Feb 21, 2020
Dear Parents,
After completing ten days of E-Learning, both our students’ and teachers’ skills have increased without bound. My message last week focussed on the opportunities that challenges can bring, and in true Britannica fashion, our students and teachers have fully grasped these.
For those students still yet to engage in online activities, we strongly encourage you to do so.
Do keep your eyes on our WeChat page, as we continue to update parents on our whole school responses to the current closure period. We hope you also enjoy the articles posted by our Heads of Phase, who have rounded up what has been happening in Britannica E-learning across the school this week.
EYFS
It has been another busy week E-learning in EYFS as each year group has taken on the challenges and activities that all the teachers have set. There have been new creative ways of sharing activities and learning from the EYFS teachers as we have delved into more teacher tutorials, video feedbacksand creative video modelling （更多的个别辅导、视频反馈和创意视频建模） of how to complete activities.
This week has been our last week on our current topics and all children have been having fun wrapping up their learning on ‘Dinosaurs’, ‘Traditional Tales’ and ‘On the Farm’.
Pre-Nursery have met a new friend this week in ‘Dingle Dangle Scarecrow’ who helps the farmer look after the crops on the farm. Looking at vegetables grown on the farm, Pre-Nursery had the opportunity to follow instructions to make vegetable soup, role-play cooking vegetables and got colourful by making rainbow bread（通过游戏在线上角色扮演煮蔬菜汤，制作彩虹面包等）!
Nursery have been all dramatic this week as they brought all their learning of ‘Traditional Tales’（经典英文故事） to an end by looking at imaginative role-play, drama and using their facial expressions to say how a character feels. These first stages of drama are an important aspect for young children as they support them understanding key characters in stories and why something may happen next in a story.
The stomping of Dinosaurs has come to an end in Reception as they brought together their learning and investigated the diet of each dinosaur; identifying foods an omnivore, herbivore and carnivore would have from their fridge. Along with their Dinosaur fun, Reception have continued their daily phonics （自然拼读） with reading, writing and speaking activities and in Mathematics they have looked at the concept of time （时间的概念）.
staff and their children in supporting our E-Learning journey. Please do continue to post your child’s work and videos to their Tapestry learning journals. I know all teachers have enjoyed seeing the children learning and enjoying their activities.
Next week each year group will begin their adventure into new topics. Keep an eye out for emails from your child’s class teacher in regards to information about these new topics.
Wishing you all a restful, relaxing weekend.
Isla Gillespie
Head of Early Years
Primary
Children and teachers across our Primary phase have continued to positively embrace various E-learning tasks and activities this week.
This week lessons have been further developed by our teachers to enable the children to access the work more confidently and empowering them to complete their learning so it feels like they are back in the classroom. Our teachers have been busy preparing a range of exciting tasks and activities as well as making more videos as part of the lesson input.
Children across all year groups have been able to watch and listen to lots more videos from their teachers （能够查看并收听更多来自老师分享的视频） explaining what their task is. Children have also become more confident to upload their work in a variety of forms （通过不同形式上传作业）, such as directly onto the template the teachers have given them, printing their work（打印作业） as well as uploading photos and videos of themselves（自己上传照片和视频）. Teachers are also able to give written or recorded spoken feedback to the children about their learning and it is especially pleasing when we get responses from the children in return, so please do make sure your child checks back on the work they have uploaded. It is a pleasure to see the children continue to work hard, challenge themselves and support each other with their E-learning.
Collaboration is one of our key foci in our mission and vision and has been demonstrated tenfold with how staff are communicating and collaborating with each other using technology and often over different time zones in order to plan the children’s lessons and ensure the children are still learning the objectives for this term. Of course, collaboration also involves our parents partnerships too, so we thank parents for supporting their child’s E-learning. Please do contact your child’s form teacher if you have any questions or feedback – it has been very rewarding to hear the positive feedback from many of you, and I thank you for this.
Continued good health and best wishes to you all.
Ms Mustoe
Head of Primary
Secondary
I have been continually impressed by many of our secondary children’s approach to our current e-learning provision and this week has been no exception. I have lost count of the number of staff who have spoken with me, commenting on how well many of our students have engaged and contributed to their online lessons, how focused and enthusiastic they are about their learning and what terrific ambassadors they have been during the schools delivery of remote learning.
I would like to encourage the parents of any student who is yet to engage to do so as soon as possible. If you require additional support in accessing the material or have any questions please do not hesitate to contact:
Paul.Farrell@britannicashanghai.com – VP and Head of Secondary
Laurence.Bell@britannicashanghai.com – Director of Educational Technology
The number of lessons which are being delivered by online conferences and pre-recorded screencasts has increased this week and many students have commented on their appreciation of this method of delivery. We will continue to further develop this area of e-learning next week.
In Science students have been learning using screencasts and live annotated power points （理科学生通过视频和带注解的PPT进行学习）. The work which has been submitted has been marked and returned to students for further steps. I would like to commend the students who have submitted work in this area; I was particularly impressed with the quality of scientific diagrams submitted during the study of magnetic fields （提交磁场课题的图表作业）.
Our Mandarin department continue to deliver their lessons via screencast （中文部也持续通过视频教学） and there have been some excellent examples of student and teacher collaboration in this area.
It has also been pleasing to see our Physical Education department creating and uploading videos to keep our children active at home （体育部则上传分享了一些体能锻炼视频，使学生们能在家开展运动）. I have personally tried to follow one of Mr Nicholas’ workouts at home and they are not easy! Well done to those students who have been participating and submitting their physical activity logs.
Paul Farrell
Head of Secondary and Vice Principal
