Home Learning

Top tips for 'family learning'   

1)    Share learning happening in your setting and experiences families could offer to support and extend the learning. Include numeracy, literacy, health and wellbeing plus other curriculum area and experiences for both indoors and outdoors.

2)  Think about the quantity of activities sent home and how you share it.  Parents/carers can often feel overwhelmed and assume they are required to work through it all. You could include a basic experience and a challenge experience. Ask parents to email if they would like more.

3)  When providing activity ideas, include guidance to parents /carers, giving them alternative options that link with their own children’s interests. Highlighting that the process, rather than the product, is important.

4)    Ensure parents/carers also understand the balance of play and learning – could you provide a short video clip on the importance of learning through play? Make sure that the experiences are not all IT based to limit ‘screen time’.

5)  Reassure parents/carers that children are at different stages in learning. The remote learning is a suggestion and offers ideas. If they feel the activity is too difficult or too easy, they can adapt them to suit their child.  Ensure you are available to answer questions or have some suggestions ready to differentiate tasks.

6)  Make sure the experiences do not need too many resources and give suggestions for alternatives. Could you have a resource bank outside your setting?  Could you send a paper bag home with the resources needed for the experience?

7)  Could you ‘teach’ some of the content remotely yourself using technology? This could be helpful to set the children a task or challenge that is play-based. Children like seeing familiar adults. If you prefer send photos rather than videos.

8)  Consider how children, parents/carers are recording/sharing learning. It doesn’t always have to be written. Suggest using photos to share active learning that might happen spontaneously. These could be added to the child’s learning story.

9)  Convey to families that playing and talking with their children is the most important learning activity they can do.

10)  When checking in with families gather feedback about how they are feeling about the activity ideas and how often they are being sent out.

Early learning and childcare and primary science resources/links

Visit the Remote learning for ELC and primary science blog post for a fuller description of the support outlined below.

• Nine contexts planners are available to support remote learning on a range of relevant themes from early through to second level.

• The RAiSE Science Planning Resource is a comprehensive resource to support practitioners planning for early to second level science.

• Education Scotland’s Science and STEM Wakelet contains a range of useful curated web links for early, first and second level.

In addition to the above, the BBC will be broadcasting educational content to support learning at home: www.bbc.co.uk/lockdownlearningscotland. We are pleased to be working with the BBC to build on our support already available nationally.