Free daily audio book from David Walliams

Dear parents/carers

During this time, it is vital that our children continue to read. Reading opens to the doors to so many opportunities and allows them to access all areas of the curriculum.
To support the children’s reading, AR has changed their licensing which means we are able to test at home.
Please find all the information about how to access it below.
If the text your child is reading is not on AR, please do not worry. The focus is reading, not testing. When your child is reading, you can ask them questions to support their learning. It does not all have to be done on AR.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. If the class teacher is unable to help contact us via the school email or Facebook page.
Keep safe and look after yourselves.

Please see below for the latest letter from the childhood immunisation team

From Durham Constabulary’s Cyber Protect Team:

With schools now being officially shut because of the COVID-19 outbreak, it is likely that there will be an increase of internet use for families and children over the coming weeks. With that in mind, here are some great tips for parents on setting up the right controls and privacy settings to ensure their child stays safe online. You can find these in detail in our ‘Parents Guide to Cyber Safety’ advice booklet which is attached to this email.

The booklet looks at the following areas:

Smart Devices
They are a number of different ways to secure your child’s device within the phone settings. Some of these are turning off location settings, blocking inappropriate content and disabling app purchasing.

Broadband & Mobile Networks
Did you know you can restrict certain websites on devices connected to your home router? You can also use these settings to make the home Wi-Fi unavailable to a device after say 9pm for example!

Gaming
We look at questions to ask when buying a games console, such as if the console or games have chat facilities, is your child able to make purchases using their games console, or does your child’s gamertag reveal their identity?

Social Media
There are many features that you can put in place to ensure social media is safe for your child, like ensuring accounts are private not public, filtering out inappropriate comments and setting up two-factor authentication.

There are also a number of websites that give detailed advice on staying safe online, such as:

www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls
www.ncsc.gov.uk
www.net-aware.org.uk
www.getsafeonline.org

We are on social media! We post regular cyber safety updates on social media and you can find us @DurhamCyber on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also contact the Durham Constabulary Cyber Protect Team at cyber.protect@durham.pnn.police.uk. Please be aware that our inbox is not staffed 24/7. Ring 999 in an emergency or 101 to report an incident

If you can keep your child safely at home or are a key-worker who can arrange other childcare we urge you to do so to limit the spread of Coranavirus.

From Monday 23rd March there will be daily Ruth Miskin Read Write Inc lessons available on Facebook and YouTube for children to watch at home. These will be available everyday for the next 2 weeks at the times below:

Set 1 Speed Sounds at 9.30am and again at 12.30pm

Set 2 Speed Sounds at 10.00am and again at 1.00pm

Set 3 Speed Sounds at 10.30am and again at 1.30pm

The films will be streamed live by Read Write Inc trainers and won’t be available at other times.

Also at 2pm each day there will be a film of a poem, these poems will be available on YouTube to enjoy again and again.

There will also be films for parents/carers to watch too, in order to continue to help your child read at home.
These films will be available on Facebook or the Read Write Inc YouTube channel. A new parent/carer film will be added to Facebook each day.

Parents/carers can sign up to either Ruth Muskin’s Read Write Inc  Facebook page or their  YouTube channel.

Stay safe everyone and enjoy your reading journey at home.