Work From Home

Working from Home

During the current COVID lockdown measures, your child can access his/her home learning through Microsoft Teams. We are using Microsoft teams for all home learning at QKA. This includes live lessons with your child’s teacher and assignments for your child to complete.

Lesson Timetable

At QKA, we are running our whole timetable as live lessons over Microsoft Teams. That means that you child can have live interactions with his/her teachers during every weekday in lockdown at their usual lesson times. For example, if your child has a Maths lesson on Thursday 1a on their timetable, there will be a live Maths lesson via Teams at that same time. Assignments are used by your child’s teachers to set worksheets and activities to complete. These tasks are often completed during the live lesson slots.

You can find a printed copy of your child's school timetable in their planner.  Please contact your child's Tutor or Progress Leader if you need an additional copy. 

1a – 08:45 – 09:35

1b – 09:35 – 10:25

2a – 10:25 – 11:15

Lunch – 11:15 – 11:55

2b – 11:55 – 12:35

3a – 12:35 – 13:25

Work for Students without IT access at Home

QKA is working hard to provide digital devices to those students who do not have IT at home.  As additional devices become available, they will be distributed by the Progress Teams. If your child does not have a device at home to access home learning, please contact the appropriate Progress Leader:

• Year 7 – Miss Stapleton
• Year 8 – Mrs Burrows
• Year 9 – Mr Jago
• Year 10 – Mrs Newland
• Year 11 – Mrs Wood
• P16 – Mr Lewis

Students who do not have IT access at home will receive a printed work pack each week through the post, with work from each subject.  A stamped-addressed envelope will be enclosed in the work pack so that students can return completed work for teacher feedback. At QKA, we expect students to attend live lessons each day, where possible. Where this is not possible, they should still complete the assignments that are set for them.

Monitoring Engagement in Home Learning

Teaching and pastoral staff will contact you if your child is not engaging in lessons and / or assignments. You can check what assignments are outstanding for your child by getting them to log into MS-Teams and clicking on ‘Assignments’. Weekly feedback will be given to students using Microsoft Teams – this will be a combination of verbal feedback during live teaching, written feedback in lessons using the chat facility as well as bespoke feedback on individual activities in Teams Assignments. Students receiving printed work pack will receive weekly feedback orally through conversations with pastoral teams.

Support for Students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). 

One of the challenges of lockdown is ensuring that we are still providing the high quality education and support that our students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities need and deserve.At the Queen Katharine Academy, we are very proud of our work in the SEND team and, to make sure that both our online and in-school provision meet the students’ needs, we have put a number of strategies in place.  Teaching Assistants are available throughout the day in school in order to support our most vulnerable learners - they often work one-to-one to support students as they access their lessons and they are also available as shared support within every classroom.  We have also planned in-school and online interventions to support students with their Social Emotional and Mental Health development and also for their Cognition and Learning development.   In addition to these interventions, our Teaching Assistants are also experts in differentiation and they are available to support students’ access the work across all subjects.

Logging into Teams

Microsoft Teams can be access from multiple locations and you are not limited to accessing it from only one location. For example, Teams can be used on a laptop, tablet, and phone simultaneously. Please watch the video for instructions on how to login:

Follow these written instructions if you cannot access the video above.

Laptop/PC

1. Go to https://teams.microsoft.com/ in a modern web browser (Google Chrome/Microsoft Edge/Mozilla Firefox/Safari are recommended for a smooth experience):

2. Enter your child’s full QKA email address. They should know this, as the first part is just their username for the computers in school. For example, a student called John Smith will have the username john.smith. For Teams, they must add @qka.education at the end to tell Microsoft what school they are at. So, John’s full email address would be john.smith@qka.education:

3. Enter your child’s password for the school computers. Again, they should know this.

If they have forgotten their password, please email oliver.moore@qka.education and ask for it to be reset remotely.

4. Click ‘Don’t show this again’ and choose Yes to keep the device logged in

5. You will then be presented with the Microsoft Teams homepage. Look on the left sidebar for the Calendar, for live lessons, and Assignments, for work to complete.

Mobile Phone/Tablet

1. Search the app store on your device for ‘microsoft teams’ and install the app.

2. Open the app on your device.

3. Login using the same process as outlined above.

Accessing Live Lessons

Live lessons can be access from the calendar.

1. Click Calendar in the left sidebar:

2. Check the times of the lessons in the calendar - lessons start and end ~2/3 minutes either side of the lesson slot shown on the calendar. The lesson in the example below is scheduled at 8:45 and finishes at 9:35. All live lessons match the times of your child’s timetable – you can check their planner to see what lessons they have each day.

3. To join the lesson, click the lesson you want to join and press the Join button:

Accessing Assignments

Assignments can be found in the Assignments section. This are activities for your child to complete to reinforce or develop their learning.

1. Click Assignments in the left sidebar:

2. Look at the list of Assignments, they will be ordered by Due Date. Click on an assignment for instructions and files needed to complete the work.