Timetable

Teams Walk Through

Teams FAQs

Hints & Tips

Office Lens

Immersive Reader

Remote education during national/local restrictions or when entire bubbles must remain home.

Please click the headings below for further information

The remote curriculum: what is taught to students at home?

Our Remote Education offer using Microsoft Teams has been developed to ensure that students can access their normal timetabled lessons and follow their usual curriculum as closely as possible. Our curriculum has been carefully sequenced to allows students to obtain the building blocks they need to move on to the next step whilst ensuring that they know more and remember more. Remote education is simply an alternative way of delivering our curriculum. It is important to note that a student’s first day or two of being educated remotely might look different from our standard approach, while we take all necessary actions to prepare for a longer period of remote teaching.

Why Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft is a worldwide organisation with a history of supporting educational technology. Hurworth has been using the Teams software since 2016 and it was rolled out to support ILTs in 2017. During 2020 the number of Active Daily Users of Teams grew from 32 million at the beginning of the year to 75 million in April and 115 million as of November.

Whilst there may be outages during peak times; Teams is the perfect fit for Hurworth School. Please watch the walkthrough video below to see the expected student experience.

What should my child expect from the remote curriculum?

Students will follow their normal 5 lesson timetable. Each lesson will have an easily labelled assignment which has simple written instructions accompanied by a pre-recorded video by the class teacher. The teacher will also be available to provide additional support and feedback via the posts stream during the allotted time. Pre-recording lesson content enables students to access the lesson materials outside of the timetabled slot if necessary and also allows them to re-visit sections of the lesson as needed.

Live lessons are provided in addition to our core offer and are used as part of the range of activities we employ as different approaches to remote education suit different types of content and students. If a live lesson has been scheduled notice will be given the week before. Students will access the live element of the lesson through the assignment set by the teacher.

Our offer is in line with the recommendations from Ofsted research “What’s working well in remote education”

How will my child access the online remote curriculum?

Please watch the walkthrough video and read the visual guide below to see the expected student experience. Support is available on this page under the Hints & Tips, Teams FAQ, Immersive reader and Office lens icons.

How will you check whether my child is engaging with their work and how will I be informed if there are concerns?

Student engagement is tracked by teachers on a daily basis and a weekly report will be issued to parents/carers. Parents/carers will also receive welfare calls from school where engagement in remote education will be discussed.

How will you assess my child’s work and progress?

Feedback and assessment are still as important during remote education as in the classroom. Assessment is carried out in line with the regular curriculum where possible however assessment may take place digitally using Microsoft Forms.

What support is available for students with particular needs?

t is important that every student continues to engage with their education and that parents/carers are supported in this process. Please contact Cath Lawrence, SENCo, (cle@hurworth.swiftacademies.org.uk) if you need help with this.

If complex special educational needs are making some areas of remote education difficult, it is absolutely fine for parents/carers to reduce, adapt or change any of the work. Again, please seek advice from the SENCo or the subject teacher if you need help with this.

Teachers will continue to meet the needs of students through Quality First Teaching by ensuring that lessons and resources are accessible and suitable for all students. Some students may be given differentiated work; this might look different from the work given to another student in the same class.

Pupils with EHCPs have been invited to attend school.

SEND reviews will continue as planned but via Teams, where possible.

Outside agencies and professionals (such as CAMHS, educational psychologists, Speech and Language Therapy, PWP) will continue their involvement, although it may take a different form (e.g. Teams/phone calls instead of 1:1s).

Referrals to outside agencies will continue to be made by the SENCo, when necessary.

Most students who are attending school during lockdown, who would normally access the Resource Base, will be unable to access it at this time due to maintenance of year group bubbles

Weekly contact will be made with parents/carers and students who are learning at home and are on the SEND Register. This is to support students’ engagement and to check on well-being. Information from these calls is shared with the students’ teachers so that any issues can be addressed.

Laptops have been provided to support a number of students with SEND.

Please contact teachers by email at any time (or by email/’Posts’ in Teams during the lesson time) if the work is too challenging; it is better that teachers know.

Engagement in learning is monitored closely for students with SEND. Pupils and/or parents/carers will be contacted directly by teachers or the SENCo to offer support if necessary. If problems are identified with the level, type or volume of work, teachers are able to discuss suitable changes.

Students with SEND who are attending school at this time are accessing lessons remotely, the same as those who are working at home. They are supervised and supported in doing this by teachers and teaching assistants.

When we discover websites that we think would be useful to support learning, engage students further or support specific needs, links to websites are shared via the ‘We are Hurworth’ newsletter. An example is: https://classroom.thenational.academy/

Access to remote education 
If my child does not have digital or online access at home, how will you support them to access remote education?

If your child does not have suitable online access at home or is struggling to access the work set, please contact the school on 01325 720424 so we can arrange the appropriate support for them.

What are your expectations for my child’s engagement and the support that we as parents and carers should provide at home?

We encourage parents/carers to support their child’s learning by checking they are able to access resources and materials, to check they are submitting their work in the way the teacher has asked, and engage in conversation with your child about their learning. Parents/carers should aim to set routines for their child, such as bed times and an alarm in the morning, and promote some time away from the screen, for example a walk on a morning or an evening.

 

Remote education for self-isolating students

Where individual pupils need to self-isolate, but the majority of their peer group remains in school, how remote education is provided will differ from the approach for whole groups. This is due to the challenges of teaching pupils both at home and in school. Students will receive an email at 7.00 pm each night from their teachers with lesson content for the next day. These lessons will be the same as what is delivered in the classroom as closely as is possible. Teachers will arrange with students how the work is to be returned to school in order to allow for assessment and feedback. If a student is unable to access remote education when self-isolating then the arrangements above for access will be put into place.

Hints & Tips

Accessing Teams
  • Over 100 million people use Microsoft Teams EVERY DAY. There will be times, especially on an early morning when it will be slow. Please be patient.
  • All lessons will appear as an “assignment” in Teams make sure that you click view assignment on the correct lesson at the correct time. Make sure that you watch the video first. Teachers are spending a lot of time in creating them to help you.
  • When Teams is very busy documents will open in “read only mode” which means you will not be able edit. Please check for this at the top of a document and change if necessary.
Writing posts
  • When contacting teachers please use the posts stream and tag your teacher by using @ TEACHERID the teacher will share their ID in the task. This will mean the teacher will receive a notification and can reply to you ASAP.
  • When contacting teachers for help please be specific. Saying you are “stuck” , “confused” or “need help” will enable your teachers to help you.
  • Teams is an educational tool and social media. If posts are not related to the lesson students may be muted.
Working online
  • The majority of tasks will be completed within Teams using Word or PowerPoint online. Both pieces of software save automatically when you stop typing. Please take a couple of seconds to pause every now and then to enable this to happen.
  • At busy times when the software is slow avoid pasting large images.

Timetable

Description Start End
Start moving towards Form Class bell          8:50
Registration/Assembly 8:55 9:10
Period 1 9:10 10:10
Period 2 10:10 11:10
Break 11:10 11:25
Period 3 11:25 12:25
Lunch 12:25 13:15
Start moving towards Form Class bell 13:15
Registration 13:20 13:25
Period 4 13:25 14:25
Period 5 14:25 15:25
Comfort break before journey home, collect mobile phone etc. 15:25 15:30
End of School Day 15:30

Walk-Through

Please see below our Teams video guide and step by step walk-through.

Use an up-to-date Web Browser such as Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Edge.

We have had reported issues in the past with the
Safari browser so please do not use.

Navigate to the school website

Click on the pupil portal below the welcome graphic

Click on the link for Teams

Enter your school login details.
This is your 4-digit code followed by

@hurworth.swiftacademies.org.uk

You can find individual classes by clicking the Teams tab.

Each class has their own team. Which is identified by the code
at the end of the Team name.
For example: Co – Computing, En – English, Gy – Geography, Ma – Maths

If an assignment has been posted or a post added to the posts stream the text will be bold / a small red notification will appear

Once inside a team you will be presented with the posts stream.

Teachers may post tasks here.

Here students can ask sensible questions to their teacher
and fellow classmates.

Posts should be sensible. They cannot be deleted by students
and sanctions will be issued for misuse.

Click VIEW ASSIGNMENT to access the task

The assignment will include instructions from the teacher. They may share a selection of resources with you including demonstration videos, links to other websites and documents to read.

These will come under “Reference Materials.”

If the teacher wants you to work in a document online that they have provided click the document under “My Work” and carry out the task in the online document on Teams.

Do not download and work on the document and re-upload it.

If the teacher wants you to create your own document to
complete the task click on

“Add work” > New File > Word Document or
Powerpoint Presentation
.

Name the document the title of the task and click attach.

You will now be able to open the document and work online in Teams.

Do not download and work on the document and reupload it.

Teams assignment 2

Alternatively the Teams app can be
downloaded on smartphones and tablets.

Download  “Microsoft Teams” from either the
Apple app store or Google Play Store.

Students must use their school login details.

This is your 4-digit code followed by
@hurworth.swiftacademies.org.uk

Further guidance is available direct from Microsoft using this link https://bit.ly/2U3GqpZ

Office Lens

What is Microsoft Office Lens?

Microsoft Office Lens is a free app on Android and iOS that allows users to scan in copies of documents and whiteboards, and input them into other applications.

How to….

Take photos of physical tasks

If taking photographs for tasks which cannot be completed online such as Art please download Microsoft Office Lens from either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

Office Lens converts a photo of a document into “scan quality” by removing shadows and off angles so that images are easier to read.

Choose a mode

As soon as you open Office Lens, you can choose your mode. Please press photo if you have drawn an image or Document if you have a piece of work which is mainly text.

Take a picture

Choose whether or not to use a flash, and then make sure the frame lines up with the item you want to capture. Use the Camera button to take a picture. If you prefer, you can import an existing image from the local gallery on your device. If you want to retake the photo, tap the Trash button icon to delete it, then tap the Take More button to retake the displayed image. If you want to take more photos, tap the Take More button.

Review and edit

You can edit your image before you save it so it’s exactly the way you want it to be. Tap the Crop icon to trim away any parts of the image that you don’t need.

Save

When you’re happy with your edits, please save the document to your device only. Ignore options for OneDrive or OneNote.

Immersive Reader

What is Immersive Reader?

Immersive Reader re-formats text so that it is accessible to all. It also reads out text at a pace that suits the user.

How do I turn it on?

In Teams and Outlook look for the Immersive Reader icon (open book with speaker)

In Word Online & Word 365 click view > Immersive Reader

What are the features?

The immersive reader allows you to change:

  • Background and text colour
  • Text spacing and layout

The immersive reader can:

  • Use focus mode to hide all but the sentence you need
  • Read text aloud
  • Highlight syllables