Westbourne House at Home
Since 2020, all pupils have benefitted from access to remote teaching and learning via Westbourne House at Home, which is delivered using the Google Classroom platform. Westbourne House at Home was first delivered during lockdown 1 and it continues to be used today to ensure that children can work from home if isolating and to provide flexibility should the school close suddenly, as was necessary during Storm Eunice.
Each pupil has a personal login and are members of their teachers’ classrooms. There they can find instructions for the lessons plus any related content such as worksheets, videos, PowerPoints, Zoom links, extension tasks and the HPL focus for the lesson. If a pupil is absent from a lesson, for whatever reason, they can log in and complete the work at any time. If a pupil is well enough, teachers will, if appropriate, run a hybrid Zoom lesson so that the learning is live.
This platform is also used for pupils to access exam revision and any holiday work.
Remote Learning Aims
During the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, Westbourne House remained fully committed to providing an excellent, challenging and innovative online education for our children and to ensuring they each reached their full potential.
Lessons: We provided inspiring teaching and learning in real-time to ensure all pupils continued their academic progress. Pupils in Reception to Year 8 followed their usual timetable of lessons including languages, science, music, design technology, art and games. In the Pre-Prep and Year 3, the teachers supplemented teaching with recorded story times and lessons. You can watch examples of these below. Prep School pupils could drop into English and maths clinics at which they could ask further questions and receive one-on-one support.
Individual Needs: Individual needs lessons and support continued as normal. Pupils meet online with their IN teacher for ongoing one-on-one or small group support.
Pastoral: Much care and thought was invested in the pastoral care we offered our pupils remotely – care the pupils would normally receive on a daily basis when at school. We continued our Learning4Life (L4L) lessons which served as an additional layer of contact and support. These pastoral opportunities gave the children much-needed touchstones of normality. Westbourne House partnered with Teen Tips to provide a wellbeing hub which supports our parents.
Extracurricular Music: Pupils' individual instrument lessons took place during the school day. Our music teachers joined pupils on Zoom for their weekly 30-minute lesson. Pupils continued to progress well over Zoom. The Music Department enriched the school day with instrumental music groups and year group choirs.
Time Away From Screens: Each lesson ran for 45 minutes to give our children a 15 minute break at the end of each lesson away from their screen. We created an extended lunch break of two hours so that families could get outside in the middle of the day. For us, it was key to ensure that pupils and staff were refreshed and ready for second part of the day.
Enrichment and Engagement: To keep spirits up and learning fresh and dynamic, we constantly evolved and added to the experience of Westbourne House at Home. You may wish to read about our WHS Community Hub, Westbourne Writers and our optional Saturday Activities (Prep School).
Westbourne House has a talented and diverse staff team, who pull out all the stops. Our teachers spark a love of learning in our pupils via our online platforms, as well as being there for the children and supporting their wellbeing.
Martin Barker, Westbourne House School