As you will realise, Long Bennington CE Academy continues to be closed for the majority of our pupils, due to the national emergency.

However, the school continues to provide Emergency Childcare provision for those identified vulnerable children as well as children of key workers, so they can support the national effort.  School is open Monday - Friday and we genuinely are here to support you with childcare provision. 

If any parents do require the school to provide childcare for their children then we are here to help and you can contact us using the enquiries@longbennigntonacademy.co.uk email address to inform us of the days your child/ren will be in school. 

Home Learning

Working from home We’re realistic about what pupils will be able to do during this period, and we want you to be too. You're not expected to become teachers and your children aren't expected to learn as they do in school. Simply providing them with some structure at home will help them to adapt. The following tips are designed to help you create a positive learning environment at home. See what works best for your household.

 Create and stick to a routine if you can. This is what children are used to. For example, eat breakfast at the same time and make sure they're dressed before starting the ‘school’ day – avoid staying in pyjamas!

 Involve your children in setting the timetable where possible. It’s a great opportunity for them to manage their own time better and it’ll give them ownership

 Check in with your children and try to keep to the timetable, but be flexible. If a task/activity is going well or they want more time, let it extend where possible

 If you have more than 1 child at home, consider combining their timetables. For example, they might exercise and do maths together – see what works for your household

 Designate a working space if possible, and at the end of the day have a clear cut-off to signal school time is over

 Stick the timetable up on the wall so everyone knows what they should be doing when, and tick activities off throughout the day

  Distinguish between weekdays and weekends, to separate school life and home life

  Accept that they'll probably watch more TV/spend time on their phone – that's ok but you might want to set/agree some screen time limits

Please don’t worry about your children getting behind with learning. Everyone’s in the same boat.

The class teachers are putting together a timetable of activities for the children to complete each day and these are being shared by the class pages on the website and other established forms of communication. 

I would also like to highlight the 'home learning' section of the school website which has numerous links to other resources covering many areas of the curriculum.  This morning I have also added additional maths and project resources to the class pages.  All of these can be used to supplement the work set by the class teachers.  I myself completed the BBC Bitesize maths activities with my children yesterday and then set them additional maths work using the White Rose resources.  I didn't print the worksheets, they had the questions on screen and then answered them on a blank sheet of paper, this seemed to work quite well for us and the video resources were a useful guide. 

Through all of this it is important to remember that you do what is best for you and your families at home and please feel free to 'Pick and Mix' the resources which work best for yourselves. 

If any families are struggling to engage with the learning set then please feel free to contact us and we will do all we can to try and help/support in any way we can. 

Remember, as you begin the ‘new term’ and continue to support your child/ren with their home-learning I would like to encourage you to try and ensure that the children or yourselves engage with their class teacher at least once a week.  

This could be simply to:

• confirm that ‘all is well’ at home and your child is happy with the tasks that they are doing;
• to share some work with your child’s teacher; or
• to ask for further support around a particular activity.

Collective Worship

The children are used to the routine of Collective Worship and this does provide them with a moment in the day for some quiet time and reflection.  The diocese of Lincoln have put together a useful pack of resources and these are available in the 'home learning' section of the website. 

I have spoken to Reverend Harriet at church and we will be looking to put some additional resources together based around Collective Worship.

Reading Books

There are many ways to access on-line reading materials at home these include:

Access 330+ free KS1 ebooks from our primary reading programme

Go to Collins Connect and click on the Teacher portal and enter: 

Username: parents@harpercollins.co.uk

Password: Parents20! 

and click Login.

http://E Books - 7,102 FREE books available

https://stories.audible.com/discovery

Physical Activity and Healthy Lifestyle Challenges

As you know we work closely in school with the local charity Inspire+, the staff at Inspire + have been very busy creating challenges for the children alongside virtual competitions.  These are all available to view on their website:

https://www.inspireplus.org.uk/

I will continue to provide a daily update which will be available on the latest news section of the school website.   I know that these are uncertain times for us all but we will continue to support our school community as best we can.    

Stay Safe

David Nicholson