Adaptations to school provision for Covid-19

Full return to school – September 2020

Our tiered contingency plan can be found here: HSM Tiered contingency plan

COVID-19 – A quick guide for parents and carers

We are now in a position to update you on the planning for the Autumn term 2020. As per Government guidance, the children will remain in class ‘bubbles’ for the first half of the autumn term at least. These bubbles will consist of their teacher and the teaching assistant or other staff that make up the bubble. This is as per the guidance for schools.

New guidance for parents has been sent. If you haven’t already seen it you may want to have a read.

Please find our full risk assessment here:

Sept 2020 HSM and LFF Risk Assessment for COVID-19 website

Parental agreement

Please find the parental agreement for September here: September Parent – School Agreement

All parents and carers of children in Little Forest Friends, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are required to read, agree and adhere to the new requirements which come into place from the start of the Autumn term. Please ensure that the agreement is signed by Monday 7th September . The agreement form can be accessed here: https://forms.gle/hNzHeTYbQgrzjX7q8

Dates of school term

The school term will start on Monday 7th September for all Year 1 and Year 2 children in their designated class bubble group (please see later for timings). These children will not be in school on Thursday 3rd September or Friday 4th September.

We will be welcoming our Little Forest Friends and new Reception children in small groups with their parents on Thursday 3rd September and Friday 4th September. This is for stay and play sessions and to meet the teachers and staff that will working in these bubble groups.

Attendance

The expectation is that all children will return to school unless they are extremely clinically vulnerable and have been advised by a specialist not to do so. These children will be offered online learning and support. We will be expecting to see all other children return into their bubble group.

Staggered start and finished times

In line with the Government guidance to reduce transmission between individuals, we will be organising staggered start and finish times for each year group bubble. Each class will have six hours on the school site.

Little Forest Friends will return to the Eco Lodge in September now that the heating has been fixed. This will allow children a full forest school environment. The sessions will run as they have this year with half sessions picking up or dropping at 12:00 noon.

Class  Drop off  Collection 
Little Forest Friends 8.55am 2.55pm
Rainbow 1 and Rainbow 2 8.45am 2.45pm
Sunshine 1 and Sunshine 2 9.00am 3.00pm
Sky 1 and Sky 2 9.15am 3.15pm

We realise that there may be some difficulties for families who have siblings at school. If this does affect you and your pick and up drop off time is unmanageable please get in touch.

We are in the unique situation of having the church path entrance and so have had to create more prescriptive staggered times.

 Now that potentially 60 parents and children will need to get through the churchyard, we really will need your help in ensuring that everyone is swift and efficient in this. I am afraid that you will not be able to speak to class teachers at the door, therefore, anything that needs attention for that day should be emailed to the school office and the class teacher will be informed. We will be keeping the class emails open for the foreseeable future for any other communication with class teachers.
lffteaching@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
rainbow1@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
rainbow2@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
sunshine1@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
sunshine2@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
sky1@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
sky2@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
Please also ensure that you hold your child’s hand when dropping off and picking up so that they do not run ahead of you.

One way system in operation to reduce transmission and avoid large gatherings of people

The system will alter slightly to the one that is currently in operation and the churchyard path will be used in a one-way system:

Coming to school: Enter via the churchyard path, use the gate next to Rainbows (on the right of the main building) and then drop your child at the outside door of their bubble group. Parents and carers will then continue in the same direction, past the other classrooms and follow the path on the inside of the orange netting down the side of the school drive and exit via the main staff car park entrance/exit.

Collecting from school: This will be a reverse of dropping off. Parents and carers will enter via the driveway and follow the path inside the orange netting at the side of the school driveway, pick up their child from outside their bubble group classroom, continue past the other classrooms and out of the gate next to Rainbows and then exit via the churchyard. This will ensure that children only use the churchyard path and not the school driveway.

Mrs Richardson and I have also prepared this rather awful video clip that explains the system for dropping off and picking up. You may want to get a cup of tea whilst you watch as it is 7 minutes long!

Little Forest Friends drop off/pick up

When dropping off or picking up at 8.55am or 2.55pm from the setting (in the Eco Lodge),
  • drop off – enter via the church path and wooden side gate, walk across the field and exit via the one-way system through the blue gate and down the side of the staff car park.
  • picking up – enter via blue gate and path (one-way system), walk across the field, exit via side gate and church path. 
12pm pick up and drop off (at the art area pagoda in the playground);
  • enter via church path, pick up/drop off at the art area pagoda in the playground (a member of staff will be waiting for you). Please be on time to avoid staff/children waiting unnecessarily. Exit via the one-way system down the drive.
Children who find it difficult to settle
If children find it difficult to settle, we are now able to give them more encouragement than we were permitted to do so in earlier guidance. Any physical contact with children will need to be recorded in case there is a confirmed case within that class to help provide information to Public Health England on who would need to isolate. We will do our best to settle children as much as possible and recognise that some may find it difficult, particularly if they are new to the school or finding the transition from home to school difficult.

Classroom set up – Key Stage 1

We will keep the circular tables that we have now but use them in the semi-circle format with two children per table sat side by side and facing the class teacher. The teacher will teach from the front of the classroom. Key Stage 1 children will not sit on the carpet as there will not be enough space.

Classroom set up – Early Years

EYFS will use the continuous provision in their own classroom. There will be timetabled sessions for using the covered area and field space. Each class will have access to outside space every day. Little Forest Friends will use their own space in the Eco Lodge. The children will have a set carpet space. Rainbow 1 will use the cloakroom area to hang their coats. Rainbow 2 will use the middle classroom as their cloakroom area to hang their coats. The shared area will not be used as a teaching space. Little Forest Friends will eat lunch in the Eco Lodge.

Happy Hedgehogs

Due to staff being unable to cross bubble groups and to mitigate the risks of bubble groups closing down, we will not be offering a full wraparound care service from the 7th September. However, we can support parents with an hour of childcare after school each day in each year bubble group. This will be charged at £5.00 for the hour. The children will stay in their year bubble group classroom with a member of staff from their bubble. Please see below for the hours that we are able to offer for each bubble group:

Happy Hedgehogs pick up timings (to include additional hour):

Little Forest Friends                     3:55pm

Rainbow 1 and Rainbow 2           3:45pm

Sunshine 1 and Sunshine 2         4:00pm

Sky 1 and Sky 2                              4:15pm

Please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to take up this offer by emailing happyhedgehogs@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk. It does not have to be every day.

Staffing

Mrs Richardson will be increasing her leadership hours from September and Mrs Emily Roads will now be teaching in Sky 1 on Thursday and Friday, with Mrs Allison on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The teaching assistants that will be working in each class are as follows. This will be consistent so that each bubble will be self-contained and avoid any staff working across bubbles.

Rainbow 1               Mrs Howse working with Mrs Mehta.

Rainbow 2               Mrs Ladyman and Mrs Tombs-Gallagher working with Mrs Smith.

Sunshine 1              Miss Booth, Mrs Kirby working with Mr Williams and Mrs Williams.

Sunshine 2              Mrs Aziz working with Mrs Nickless.

Sky 1                        Miss Hawes and Mrs Butler working with Mrs Allison and Mrs Roads.

Sky 2                       Mrs Brown and Mrs Eccles working with Mrs Gilbert-Scott.

We are also pleased that Miss Hawes will be completing her SCITT teacher training programme next year.

Forest School

There will be no forest school sessions offered in the first half of the Autumn term for any class. Mrs Roads cannot work across two bubbles and she is our only qualified Forest School teacher. We hope that these sessions might resume in the second half of the Autumn term but will depend on the Government guidance.

After school clubs

No after school clubs will be offered in the first half of the Autumn term. Again, this is due to reducing transmission and to avoid mixing of bubble groups.

PE days

Children should wear leisure or comfortable clothes on their PE day. This will avoid children bringing PE kit into school and the need to change clothing. The PE days for each class are as follows:

Monday                  Sky 1

Tuesday                  Sky 2

Wednesday            Sunshine 1

Thursday                 Sunshine 2

Friday                     Rainbow 1

Friday                     Rainbow 2

Uniform

All children will be expected to return to school in full school uniform and the relaxation of the rules will be lifted, however we are again understanding of financial situations and if you are facing difficulty with purchasing uniform please get in touch.

Handwashing and hygiene

Children will continue to wash hands upon entry to school, during regular sessions throughout the day and before lunch and eating. All staff and pupils will continue to observe good hand washing protocols in addition to using hand sanitiser. Staff will continue to disinfect high touch areas and touch points throughout the day.

Lunchtime

The kitchen will resume with hot lunches for all children. Children in Sunshine and Sky bubbles will eat at their table in their classroom. The lunches will be delivered by trolley and served by the kitchen staff at a social distance.

Rainbow children will eat their lunch in the hall at designated tables. Both Rainbow bubbles will be staggered giving them time to eat in their class bubble group.

School equipment
Government guidance is currently for children to bring in to school as few personal items as possible. We have therefore limited these to essential items such as lunch boxes and snack boxes.
All equipment in school will be kept within bubbles and/or cleaned and sanitised regularly.  Pens and pencils for EYFS children will be sanitised regularly.
We have offered to provide a pencil case for Key Stage 1 classes in order to avoid children touching (or chewing!) shared equipment. For clarity, the stationery provided will include: a large, wipeable pencil case containing a 30cm ruler, 3 HB pencils, 12 high quality colouring pencils, an eraser, a canister pencil sharpener, a purple polishing pen, a whiteboard marker, a whiteboard rubber and a glue stick. As items are used up, they will be replenished from school stocks at no extra charge. The junior school are providing individual pencil cases and contents for their pupils but we understand that they are not asking parents to contribute to this. We are asking for a voluntary contribution of £5 to help cover the costs in order that we can continue to provide our usual high level of other resources in the classrooms. Please be aware that this is voluntary and if you do not want to contribute or are finding it difficult to do so then we will use the school budget to fund this for every Key Stage 1 child. One family has queried why we have asked for a contribution and HCJS have not, but others may wonder, therefore I would like to explain why our school has been more financially impacted due to the pandemic than theirs.
  • We were unable to furlough our Happy Hedgehogs staff as they all had other contracts with Buckinghamshire Council (ie they all have other roles in school or at another school), therefore the scheme didn’t allow this so we continued to pay their wages whilst receiving no income.
  • HCJS were only required to take Y6 plus key workers back in bubbles of 15 in June, however the guidance for us prioritised youngest children first in bubbles of 8 therefore we needed more staff to run the provision resulting in overtime costs for part time workers.
  • HCJS continued to receive free school meal income with no outgoings. As the catering hub for HCJS, Cuddington and Dinton schools, we continued to pay for staff and vehicle costs with significant reductions in income – only receiving our own universal free school meal income.  Again, we were unable to furlough kitchen staff.
All of this, plus the additional costs of PPE and cleaning equipment purchase has impacted our budget by £75,000 to date.
 
Reading
Sunshine and Sky Classes
Sunshine and Sky classes will bring home reading books each Monday and we ask that you return the finished books along with the reading record on a Friday, the children will put their book bag into a class box where it will stay for the weekend ready for new books to be issued on the Monday. Please send your child’s named empty book bag into school on Friday 11th September so we can issue books on the following Monday. We will not be able to change books throughout the week, but we will be sending home a login for your child to access a wider range of e-books on the Oxford Owl website, and details of the letters and sounds phase your child is working at so you can read more books if you would like to. Each child will also have a reading book in school kept in a separate folder to read regularly to an adult.
Rainbow Classes
Rainbow classes will not bring reading books home for the first few weeks. We will let you know when this will start but the arrangements will be the same. Your child may also bring home sound and word cards in addition to the books to be kept at home until they are finished with.
Learning logs/homework
Learning logs will be sent home by Friday 11th of September with a grid of activities (which will also be posted on the website). We will then ask for these books to be sent in during the last week of this half term for teachers to give their feedback and the books will then be returned after half term. Other homework activities will be sent home with children and can be returned to school when completed but will not be marked until 72 hours have passed.
Children in Rainbow classes will not receive learning logs until the Spring term to enable them to settle in.
Water bottles
In line with Government guidance on limiting non-essential belongings into school, we are asking children not bring a water bottle into school.  Every child will be provided with a named reusable plastic cup (NB not single use plastic) which can be washed regularly in their classroom. There will be access to water for all children throughout the school day.
Snacks
If you would like to provide your child with a snack to eat during the school day, please provide a named box with snacks in that will last the child the week. It can be brought into school on a Monday and will then be returned on a Friday. Please do not provide snacks on a daily basis that are not in a box. The children will still have access to a daily piece of fruit in school. Do not provide any snacks that require refrigeration such as cheese or yogurt. As per our school policy, no food should contain nuts.

Packed lunch/hot dinners

The school kitchen will be reopening from next Monday to provide a hot school lunch for Year 1 and Year 2 children and for Reception children from the following week. As usual, the menus will be published each week on the school website. If your child wishes to bring a packed lunch instead of eating the hot lunch then this is permitted. We will not be using the lunch box trolleys in the hall, so your child should take their lunch box to their classroom. Children in Little Forest Friends should continue to bring a packed lunch if they are attending for the whole day.

Remote curriculum
We are finalising our plans for remote learning in the event that your child needs to isolate. We have taken advantage of having more time over the summer break to look at online platforms to support learning. More information, including the parent consultation run by the Governors, will follow.

Catch up curriculum

We will resume a full curriculum from September.  Please see here for the link to our recovery curriculum: Recovery Curriculum Sept 2020 final

We will identify the most important knowledge and skills missed in the last term of the previous year group and plan to cover these ‘non-negotiables’ intensively in the first half term. Children will be given the chance to catch up. The children will then move onto the planned year group curriculum.

Each class will have a weekly circle time/PSHE lesson in the Autumn term where emotional wellbeing will be a huge focus. Nurture groups will continue in class for those that need this extra support.

RE will continue to be alternate weeks in Key Stage 1, and there will be music one week and RE the next. Phonics in Key Stage 1 will not be taught in mixed groups across the year – this will be done within each bubble. We will use a carousel during the day so that the teacher or TA can focus on differentiated groups. Children will have five phonic sessions a week in EYFS and four sessions in Key Stage 1 in addition to class spelling.

Collective Worship
The children will be receiving their usual Collective Worship time on a daily basis; this will now be after lunch. We are planning to continue with weekly ‘Diamonds in the Jar’ and ‘Sparkling Star’ assemblies and Mrs Collett and Mrs Richardson will deliver regular Collective Worship sessions via Zoom or Teams. Some sessions will be led in class by the class teacher but will follow the usual format with the greeting, and reflection and prayer time will be included. A schedule of appropriate stories both secular and non-secular has been created to allow teachers to deliver quality Collective Worship sessions in class.
Medical appointments 
We ask that medical appointments in the school day be made only if entirely necessary and there is no other option. This will avoid children coming in and out of ‘bubbles’ during the school day.
Child absence
If your child is unwell for any reason and will not be attending school please inform the school as soon as possible. You can use the school office phone number and select the ‘school absence’ option and state the reason why they are not in school. Alternatively, please email the school office. Please don’t use the class email addresses for this purpose as the School Office need a record of absence in the morning.
 
Please remember that if your child has any Covid-19 symptoms – a high temperature, a new continuous cough, or a loss or change to sense of smell or taste then they should not attend school.

School office

The school office will remain closed to staff and visitors from September without prior appointment. Please use the telephone and school email account for contact.

Regular collectors
To reduce numbers of people on the church path and school grounds we are asking that only one person drops off their child at school. If someone other than yourself collects your child from school on a regular basis please inform the school office. This will avoid us having to contact you should we not recognise someone who is picking up your child.

Junior School drop off

We have worked with Haddenham Junior School to co-ordinate drop off and pick times to try to negate disruption for parents.

Free School Meals

Please get in touch if you are eligible for free school meals and need help with purchasing uniform. Pencil cases for children eligible for Free School Meals will be purchased through pupil premium funds.

Updated policies and addendums for Covid-19

Here is the new behaviour poster for children:

Coronavirus Rules_5.9.20

 

2020 September HSM Behaviour Policy Covid-19 addendum website

2020 website HSM Child Protection Policy Annexe Covid-19

Pupil Privacy notice addendum during Covid 2020-2021

 

 

Education Offer and Covid-19

Details of our provision for
Adaptations to school provision for Covid-19

Aston Road, Haddenham, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP17 8AF. T: 01844 291455 e: office@haddenham-st-marys.bucks.sch.uk
Headteacher: Mrs K Collett. Chair of Governors: Mrs G Bull
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