Dear Parents and Guardians

I hope you have had a good week and been able to engage with your child's teachers during the learning conferences. We hope that by providing two learning conferences a year you have the opportunities you need to interact with your child's subject teachers and that Canvas and the summary reports in the Engage Parent Portal mean you feel involved with your child's learning journey. As you know Canvas is new to our community this year and with any new system there is an implementation period. Now we understand more about Canvas we are working as a community to improve consistency for learners and their families. Please bear with us as we develop our systems and identify best working practices. Mr Rohit will be offering drop in sessions where you can ask specific questions about Canvas and learn more as a parent in Term 4. Please see Important Notices tab for more information. Please remember that the Canvas App only provides a snapshot, please use the Canvas website to see what learners have submitted, teacher feedback and more detail around the assignments set.

We are keen for you to understand the programme your child is studying and provide many detailed resources on the Parent Zone of the school website. In addition to these there are some useful overviews on IGCSE and IBDP following the embedded links. Through everything we do we are trying to prepare learners for life beyond Nexus by helping them develop the mental agility to cope with applying knowledge and skills in novel situations. Much of our work supporting learners with this is through the Approaches to Learning which are the skills that underpin learning to learn. I urge you to take a moment to reflect on what you and your child learned from the learner conferences and ask you to consider is progress limited by skill or will? Was there a common theme between subjects? Is lack of organisation holding your child back? As parents you can support by providing structure and routines in the home environment. Providing a place for your child to study with limited distractions, sharing your own routines and tips for prioritising.

Probably the most important routine is that for sleep. Removing devices from bedrooms and ensuring children do not go straight from study to sleep is so important. There are numerous studies that clearly identify the value of sleep for young people and you can find out more about one of these using this link. The world does not end if you are not on social media 24/7. Please work with your child to help them see that better sleep enables greater success and productivity and that social media is something you should control and do not let it control you!

We are acutely aware that global events are causing stress for families and learners. Teachers and tutors are working to support learners through these difficult times and our counsellors are available for booking for those that need emotional support. If you are worried about your child and any additional stress or anxiety they may be feeling at this time, please don't hesitate to reach out.

I hope to see many of you at Mary Poppins in the last week of term as we welcome larger events back onto campus.

Best wishes

Dr Heather

Head of Secondary