Weekly Update #28, 24 April 2020

Hello HeadStart!

How are you? Have you been staying active? How has your online schooling been going? The teachers and staff are eagerly waiting for the day that we can open the school again. We are looking forward to noisy hallways filled with happy smiling students and all of the excitement that comes with House competitions, sports, creative arts and all of the the activities that make us HeadStart! Most of all, we look forward to the chance when we can see you all face to face again. Until then, we thought to try a few fun home challenges that you could occupy yourself with…just for fun! It’s not a competition so don’t worry- enjoy it and get creative!

This week’s challenge is to send in a crazy hair photo. It could be of just you or it could be a fun family photo. Use your imagination and have fun in the process!

Deadline for entries: Friday afternoon every week. All entries should be emailed to [email protected].

During this time of school closure, we want parents and students to know the HeadStart’s Student Support Services Team is still available to support students, parents and teachers. From individual learning support sessions and consultations with our Learning Support Coordinator, Mr Atkins and well-being with our counsellors, Ms Milner and Ms Costa and consultations with our school psychologist Dr. Deborah Previti, we are still here for you. What you can expect from us during this time of Virtual Learning

Well-being Wednesday

Every Wednesday will have a well-being focus across all phase levels of the school. This will include curriculum lessons, guided meditation, interactive student drop in sessions on key topics and quizzes to encourage student connection and fun.

Curriculum

When it is appropriate we will prioritize the most critical academic, career and social/emotional lessons through Google Classroom in consultation with homeroom teachers, in allocated PSHE and well-being lessons.

Counseling and Student check in

We are pleased to continue offering our support to you and your child albeit in a different format. We want to acknowledge that virtual school counselling has benefits, challenges, and limitations. To ensure we are upholding our ethical practices, we will be asking for your consent to hold 1-1 sessions with your child should they want to talk virtually. You can expect an email from us in this regard if your child reaches out to us. You or your child can schedule a check in with us by contacting us at: [email protected]

Clinical Psychology

Our licensed Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Debora Previti is offering continued sessions with students and external support for families, staff and students. Should you wish to schedule an appointment please contact her at: [email protected]

Advise, Consult and Collaborate

We are accessible to advise students through email and Google Meets. We will also share credible and relevant resources (see below) to help you and your family through this time. We will continue to consult and collaborate with families, teachers, administrators to best support teachers and students during Virtual Learning. ‘Coffee with the Counsellors’ mornings will be held for parents with the Student Support Team to discuss topics of well-being, challenges of distance learning and connecting as a community.

Referrals

Since school counsellors do not provide ongoing long term therapy, we have an updated list of available outside mental health services, social/emotional and physical well-being support to share with families. Please email us at [email protected] for an updated list of these contacts.

Secondary Virtual School Planners

We have created a daily planner to help your child stay on track and take care of themselves whilst learning at home. Steps like making their bed, drinking water and daily self care is extremely important in this time. Please access the Online Planner here.

We would like to share some resources with you to support you and your child during this time. Here are some articles and videos you might find useful:

Students Support Services ‘Well-being Wednesday’ kicked off again this week. We had two ‘Be Kind To Your Mind’ drop in sessions for KS3 and KS4 with a guided meditation and interactive general knowledge trivia. The Brain sister’s won the overall competition in Key Stage 4 and enjoyed a Starbucks delivery as their prize. Congratulations to Mehar Sachdeva in Year 9 for being the trivia champion for Key Stage 3. We hope secondary students will join us again next for our drop in sessions next week to connect with each other and have some fun.

Our KS3 students have also sent some shoutout videos to the HeadStart community and are focusing on gratitude. We hope their messages bring a smile to your face and get you thinking about what makes you grateful.

In Key Stage 1, the invisible string project was a great success as students learned about connections and the people we love.

The children of Year 1 White are really enjoying their daily reading session with Mr Williams.

In Year 2, students have been coming up with stone stories. We have been taking them around our houses and taking good care of them. Some of our characters have already gone on wild adventures! In Science, we have started to learn about rocks and went around our house to investigate what was made out of rock. We took pictures and sent them back to the teachers online so they could check we were right. -Mr Michael Marx

Students from year 7-9 have learnt how to draw using one point and two point perspective. -Ms Jody Leow

Next week KS3 students will be set the creative task of competing the Getty Art Challenge. The challenge is to recreate famous artworks; this could be from items found in your house, dressing up to create an accurate portrait or even including your pets! See if you can guess these famous artworks I recreated at home. For bonus points, name the artist! Be creative, use your imagination and have fun! I can’t wait to see your recreations next week! -Ms Gill