Head of IT: teaching and learning at St John’s Irene Basson assured the public that all classes from The Bridge Nursery School to Grade 0 to Sixth Form are continuing on an online platform including music lessons.
The pre-prep has a website where all activities and resources are posted for parents and learners. “Teachers are also reading stories, singing songs and sending out various worksheets which boys can complete with their parents,” said Basson.
The headmistress at the pre-prep, Jane Lane, sends out a message each morning to connect with her parents and boys. “Not all teachers are fans of teaching with technology, and yet, when the news of school closures broke, they attended various workshops and upskilled, and within two days, all were ready to teach online.”
Basson said that most of the St John’s community are fortunate to be able to get online from home. Boys at the college who do not have access to the Internet were provided with laptops, dongles and data to get them up and running over the next few weeks.
Learners began online learning from 18 March and will end the term on 8 April. School is expected to resume on 5 May, unless the president extends the lockdown.
The prep and college continue with lessons as per the normal timetable. Work is distributed to each class and collected from learners students via Google Classroom and a Google Meet happens at least every second lesson.
According to Basson, teachers have made great videos and are really creative with Screencastify and these are posted in the Classroom. Flipgrid is used extensively to get feedback, speeches, monologues, questions etc. from the boys. Teachers are running assessments in Google Forms with shuffled questions, scheduled start time on a Meet with webcams on, imposing a time limit.
“On the whole, I would say that St John’s staff are pretty impressive! Many teachers are just not so tech-savvy, and yet, in five days they went from zero to hero. With incredible energy, they have stayed positive, not complaining, but rather creatively finding solutions and giving 200 per cent to their students. We are so lucky to be part of this awesome community,” concluded Basson.
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