Welcoming refugee children
Resources are available for schools welcoming refugee children and their families. Created by The Bell Foundation, Welcoming Refugee and Asylum Seeking Learners contains useful guidance for school staff about welcoming newly arrived learners who speak English as an additional language (EAL) and includes a downloadable flyer.
The charity’s parental Involvement webpages also offer guidance for parents and carers including on “Helping children to learn” and “About the English education system” – with both primary and secondary versions.
The flyers are available in 22 languages which includes Ukrainian, as well as Dari, Pashto and Traditional Chinese.
Teachers can download the flyers for free and share them with parents/carers. Readers might also be interested in a recent Headteacher Update article looking at ways to support Afghan refugees arriving in the UK education system. Much of the advice in this article, which was written by The Bell Foundation, will be applicable for Ukrainian arrivals as well.
- Welcoming Refugee and Asylum Seeking Learners: https://bit.ly/3vyqbDX
- Parental Involvement: https://bit.ly/3AmRpN3
- Six steps to supporting Afghan refugees arriving in your school, Headteacher Update, October 2021: https://bit.ly/2YIGAYu
Digital wellbeing resources
Resources to support the digital wellbeing of children and young people have been released by South West Grid for Learning. The guidance aims to help professionals, parents and carers in supporting children’s wellbeing online. It looks at the impact of exposure to abuse or online harm on a child’s digital wellbeing and provides information on the role of digital technologies in relation to welfare. Specific resources available so far include exploring influencer culture, finding positive spaces online, and how schools can support digital wellbeing.
- For details, visit https://swgfl.org.uk/topics/digital-wellbeing/
Drowning Prevention Week
Drowning Prevention Week takes place this year from June 18 to 25 and will offer resources to help educate children about water safety. The national campaign is run by the Royal Life Saving Society UK and aims to equip everybody with the “skills and knowledge to make the right decisions about water safety”.
During lockdowns, millions of young people have missed out on the opportunity to swim, and so experts are concerned that there will have been a notable gap in school swimming and water safety education. More than 400 lives a year are lost to drowning in the UK and Ireland and the campaign offers pre-school, primary and secondary resources. Hundreds of schools and leisure centres take part in campaign activity every year.
Let’s Count
A range of teaching resources have been made available as part of the Let’s Count! campaign for primary schools. The resources have been created by the Office for National Statistics and iChild and aim to “bring census data to life”.
Resources include five lessons taking children on a journey from collecting census data through to analysing and publishing findings. Each lesson is available in English and Welsh and is suitable for both classroom and remote learning. There is a video lesson for participating schools delivered by ONS experts. The programme supports numeracy, history, geography and writing skills, and follows the 14 lessons created for Let’s Count! 2021 which are still available.
- Schools can register for the resources at https://letscount.ichild.co.uk/
Webinar: Closing the digital divide
What can schools do to support families and pupils who find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide? This was the subject for a recent Headteacher Update webinar that is now available to watch back free. The hour-long webinar featured five experts and offered some practical solutions, examples, and advice for schools.
The webinar asked key questions including: What issues are we still seeing in our communities with regards the digital divide? What are the main barriers to education/school with regards edtech-use? What can schools do practically to support families in the short-term? How can schools close digital skills gaps for pupils? What steps can schools take now?
- To watch this webinar, visit https://bit.ly/htuseced-digitaldivide1
Computing & coding with Micro:bit
A total of 57,000 BBC micro:bit devices are being donated to UK primary schools alongside teaching resources and online CPD to help deliver computing and coding lessons. The project – which is being delivered by the Micro:bit Educational Foundation in partnership with Nominet and the Scottish government – will see 3,000 UK primary schools receive around 20 devices each.
There are currently around six million BBC micro:bits being used by children all over the world, including in most UK secondary schools. The foundation has seen growing demand from primary schools to teach eight to 11-year-olds with the devices.
- For details and to access the resources, visit https://microbit.org/