Since March, Westfield School has ensured a seamless provision of learning for all our girls. We provided as normal an educational experience as possible according to the age of the girl, using real time virtual lessons or by sending work home to be done when convenient for the family.
Due to our small class sizes, the quality of our teaching staff and the flexibility of our curriculum, we have been able to smoothly transition from in-school learning, to remote learning to blended learning as the situation has changed. With our many strengths, we are in a much better position than some other schools to ensure a seamless education for all of our girls, from Nursery through to our Sixth Formers, and make sure that they are in a very strong position going forwards. The individualised education that we are providing will be the key differentiator for Westfield girls next year, and into the future.
In order to achieve this, we have employed a range of techniques depending on the age of the girls and their access to technology at home. Our youngest girls received packs of suggested activities linked to the key learning outcomes that could readily be fitted around family activities and routines. Plenty of exercise and fun was included and we had some lovely messages of support from families:
https://www.facebook.com/WestfieldSchool/posts/3005352136154126
Older girls in Juniors had daily packs of materials that they completed and returned, their teachers contacting them individually with feedback and to check on them pastorally: https://twitter.com/LizKeightley/status/1244614442786193408
Our Senior House girls followed a normal school timetable with either live video lessons or work set and the teachers online to support through the lesson. Tasks varied from online to offline in order to try to balance the amount of screen time each day, here is some feedback from parents: https://twitter.com/rhodafairbairn/status/1268230728434712577https://twitter.com/ridingbb/status/1262686082774323202
Once girls were starting to come back to school, teachers live streamed lessons for those who were not able to join us to ensure that social contact and educational progress were not affected for anyone.
Westfield has a large number of positives going for it, as a small school with big grounds, we have the space to be able to offer plenty of outdoor learning opportunities, not to mention our dedicated Forest school areas. Our ethos is about individualised learning so with our normal class sizes being between 12-15, or often fewer in Juniors, we have the perfect set up to ensure safe and secure whole class teaching and we were very pleased to have all of our Juniors back in classes before the end of June. We even had every class in Senior House back for a session with their form tutor before the summer to check on their well-being and so they could engage with their friends before the holidays.
We still have some places open for September so if you are interested in giving your daughter the advantages of a Westfield education please contact us on westfield@westfield.newcastle.sch.uk
