Letter from Mr Tony; August 31

Dear Parents
If you are reading this letter then well done on navigating your way to our ‘OGC Primary Leadership Blog’. Do keep popping back from time to time as my team and I will be using this platform on which to communicate our thinking with you,  our parent community.

Last week saw the beginning of our second cycle, and today we have been back at school for 19 days. It is opportune then to take this opportunity to thank you for enabling and supporting your children to have a very smooth transition back into this new academic year. 

The faculty tell me that despite the ‘Learning from Home’ programme, the children are very positive, they are, for the most part, arriving on time for their lessons and that the teething issues experienced at the start have now mostly been sorted.

We have enjoyed hearing from you about your beginning online experiences and have taken up some of your suggestions to further support the smooth running of our programme. 

When looking to make changes to our learning from home programme we ensure that changes are inline with our OIS guiding statements, the requirements of us as an International Baccalaureate World School, and our child safeguarding policy in particular the procedures around keeping our children safe online. Along with our awareness of these documents we also keep true to our experience and understandings around best educational practices.

We have heard your suggestions to lengthen the time for the online sessions and reduce the number of times our EY children need to log on and log off and these changes have been communicated to you through Ms Vani the Grade Level Coordinator for Early Years. Coordinators in other grade levels will keep you informed of the ‘tweaks’ to the ‘plan of the day’ as these happen.

One area that many of you have requested of us is to provide opportunities for one on one curriculum support for children. All of our teachers will be available from 1400 - 1500 daily to chat with the children they teach to support them in better understanding the concepts and skills taught, to clarify tasks, or to better understand feedback they are getting from their tasks. It is also an opportunity for parents to talk with teachers and also a chance for teachers to touch base with you and your child around their progress towards achieving their goals. I would hasten to say that this is in no way compulsory for children, and that should they avail themselves of these sessions that an adult must be in the vicinity of the child as per our OIS online safeguarding procedures.

At the beginning of every year we hold a session for our parents who are new to OIS and new to the Primary Years Programme (PYP). This year our PYP Coordinators from both the JVLR campus and the OGC campus have prepared a virtual session for parents new to the PYP (this will be on September 04) and you will receive more information from them about this. 

In closing I would like to thank you for your patience while we have settled into the routines of the new academic year and for your continued support of us.


Have a great week ahead.
Tony
Head of Primary