One Wiltshire school has given an insight into how day-to-day life has changed during lockdown.

Following a single ‘normal’ day on January 4, lockdown was announced and Ramsbury Primary, in Marlborough, closed for a day to give the staff time to plan.

Similarly to the national picture, the numbers of children attending school are higher than in the first lockdown.

Since March last year, the children have utilised the online platform, Google Classroom, for their learning.

Assistant Head Teacher of KS2 and Year 5 teacher, Sophie Pollock, explained: ‘Continuing to utilise Google Classroom meant that if a class bubble needed to isolate, they were immediately up-and-running with the virtual system and all classes had a two-week work plan prepared in case an individual child or whole class bubble needed to isolate.

"For our children who have had to switch to home learning, they (and their parents) have managed brilliantly."

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The Year 5 children have collaborated to make a whole-class video performance of the poem, ‘The Raven’, with home-based children using props and dressing up to perform their stanza. The whole class catch up every day online for a story.

Joanna Price, Head Teacher, added: "Each in-school class bubble work in their own classroom, with their teacher(s) and teaching assistants. For the older years, following a full class live meeting in the morning via Google Classroom, their teacher works with the in-school bubble and teaching assistant with the at-home children, and this switches in the afternoon. Throughout school we are employing a mixture of live teaching and pre-prepared work with the aim of maximising teacher/pupil contact as much as possible to ensure our at-home children continue to feel as involved from a learning and social perspective as if they were at school. Clearly it is very difficult for parents who may also be working full-time, and we have staff teams ready to respond to parental requests for support."

Since covid hit, events have been run including a Halloween competition and a Santa dash around the school field, as well as a socially distanced Christmas Service with children from different bubbles performing songs and the school orchestra playing in their bubbles.

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This term marks the return of the ‘Ramsbury’s Got Talent’, an annual event highly anticipated by all of the children. As usual, the event will be run by the Year 6 children , although this year entries will be video submissions and can include the whole family (even pets).

Annabelle W, one of this year’s judges who will be dressing up as ‘Simone Cowell’ for the finals, said: "I have looked forward to being a judge in Ramsbury’s Got Talent since I started at Ramsbury– it’s not going to be exactly the same, but at least we get to do it, I just have to convince my mum not to sing."