WLD Update for Parents & Carers Friday 22nd May 2020

Good afternoon,

As you know, our primary focus has been on the wellbeing of our students, their families and our staff.  We have also been determined to provide appropriate resources for our students to study at home and access to individual support from their teachers.  There are plans to supplement this remote learning with some face-to-face guidance for Year 10, but we are awaiting definitive government planning information about this.  For Years 7 to 9 we currently believe that we will not be seeing you physically until September.  We have been studying the levels of engagement by different year groups and individual students and we will be looking at ways in which we can help our students engage further with studying at home over the coming weeks.  This is a challenging time for everyone and the most important thing, as this pandemic continues, is the continued health and safety of each individual.

As we reach the half-term break you will find plenty of activities suggested by the teachers at Walton-le-Dale to keep all our students busy - they are on the website here and attached to the email version of this update.  In this good weather please remind our young people of the social distancing rules - meet only one person beyond your household outside keeping 2m away, however tempting it may be to do otherwise.  Please also direct our students to the warnings from Lancashire Fire and Rescue about swimming in open water. 

In addition to the resources that we published for reading at home the National Literacy Trust have published an illustrated free collection of stories and poems. Great writers like Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Horowitz and Michael Morpurgo have created new pieces for this collection. You will find it here https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/9-12/book-hopes/.

Unless anything very urgent comes up next week the next parent & carer update will be on Friday 29th May with all the study resources for the following week. With very best wishes for the continued good health and safety of you and your family in these troubled times. 

James Harris