Advertising feature: Evolution of Learning at Blundell's School during Coronavirus

Advertiser Feature

As part of the ongoing changes to schooling during the Covid-19 crisis - we asked Blundell's School to tell us how they have adapted their educational experience to reflect the current situation. The following text has been provided by Blundell's School.

Evolution of learning during the Coronavirus

 

When the world of education was turned upside down with the closure of schools due to the Covid-19 outbreak, we quickly realised that school as we knew it would have to change, and fast.  Like most schools, we explored various online platforms and focused on the operational mechanics but at the same time we paid great attention to our core values here at Blundell's Prep.  How could our school's aims, the idea of developing Roots and Wings in all of our children, be reflected through a computer screen and when everyone was soon to be operating in such a remote and isolated way?  Having launched our 2025 strategic plan just a month before lockdown, we believed that the importance of community should be at the very heart of any Home Learning Programme and that the real difference to the lives of children would be made not solely through the delivery of teaching content but through the connections that they would feel with their teachers and their friends at a time when they would be physically distant from one another.  With that core purpose as our guiding principle, we set about putting a programme together which would enrich and engender the sense of community that has always existed at Blundell's Prep, and what happened next was beyond our expectations.

 

As well as a comprehensive but flexible academic offering, we also gave equal time to our Engagement and Enrichment programme.  The focus was on providing activities which would support our wider aims and hopes for our community through five key areas:  Academic Enrichment: providing intellectual stimulation and challenge. Cultural Enrichment: maintaining the benefits that engagement and involvement with culture brings.  Family Engagement: offering fun, interesting and engaging activities and programmes for the whole family.  Sport, Exercise and Wellbeing: ensuring we remain fit and healthy, in mind and body.  Life Skills and PSHE: taking the opportunity to develop and consolidate crucial skills for the next stage of life.  Activities such as live Yoga and Pilates, mindfulness, Quiz Club, STEM challenges, Music workshops and the much loved Book at Bedtime (a homage to Jackanory!) through to the hugely popular weekly Family Challenges, such as baking the biggest Yorkshire Pudding, building huge marble runs or creating heartfelt messages for NHS key workers.  All of these activities and more were conceived and driven by our core principle of maintaining community connections, both within our school here at Blundell's but also far beyond.    Twice weekly assemblies captured numerous examples of kindness and generosity, and alongside that our social media campaign provided comfort and reassurances to those who greatly missed the day to day connections which have always been a hallmark of our school.  Rather than focus on what the children would miss out on during lockdown, we turned it on its head and focused on what the children could gain from lockdown, and whilst we would all have preferred to have been in school, together, we made sure that our aims and values were never lost and in fact, were made stronger than ever before.    

 

Find out more about Blundell's here: https://www.blundells.org/

 

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