Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
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School open Tuesday 26th for children of key worker and vulnerable children
Mon 25 Jan 2021School will be back open tomorrow for children of key workers and vulnerable children. If you have work packs or lunch hampers to collect they will be ready in the morning. -
School Closed Monday 25th January
Sun 24 Jan 2021Due to the bad weather and road conditions - school will be closed on Monday 25th January. Pupils should work on J2E. Staff will be available on J2E to assist and give feedback. -
Sad News to share
Fri 15 Jan 2021We are very saddened to share that Mrs Linda Burden, our office and finance officer that worked here for over 30 years passed away this week. Lin retired 4 years ago, but she was still in contact with friends and colleagues here. Lin was a huge part of the Woodgate family and supported so many parents and children during her time here. Our sympathy goes out to all of her family and friends.
Lin's funeral is on Monday 1st February and due to covid restrictions staff are not able to attend to show their respects. However, we will be standing at the bottom of Lutley grove on Adams Hill at 3:30 to see the procession pass. If any families that remember Lin wish to join us they are more than welcome as long as they maintain social distancing.
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Update for Parents 13th January
Wed 13 Jan 2021Thank you to all parents that are supporting their children who are at home. Whether that be completing paper packs of work or completing work on the J2E platform. We do know that it is not easy to teach the children at home, especially if you are working from home yourself or have several children to support.Every bit that you do is appreciated. Remember not to get stressed and don't put too much pressure on yourself or the children. We are in this situation for several weeks and need to stay emotionally healthy. We are here to support you and will help and advise in any way we can. Thank you for lovely telephone conversations and for letting the children come to the phone to speak to staff when they ring.
If you have asked staff for a paper pack of work, please come and collect it. Otherwise, it is a waste of time, paper and lost learning. We currently have 48 packs of this week's work in the school entrance waiting for collection. And it's Thursday tomorrow, so time is running out to complete it.
Remember we are providing packed lunches for any child that is entitled and next week should be able to roll out a weekly food hamper instead of collecting a packed lunch each day. We are just waiting for deliveries of food.
Since our school kitchen is open and providing food, vouchers will not be available at this time unless the Government changes its advice.
We are pleased to say that we have started to get ipads out on loan to children that need them to complete their remote learning. 12 have been collected this week and more have been allocated. If you would like to loan a device for your child, when your child's teacher phones you next ask to go onto the waiting list.
If you are a key worker and your child is currently attending school, please remember that the Government advice is to keep numbers of pupils in school as low as possible. Therefore, if there is someone at home that is able to look after your child please keep them at home. Many thanks to all the staff, parents and children for maintaining their positivity and for working well together.
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Update for Parents.
Fri 08 Jan 2021It's been a very busy week in school putting remote learning in place and teaching those in school.We have had 99 children in school.
107 children have engaged with the learning on the J2E platform.
144 children have collected a paper pack.
45 children have not engaged with any learning this week. We hope that with encouragement from school and home that this figure goes down next week. It is really important that all children are engaging with their learning.
We have made contact with parents of 384 children this week. Thank you to all parents that picked up the phone to staff or emailed them. There have only been 5 that we have been unable to contact. We will try again on Monday and then will make home visits if we cannot get an answer.
Remember we are here every day to support you. Please get in touch if we can help in any way.
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More support for home learning
Fri 08 Jan 2021Information for parents to support home learning
BBC support
• On the 5th January, the BBC announced the biggest education offer in its history,
• Starting on Monday 11th January, each week day on CBBC will see a three-hour block of primary school programming from 9am.
• This could be useful for those families without internet or computers as some lessons will be on the television.
• Bitesize Daily primary will also air every day on BBC Red Button as well as episodes being available on demand on BBC iPlayer.
How to access online learning on an Xbox
• Plug a keyboard in to the Xbox USB slot
• Go to ‘my games and apps’
• Find Microsoft Edge and select.
• Type in Office 365 or Google Classroom (or the name of your online learning platform) and log in as you would in school.
• You can then access your work and use key packages including: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and emails.
• To move around you could use the Xbox controller or plug in a mouse.
How to access online learning on a PlayStation
• Plug a keyboard and mouse into the PlayStation’s USB slots (on the front).
• Identify the PlayStation internet browser icon (www with dots around it).
• Press the PlayStation logo on the controller.
• Go to the library and find options for games and applications
• Go into applications and you will find the internet browser
• Type in Office 365 or Google Classroom (or the name of your online learning platform) and log in as you would in school.
• You can then access your work and use key packages including: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and emails.
We have keyboards available for your use if you need one just phone school.
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Learning at home during Lockdown
Thu 07 Jan 2021I hope that you are all keeping safe. All staff are in school working and are here to help. We have over 90 children attending school each day, children of key workers or those considered to be vulnerable. Teachers and teaching assistants have telephoned every parent/child this week. Thank you to those that have answered the phone. I know that many positive conversations have been had.
Please be aware that the school number sometimes shows on your device as 'unknown' or 'withheld'.
Please pick up if you can in case it is school trying to contact you.
The reason for school contacting you is so that we can direct your child to the work they are expected to do on the J2E learning platform, to offer a paper work pack if preferred and to check on their welfare and see if there is anything else school can support you with in these challenging times. If your child is using a paper pack of work, please return it to school so that it can be marked by the teacher and filed away. You will then be able to collect the next week’s work. If you are using the remote platform but are also doing some work on paper you can take a photo and upload it to the platform or simply email it to the teacher. Again, this is so that the teacher can give feedback to your child. We will contact you at least once a week and of course you can contact your child's teacher as often as you like via email. Remember, if your child is entitled to a free school meal you can order packed lunches to collect each day. Just phone the school office to arrange this. Please take up this offer to support you over coming weeks. Our school kitchen staff are here and want to provide food for the children.
We understand that supporting home learning is not easy, especially if you have more than one child at home and are also trying to work from home yourself.
We would ask that at a bare minimum you keep your child reading and writing and practicing their basic number bonds and times tables. If children do not keep these basic skills going for the next 6 weeks there will be a huge detrimental impact on their ability when they return to school. We are already trying to catch up from the impact of last year's lockdown. If you need an exercise book and school pen/pencil for your child to practice these skills please phone school and arrange to come and collect one. Reading in particular suffered massively last year - please make sure your child reads every day. There is a wealth of free reading material on the internet as well as whatever books you have at home. If you are really struggling to find material speak to your child's teacher and they will arrange for a book to come home. This must be returned before it can be replaced with another one.
We have a number of spare USB keyboards. These can be plugged into an Xbox or playstation which can then be used to access remote learning instead of a laptop or tablet. If you would like one so that your child can access the remote learning in this way, please phone school and arrange to collect one.
Remember, we are here to help and can't wait to have everyone back in school together safely to continue our journey learning together.
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Partial Closure of School from Tuesday 5th January
Sun 03 Jan 2021Urgent Letter to Parents
Sunday 3rd January
Dear Parents,
It is with regret that I am writing to inform you of changes to school opening on Tuesday 5th January. Although this is short notice, we are letting you know as soon as we have been able to. You will probably be aware through media coverage that there has been much discussion around the safety of reopening primary schools.
The scientific evidence suggests that the infection rate in children is rising. In Birmingham cases among five-to-nine year olds has risen from 93 per 100,000 on 7th December to 174 per 100,000 on 27th December. The most recent advice from SAGE is that schools should not open in January mother than for children of key workers and vulnerable children. This is because the scientific advice is that it is not safe for schools to open. There are new variants of Covid-19 that are highly infectious and infection rates have increased significantly since schools closed.
Based on the above, teacher unions do not believe that it is safe for teachers to return to full classes. This advice means that Woodgate Primary School is not able to open to all pupils from Tuesday 5th January until further notice. Remote learning will happen every day through the J2E platform. All pupils have a login for this. It is expected that ALL children will complete the work and staff will be following this up regularly. Staff will feedback to work directly on the J2E platform and may make contact by phone to give support. If you are unable to access this online learning you must contact your child’s teacher for a paper copy of the week’s work. If you need to contact your child’s teacher, all staff email addresses are on the school website on Class Pages.
If your child is eligible for free school meals and you wish school to provide a packed lunch, please contact the office to arrange this.
School will remain open for children with Educational Health Care Plan, children of key workers and those children considered vulnerable.
If you are a key worker and wish for your child to attend school you must email school on enquiry@woodgate.bham.sch.uk providing your child’s name, class, your job role and the name of your employer before midday Monday 4th January. This will allow us to prepare for opening on Tuesday 5th January.
If we consider your child to be vulnerable and, therefore, would like them to attend school we will contact you on Monday 4th January. If you feel that your child is vulnerable, please contact school on enquiry@woodgate.bham.sch.uk stating your child’s name, class and the reason. Please do not send your child to school until we have got in contact to discuss the situation.
If your child is attending school – the same start and finish times apply, and entry and exit points as before Christmas. It is crucial that your child arrives to school on time. Breakfast club is available as usual.
Please do not hesitate to contact school if you have any queries. We appreciate that this situation will cause disruption and inconvenience and hope that it is not too long before it is deemed safe to welcome all children back to school.
Yours sincerely,
D. Colley
Head Teacher