The sudden closure of schools before lockdown had many scrambling to get things in order to enable learners to carry on with schoolwork remotely.
We asked Nova Pioneer how the school’s management and staff got everything ready for learners.
1.How did the lockdown affect the school, the teachers, learners and management?
The Global Academic Leadership team immediately met on a Zoom call to devise a plan to roll out remote learning. We called this Phase 1, and it was designed to meet the immediate needs of student learning as soon as schools were instructed to close.
2. How many days did you actually have to come up with a workable plan?
We met on the Sunday morning prior to the school closing announcement since we needed to make contingency plans to ensure ongoing learning.
The President announced SA schools were closing from Wednesday, so we needed the learning packs, teacher communication and training to be completed before close of school on Tuesday.
We managed to get the learning packs ready and emailed to all parents.
The secondary school teachers met on Wednesday morning for a professional learning session to roll out online learning and to ensure all students had chrome books loaned out by the school.
3. Looking at the big ‘unknown’, which action plans were the most difficult to put in place?
Our greatest concern was to ensure all students in the secondary school had access to devices and data to ensure equity in their learning experience.
We then had to ensure all our teachers had sufficient data to meet the needs of online learning.
The primary learning packs were prepared for ease and clarity of use for the parents and students.
Nova Pioneer is fortunate to have a learning design team that plans the lessons for the primary teachers.
This team was called on to ensure age and content appropriate lesson plans were prepared, and that plans were parent-friendly, using materials that were generally available in homes, or were easily accessible.
4. Do all learners have access to be able to take part in online and remote learning?
We ran surveys to ensure all our students could get access to the teaching and learning planned.
The secondary teachers connected with students and ensured school chrome books were made available to the students who did not have access to devices at home, as well as they were given data to ensure continued access.
The primary program was emailed to parents. The parents could then could print the documents to ensure lessons could continue at home.
5. What methods do you use to stay in touch with the learners?
We use email, WhatsApp, Zoom, and Google Classroom and Google Meet to connect with families and students.
6. How successful is this? Is everyone taking part in remote learning?
All primary students and families have been called by class teachers to connect with them to ensure they are able to access the materials and to ensure their well being.
The secondary students are tracked on the Google Classroom by their teachers to ensure they are online and are managing their learning. If they are missing, the teachers have reached out to offer support.
7. Staff meetings – how do you manage this to still function as a unit during a lockdown?
The school leadership teams have ensured that staff meetings and staff morning huddles continue as scheduled.
The meetings generally take place on Zoom or Google Meet.
The instructional coaches are meeting with their teachers on a bi-weekly basis to ensure they are managing the remote teaching and to discuss areas in which they may need support.
Our Nova Pioneer culture team have encouraged creative ways to remain connected and have planned online cooking lessons, Karaoke sessions and dance fun times.
Our global leadership team have coordinated online Zoom meetings and information sharing sessions with all team members in the organisation.
8. Tell us about new ways you had to adapt to when it comes to actually class time and checking in with the learners.
As an organisation we considered global best practices from colleagues and selected to move to mainly asynchronous learning, which gives families flexibility in doing the work at home.
They can choose when it best suits their home environments, guided by our schedules and lesson plans.
We have ensured all teachers have set weekly connection times to share the week ahead plans and to connect at the end of a week to close the week. At the end of the term many classes held online class parties.
9. How do learners submit their work?
We have asked primary parents to screenshot work and WhatsApp or email it to the teachers for grading purposes, and to keep the packs to hand in on school return.
The secondary students have turned in classwork, assignments and assessments on the Google Classroom for grading and feedback. Our focus has been directed to qualitative feedback rather than actual grades in some areas.
10. Tests and exams – what will happen?
Our students are registered for Cambridge examinations, and Cambridge have been exceptionally proactive in planning the Covid-19 assessment approach, which foregrounds recognition of previous work and detailed how schools can evaluate and assess learning which is remote and online.
They have provided detailed trackers to grade and rank students within their global framework based on valid current data that schools have collected.
Cambridge has provided support for teachers in using evidence to give an objective recommendation for students’ grades and ranks by reducing unconscious bias in grades as well as by validating the data across their global network.
11. Do you think that you were able to cover everything to see the learners successfully through the 2020 school year?
In our planning, we have endeavoured to ensure our students will have covered the core of learning in each grade.
We will ensure the content required to build concepts are not missed for the subsequent grade, based on the rigorous Cambridge curriculum standards.
Once schools resume in person, we will include additional diagnostic assessments and use the data to build back learning gaps that may be evident.
12. How does the school cope financially?
Even though we are an independent school, it is important to note that we have no financial support from the Department of Education.
We do have students on our financial support programme and the school has offered to support students and teachers in need of devices and data, once the need is verified.
We rely on school fees to sustain our work.
Our schools have been in full session, although on remote and digital platforms. Teaching and learning have continued and will continue when our term resumes on May 5, whether in person or remotely.
We have continued to provide professional learning for our teachers to prepare them for more digital teaching and learning in Phase 2 of our roll-out in the second term.
