We understand that parents are not teachers, and we do not expect you to sit beside your child(ren) and teach them from 9am-3pm every day.

We appreciate that every family situation will be different based on a variety of factors.

We ask for your patience and support during this time of change and as the situation changes. If you feel the need, please communicate how your situation is changing to your class teacher. We want to keep in touch with you.

The school will be updating this site regularly. At the moment, we have identified some skills we think students may require to be able to stay connected with school and one another.

Some things you might want to support your child with each day:

• Read, or listen to a story.
• Write something.
• Challenge your child’s thinking on a subject or topic. Ask them why and encourage them to justify their ideas.
• Solve a problem.
• Do something active.
• Hold a conversation about a topic that is interesting to them.
• Include your child in everyday home activities, like cooking, washing and cleaning.
• Have time to rest and play.
• Have FUN together in some way - get creative! Why not post this on our school facebook page?

This is adapted from the Ministry of Education Learning from home site...

Teachers are working to make modifications to class programmes, which will offer suggestions and flexibility to support student learning. To the best of our ability, staff will be available during normal classroom hours to support learning.

Please realise staff are also dealing with similar issues to other families - different factors will affect each staff member's availability. As the situation unfolds, we will identify each teacher's availability based on their needs. We will communicate this availability on this site.

We appreciate that not everyone will have access to a device (nor should everyone be on a device all the time!).

We recommend you establish some clear guidelines for how long your children are on devices, as well as when they can use them

Follow this tutorial for learning how to set up your computer so users can easily switch between different user accounts.

If students are working through a device or a computer at home then parents or caregivers are responsible for that usage. Teachers are modifying their programmes and will offer work students can complete independently or semi-independently. One facility we have available is online video meetings.

Parents should be aware that in the situation where students and staff are using video conferencing facilities (such as Google Hangouts or Zoom), that this could potentially provide a 'window into your home'. For staff that may be working from home, this could also mean the same.

Follow these suggestions for protecting everyone:

1. Ensure the device to be used for learning at home is in an area in the home that is public (ie not a bedroom), and that others in the house know the device is to be used for learning at home, including via video conferencing.
2. Ensure everyone in the home knows when the device is to be used for learning at home, and what types of usage this might entail.
3. Ensure others in the home know that they may be seen if they walk behind your son/daughter while they are in a video conference. Make sure they know that they should not wear their pyjamas or worse!
4. Teachers will take time to help your son/daughter familiarise themselves with the environment so they know this also.

Please note that if your son/daughter is using a device and a staff member sees something inappropriate, they may be obligated to report this as a legal requirement of educators.

Our school uses a system called Hāpara which helps teachers to support the learning process of students. It enables them to do this in a range of ways:

• sending documents and work out for students, or groups of students
• focusing the browsing of school-owned Chromebooks by restricting what students can see, as well as being able to view what students are doing live on their Chromebook.
• sending out assignments and giving students feedback
• keeping an eye on email usage of students

Given that school-owned Chromebooks are possibly going to be used at home, this raises a few issues that parents need to be aware of. The feature in Hāpara allows teachers to view what is happening on a school-owned Chromebook as it is happening (between 9am-3pm) it is important that these Chromebooks are ONLY USED FOR LEARNING-RELATED TASKS. For instance, as a parent we would discourage you from doing internet banking on your child's Chromebook because we wouldn't want teachers to be able to accidentally see what you are doing!

This is a trust-based system and part of your agreement to use these devices means you agree not to use them for non-learning related tasks.