Good communication between school and home is essential. We communicate with parents in different ways and for a variety of reasons. Communication is key to helping us understand your child and to ensure that parents know how to support their child’s development.
In Person Communication
Our school office is open for face to face enquiries or phone calls from 8:30-1:00pm and 2:30-4:00pm. However, the school office can be quite busy so there are numerous ways that a parent could communicate with school.
Our senior leadership team are visible at the start and end of the day and parents can speak to teachers at the end of the day. Again, however, teachers and SLT may be busy tending to children, speaking to a parent or ensuring the smooth entrance and exit to school.
As it is not always easy to speak to school, due to time commitments or not being able to ‘catch’ a member of staff, we have developed other communication systems.
Teachers to Parents- Text System
This is our text message system. Short texts of key information come through the app or straight to text. Parents can reply to messages by text or send in key information to school through this platform. We may send a form to fill in or details of school money payments through this app. If a reply to a message is needed or a form has not been completed by the due date, a reminder message will be automatically sent.
Communication Books
All children receive a communication book at the start of the year. All day to day communication should be recorded in here. You should check your child’s communication book every day and initial any comments to show you have seen them. We also check these in school and staff will initial to say they have read any comments.
Within this communication book there are key pages of information and resources for your child’s Key Stage.
There are two sections in this book for each week.
Daily Comments/ Messages
Examples of information you may add:
- If a child is tired
- If there is a change to pick up
- If they have said something about school/ friends that needs resolving
- Information regarding appointments for the teacher
- When they have done something interesting
- If a parent would like to talk to a teacher about something- staff are very busy in the day so they will try to phone home or arrange a time to speak to a parent in their book
Examples of comments/ information teachers or teaching assistants may add:
- Information if a child has received First Aid
- A comment on a child’s progress or special milestone/ event
- If a child has received a yellow/ red card (you will always receive a phone call as well for a red card)
- A written response to an enquiry off a parent
Reading Record
In this section school and home can record when a child has read, pages and any comments.
Weekly Summary
At the end of the week we ask parents to sign the communication book so that we know they have seen the key information. Staff will also sign for this reason. The children will select how their week has been. This gives staff an opportunity to talk to our children about their week before they go home for the weekend.
Letters
All letters are on our website and links to the latest letters are sent out through our text system. If a written response is required, we may send the paper version of the letter home.
Online Communication- Website, Tapestry, Facebook
Information about our curriculum, progress and events are available online the above platforms. Photos of events are uploaded to Facebook regularly and all key information about school is available on our website, which is updated regularly. During Reception, Tapestry is used to keep parents and teachers informed of a child’s progress and milestones achieved.
Parents Drop Ins/ Reports
We hold three parent drop ins a year where parents/carers can talk to their child’s class teacher and discuss progress and achievement. At the end of the year, parents/ carers receive a report that summarises the achievements and progress of their child.
Please copy head@willow.lancs.sch.uk into all email correspondence.
In addition to the above forms of communication, a parent may choose to email. All emails should be sent to clerical@willow.lancs.sch.uk for them to be forwarded and responded to by the relevant person.
However, if your email is concerning SEN, Disabilities or Medical updates, these should be sent to our SENCO k.birdsall@willow.lancs.sch.uk. If your email is surrounding pastoral support that is in addition to class support, you may want to email k.banks@willow.lancs.sch.uk