Sharing work with your teacher

Keep sharing work with the class teachers using the email addresses below. 

 

year6@laneendprimary.org.uk

year5@laneendprimary.org.uk

year4@laneendprimary.org.uk

year3@laneendprimary.org.uk

year2@laneendprimary.org.uk

year1@laneendprimary.org.uk

reception@laneendprimary.org.uk

nursery@laneendprimary.org.uk

 

The 2 short videos below show how you can send images of your child's work back to their teacher using an i-phone or i-pad.

Connecting with Teams

 

Thank you so much to all those children and families that helped me with our first test 'Teams' connect up last Thursday.  I must say how wonderful it was to see all the children, even if it was just for a few minutes.

 

The test really helped me to see what the possibilities and challenges are going to be with this new technology used at a school level, in this way.

 

If you still need help getting onto Teams or are having logging in problems with the emails and passwords, please do text, email the teachers or ring the school and we will do the best we can to help.

 

So what next - Class Teams Meetings!

 

I shared what I learnt with all the teachers, and then we have planned to have our first Class Teams Connect up this week. Teachers will post the day and time of the Class Teams meeting on the Class pages of the school website so please look out for it.

 

We are still learning how to set up and use the Teams meetings - and will keep trying to make it as straightforward and easy to use (for both children and us!) as we can. We thank you for your support and patience as we work with IT technicians, and Microsoft, to make the system as school friendly as it can be.  We are all learning about this together - but that's what the Lane End Community do best - work it out together!

 

The Class Teams meetings with your children will be new for the teachers too this week - they are very excited to see you all and I know, children, you will help them to make the class meeting as great as possible with all your safe, respectful and responsible choices. 

 

Live Learning?

 

We have decided, like many schools have, that 'live' lessons are not the best option for our children, families and staff at this point in time. There are lots of reasons that this might not the best way to offer remote learning - we recognised that many families would have had extreme challenges of sharing devices, allowing children to be using a device at a very specific time for a 'live' lesson, when there are other children and adults in the home needing access too. There has been huge issues of the demands on wi-fi capacity in live streaming. Teachers are also needed to be carrying out other tasks in school with critical worker pupils; and we felt the need for some resources in the homes needed in live teaching, like we would do in school,  may prove challenging too. So for now, we will continue with the online daily SWAY home tasks on class pages on the website, - but the teachers are working hard to include, and also record both audio and video clips to help the children with teaching and learning on the SWAYs. Some teachers have felt a bit shy, recording themselves, but they are getting used to it now!

 

Online Safety and Responsible 'live' Communication Expectations

 

On the point of making safe and responsible choices, below are the school's  age specific 'Acceptable Use Agreements' that the children have to follow when using school technology and when working online. Please could you talk about and share these key principles with your children, and the class teachers will as well, in the Class meetings as needed. 

 

I know it was very exciting for the children to be able to communicate and 'talk' to one another this week on Teams. Lockdown and school closures make it very tricky for all our children, and they can feel lonely, isolated and bored. Please could you reinforce to the children that the 'Chat' feature on Teams is not to be used for chatting outside the Teacher led sessions. We are trying to sort the settings with Microsoft so that is not an option but if you could chat about this too, that would be really helpful.

 

The reason the children are NOT to use the chat or call features on Teams - to contact one another - is around safeguarding and privacy. This includes any typed messages, no matter how short or well meaning. When teachers are leading a session, we are able to ensure that all communications and contributions are safe and appropriate, and that all children feel comfortable and included appropriately.  If children use this without teacher supervision, there are obvious risks of this not being the case.  

 

Missing our friends

 

Some parents have asked if it is possible that school facilitates some kind of communication platform, such as a Facebook page, or a place on Teams, where children could freely communicate and chat to one another, outside teacher led sessions. Unfortunately, this is not something could do at this point. As school is responsible for ensuring strict safeguarding principles with school led activities - this kind of open social media/communication forum would be impossible to monitor and restrict. We do not have the staffing capacity or technology to do this sadly.

As we have seen last week, some children found it very difficult to post messages with restraint in quantity, and that other children became understandably very distressed, and distracted at the constant interruptions of ongoing message alerts and notifications on home phones and devices.  The only thing we can suggest at this point is that, as now, parents of peer groups of friends could set up, support, work together and monitor themselves something like this as we know the children are missing contact with one another. School systems cannot be used however, nor can the sharing of contact details to facilitate this.

 

We are hoping that the weekly Class Teams meetings will enable children to have that contact with one another, until the national lockdown crisis is over, and we can finally re-open school.

 

We will be sending out a short survey, asking you about how you are being able to access the home learning soon - please do fill it in. The more we know, the more we can try to help. We will also be sending out a letter, reassuring parents about the school expectations of home learning. We know you are all doing a marvellous job in the most stressful of situations. 

 

Thank you for all your support

Asa Britton and the Lane End Team

 

 

 

 

Remote Education - Connecting home and school

Thank you all for your efforts in helping your children setting up and logging into their Lane End Outlook email.

If you are still having trouble with this – please ring, text or email school and we will try to help. There is also information on the school website: Parents tab – Remote Education https://www.laneendprimary.org.uk/remote-education/    Mr Forsythe, one of our Year 5 teachers, has made a video showing you how to do this which will help any parents and children that still might be having trouble getting it going.

 

So what next?

We would now need you all to access Microsoft Teams. This is the place where we will be able to connect live with your children at home, in a virtual screen face to face meeting. You can do this is a number of ways, depending on what device you are using at home and how it is set up.

You can download the ‘Outlook Teams’ app on a mobile device – going through your devices app store.

Once you have the app, then log in with your child’s school email address and password.

You can log on through a website rather than downloading an app.

 

• Go to:    teams.microsoft.com/download   or click here  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/download-app   
• Click on ‘download teams’
• A setup file will now download
• Click on the downloaded file (this might be at the bottom of your screen)
• Click on continue when it appears
• Type in your school email address and password
• You are now signed into Teams.

 

There is a You Tube video here, showing you this - how you can get to and then log your child into the school Teams area. You only need to watch the video up to about 1 minute 45 seconds. After this is shows you chat and video options. Please ignore this as the children will not be able to do this as this feature is blocked for them – for safeguarding purposes.

 

Click the link below to watch the You Tube video on how to install Teams through a web browser.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfDBQ3imcs4&safe=active

 

We have been testing the virtual meetings in school, and there can be a few technical issues, depending on your device, but we think we are sorting out most things we are coming across.

 

Let’s try it!

I would like to try it out – and see how many families and children at home we can successfully connect up with before the end of this week. Then next week onwards, teachers will let you know, on the class SWAY learning pages, what times they will invite the children at home to meet up with them, and their other friends at home, for a virtual chat! 😊

 

So.... tomorrow (Thursday 28th January)  I will be inviting children in different year groups to meet me on Teams for a quick, face to face hello!!  This way, you can test it out at home and we can see who still might need help or what other technical problems families are having.

 

Please help your child log into Teams.

Then, if you/they open Teams tomorrow, at the time below for their year group, hopefully we should be able to see each other for a live mini chat.

 

They are members of different school Team groups – one for year group and one for their class. So, for example, Zain, in Year 6 who has been helping us to test this out is in the ‘Year 6’ Team and the ‘Oak Class’ team.

 

I will call them in their year group team – for example ‘Year 6’. If the Teams app is open, they should get a message appearing, telling them/you the meeting has started and they can click the Join button. This should appear at the time slot below for their year group. Hopefully then, they will see me, and any other of their friends that are at home too.

 

They might need to click a couple of buttons to be seen and heard.

Then we should all see and hear each other on the screen! Like this:

 

You could help the children too, by telling them when they need to ‘’mute’ (turn their sound off) so that only one voice can be heard at a time.

 

These are the times we would like you to join me for a test connection on Teams and to say ‘hello’ face to face!

 

Thursday 28 January 2021

 

Year 6           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 9:30am

Year 5           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 9:45am

Year 4           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 10:00 am

Year 3           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 10:15am

Year 2           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 10:30am

Year 1           Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 10:45am

Reception      Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 11:00am

Nursery        Please log into Teams and click ‘join’ at 11:15am

 

If things are not working, and there are technical issues, I will text families and let them know not to try and join a meeting -  while we fix the settings.

 

If you can’t make it at this time, don’t worry. It is just a test run.

 

After we have checked this works, your child’s class teacher will be able to invite them for class meetings – getting into the meetings either this way, or through a meeting invitation that will be sent to your child’s email. So please do keep trying to get your child’s Lane End email set up with them.

Thank you

Mrs Britton

School email addresses for all Lane End children

 

Logging onto your child's school email account for the first time:

We have been working with lots of families, to try and trouble shoot any problems or questions they have, in trying to log onto their child's email account for the first time.

It is something new to us too, so thank you for being patient with the process if it isn't going quite as smoothly as we would hope!

 

So many different devices...

The challenge we are having in helping is that there is such a range of devices being used at home, and families have their technology already set up in lots of different ways, it can be tricky to give the best advice or help - especially as we cannot see you or or the messages your device is giving you.

 

It can be very tricky (and frustrating!)

I have been talking to lots of other schools, as well as EdTech advisors - and they are saying the same - it can be tricky! So, please don't worry if you are having trouble getting the technology to work. We completely understand the challenges you might be facing. We will keep doing our best to help you, as best as we can. Together, it might take us time but we will get there. I am learning new things with this technology every day too but also know how frustrating it can be when things don't seem to do what they are supposed to do! If you do need help, please send an email, a text saying something like 'help needed with emails'  or ring the school office.

 

Send a 'hi' message

As soon as you are on, please help your child to send a 'hi' email to the year group email addresses, so we know you have been successful. They can only send messages to the year group email addresses, to no where else, as this is the safety feature we have built in.

 

year6@laneendprimary.org.uk

year5@laneendprimary.org.uk

year4@laneendprimary.org.uk

year3@laneendprimary.org.uk

year2@laneendprimary.org.uk

year1@laneendprimary.org.uk

reception@laneendprimary.org.uk

nursery@laneendprimary.org.uk

 

Sharing handy tips

If using a mobile device (iPhone, iPad or android) lots of people have managed to set up their child's email by first downloading the free Microsoft Outlook app.

Other people have suggested logging onto your child's email account for the first time through the Microsoft website - at https://outlook.live.com/owa/  and then signing in to the Outlook email from here.

 

 

Adding your Microsoft Outlook email to an XBox console

 

 

Working together to get it sorted

Please do keep trying, and keep letting us know when things are not working, and what the error messages say that you are getting. A member of the Lane End team will try to get in touch with you as soon as they can, to see if together we can get it going. We have managed to help quite a lot of families in this way in the last week or so, and if we are both stuck, we have access to an IT technician once a week too.

 

Pupil email connection will allow online meetings with school and friends for your child

Your child will need to get their Lane End outlook email working to be able to be invited to a 'virtual' online face to to face sessions with their teachers and also live chats with their class mates in the coming weeks.

 

Other features to benefit children and families

If you have managed to get your child's outlook email up and running, we would like to share with you that as they have access to the school Microsoft account, they do also have access to and can use the other Microsoft programs too, free of charge. This includes Microsoft Office, Powerpoint and Excel. This can be accessed by going to the office.com website and log into their school email account.

 

Thank you for your continuing support in this stressful and challenging times for us all

Take care

Mrs Britton and the Lane End Team