Please can we share 'good practice' on primary school home learning - with website links?

[Thenagainmaybenot]

I know there are mixed opinions and practices on how primary schools are managing home learning. My children's primary, which I have not been too thrilled with, are asking for feedback on how they could improve.

Does anyone have links to the home learning websites of primary schools they feel have done this well?

I know lots of schools will be using Google Classroom etc which won't be linkable, but could you share if the work is just put up on a website?

Honestly, in house VLEs are usually clunky and awful. I've worked with several different ones over the years and whilst none of the other platforms are perfect they are much more universalisable. Eg Teams, Google Classroom etc. As for websites, the main ones are well known, Bitesize, Oak Academy, Twinkl, White Rose Maths. I know some parents are sniffy about schools not creating their own bespoke resources but there's really no need.. The existing ones are usually far more technically accomplished and easier to interact with.

I can't share a website but can tell you what I think has worked well at my dc's primary school: they were already using an app called SeeSaw for home-school communication and since lockdown they have ramped up the use of this. Each morning the children (or parents) login and find a recorded video message from their class teacher telling them a bit about the work for that day. The work is uploaded to the app and usually includes a maths activity, literacy activity and one or two other activities linked to the current theme. Also usually a couple of fun additional activities too. Some activities are done online, some on paper, others involve building or making something. The children can post responses, add messages and ask questions which are usually answered very quickly. They can also add messages to their classmates' posts (all approved by teachers first), so feel as though they are interacting with each other too. Lots of praise for work uploaded, virtual house points awarded (and virtual stickers for the younger ones). My year 6 dd is able to do most of this independently (we help her when she needs it) and it has worked really well for her. Sadly now that her year group has reopened (but she isn't going in due to our youngest dd shielding) the teacher is understandably not able to be as responsive or post every day, so they just get set work at the start of the week - she is definitely feeling more isolated and less motivated as a result.
My year 2 dd has additional needs but is still able to access and use the app with our support, and hearing from her teacher each day via the video messages definitely helps to encourage her to do some work - without this I think she would be very resistant.

Thanks - what I meant was, if people have links to websites of primary schools, to show what spefic schools are doing for specific classes.

Eg. (not a particularly good example)
wheatcroft.herts.sch.uk/parents/coronavirus-information-hub/

Here you can see home learning for each class, and you can also see that in mid May the school moved over to using Google classroom.

In this one
www.highbeeches.herts.sch.uk/pupils/year-3
there is a home learning pack for each year.

We use Google Classroom. I can’t link to what we do, but every Monday every year group gets a PDF posted with their work for the week. There is a task a day given for every subject. For maths we link to the lessons from White Rose Maths and attach the relevant sheets. Children are expected to “hand in” one task a day using either a google doc or google slides that is attached. The other tasks they complete on paper. The teacher is expected to mark the work that is handed in by the end of the week. Children can send comments to the teacher asking for help which are expected to be answered that day.

Don't just send them links of stuff you prefer. Honestly.

All schools are different, all schools have different funds for this stuff, all schools have different communities, all schools have different staffing issues.

Tell them what you'd prefer, taking into account what has been offered - be able to explain why that has not worked for you, and what would have made it work for you. Don't mention ANYONE ELSE in your response.

Ours has done very well. They use class dojo as a platform.
Every day we get Maths and English plus another one or two subjects- spellings, PE, games, topic, Science, French, art, music, reasoning, PHSCE.
The teacher tends to either do a zoom or upload a video of herself explaining the work. It is differentiated into core, challenge, super challenge. She’s using Twinkl sometimes but other resources too. Links are mainly to safe YouTube videos.
We have to upload the work - usually a photo but sometimes a video of the child. Work is marked straightaway that day and they earn points for good work.
They have a daily half hour zoom for form time too.
For example yesterday he had to write a story using homophones from a list for English. The zoom was them all reading their stories. They do their spelling test on zoom also.