I would firstly like to mention how proud I am of how the team of staff and students at Pewsey Vale School have adjusted to our current online home learning. The teachers have been successfully completing a full timetable of both ‘live’ lessons and teaching students face to face. There will continue to be a wide variety of live teaching, prepared videos and interactive learning activities throughout this lockdown. 

Over the coming weeks, we will mark and assess the students’ completed work and give them feedback. We will also be gathering data on their engagement to online learning and how they are performing overall for each subject. This information will then be shared with parents/carers. 

Well done to all involved with the effort and engagement. 

• Covid-19 Testing 

Pewsey Vale School has completed the first week of Covid- 19 mass testing for both students and staff. A lot of training has been carried out to ensure all safety procedures are being followed. One of our learning rooms has been transformed into a safe testing area and we have organised all the necessary equipment. It has been a very successful first week of testing and I would like to thank all the staff involved in the set up and implementation of this, ensuring that it ran smoothly. 

We will continue to test both students and staff for the foreseeable future. 

• IT support

https://elearning.pewseyvale.org/ 

Over the past couple of weeks, we have run an IT support team to assist students whilst they are completing their learning from home. The team have carried out password resets and talked through some system usage to support those students who needed help. If you require any technical support, please call the main school line 01672 565000 and select option 7 for technical support with remote learning. 

• Welfare & Support 

I am very proud that we have endeavoured to contact every family to ‘check in’ and complete welfare checks to ensure that students have the equipment required to complete their home learning. It is very important to take time and appreciate how hard things are presently for everyone. We are trying to do our best to support families in these challenging times so please get in touch and if we can help in any way, we will be happy to do so. 

We recognise that home learning is an increase of screen time for our students and that it is important to manage this effectively. Therefore, from this week, we have amended our online lesson times.

Online lesson timetable:

P1 9.00-9.40

P2 9.50-10.30

BREAK

P3 10.55-11.35

P4 11.45-12.30

LUNCH

P5 13.05-13.45

P6 13.55-14.35

The team at school continues to organise and distribute care packages. A huge thank you to the catering team who have been able to complete this inhouse and maintain some high-quality packages. New guidance from the Government has stated that vouchers will be an option moving forward and we have sent out information regarding this to our families that we support.

• The School Nursing Team

The School Nursing Team hope that you are all keeping well. We know that the COVID pandemic has resulted in lots of young people feeling stressed, anxious, depressed and lonely, and I wanted to share with you that these are normal feelings when faced with crisis, the unknown, or sudden change. As a service School Nurses will be continuing to offer drop in’s to ALL secondary students virtually. You can contact a School Nurse through CHAT Health by texting 07480635513.

Chat Health provides access to School Nurses who can give advice and guidance on a wide range of issues from anxiety, self-harm, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse through to bullying, problems with friends or family and puberty.

The service is available for 11 to 19-year-olds (Year 7 and above) Monday to Friday from 9am to 4.30pm all year round (excluding bank holidays) and it gives young people the opportunity to discuss their concerns with a school nurse by text if they would rather not do it face to face. If you wish to see the School Nurse then we can arrange this through CHAT Health, and we will be able to offer to meet with you over a video link or phone call.

Please don’t be afraid to reach out for help during this stressful time!

• Year 11 Parents Evening

https://pewseyvale.schoolcloud.co.uk/ 

We are delighted to have some new technology in place to carry out an effective online parents evening with remote access. The system being used is called School Cloud - the same software that we used to carry out the virtual transition sessions for our current Year 7 students and this worked very well. We have our first Year 11 parents evening booked for Thursday 21st January. If you have not yet done so, please can parents/carers of Year 11 students book their appointments for the virtual evening by clicking on the link above.

• Art & Textiles – Mrs Slater

https://www.youtube.com/c/MakeExploreArt

Mrs Slater wanted to share her channel with you. It is all about art and textiles and has demonstrations, tips, tutorials, projects and basic skills which are ideal for a range of ages.

Please do take time to have a look as there maybe something of interest to you.

We wanted to share some fantastic drawings with you that have been completed by one of our Year 9 students. The student didn’t wish to be named however we wanted to say how proud we are of what they have completed.

• Speakers for schools

https://www.speakersforschools.org/inspiration/vtalks/upcoming-vtalks/

To view the schedule of forthcoming vtalks, please click on the link. All vtalks are free to join

WEEK STARTING MONDAY 18th JANUARY 2021

HOW TO JOIN THE LIVE BROADCASTS 

• • Join 10 minutes before the broadcast to be ready
  • You can join without needing an account – Watch how here
  • For full speaker descriptions visit the Broadcast Schedule here 

LIVE BROADCASTS LIBRARY & MORE

• • Watch pre-recorded broadcasts from our library here
  • Please see our Schools Guide here. 

• Pewsey Vale School – The Masked Singer 

Mr Webb – Head of Mathematics (writer and director of the annual Christmas panto and quiz master for the PTFA annual quiz night), has decided to add another skill to his resume and is organising our very own version of the popular ITV show “The Masked Singer”. Due to the amount of interest that he has received, he now has to plan how, where and when. More information will follow.

• EDAS

https://www.edasuk.org/ 

If you wish to join any of the courses being run by EDAS or find further information, click on the link, telephone 01202 743279 or email: rachel.murphy@edasuk.org To book a place

A Survival Guide for Parents

Stand Alone Sessions (mostly) 

2 hour Zoom sessions 

18:30 – 20:30 on Wednesday evenings 

£10 per person per session