Covid Catch-Up

All of Hasmonean’s teachers have been very keen to ensure that students are able to catch-up after a summer of distance learning and a somewhat disrupted autumn term. We want to share with our parents the number of ways our teachers have been educating and helping your children.

To help pupils catch-up on missed education, the Government provided schools will additional money.

The Maths department decided to use the catch-up funding first to target a number of our Year 7 students and provide valuable intervention lessons. Every week, three different small groups have been taught parts of the course which have been missed. From January 2021, our Year 11 boys will also be offered intervention sessions. The Year 7 and 11 intervention is planned to run for a total of 20 weeks. Our Year 13 students had 8 hours of catch-up during the November half term and will have another in February. As Maths is a core subject, the department is working hard to ensure all students are up-to-date and do not miss out.

In the English Department, staff have undergone training for the Lexia Core5 Reading programme which supports educators in providing differentiated literacy instruction for students of all abilities. Years 7 and 8 are the key focus groups, but the scheme will also be used to support selected Year 9 -11 students. Lexia provides explicit, systematic, personalized learning, targeting skill gaps as they emerge, and providing teachers with the data and student-specific resources they need for individual or small-group instruction. Again, every effort is being made to target those students who need additional help and provide this. The English interventions will be up and running from January 2021.

Our Science department has been working hard to ensure that MyGCSEScience is set-up to support our Science students, and more textbooks have been ordered as well. With the Year 11 mock exams taking place over the last 2 weeks of term and the Year 13 assessments starting in January, the Science department will be able to highlight which students require extra tutoring and in what specific areas. Interventions will be implemented in early 2021 for both Years 11 and 13, and then catch-up help will be filtered down towards Years 10 and 12 at a later stage.

The Jewish Studies department intends to use some money to fund Hebrew Reading in Year 7. Year 7 is where the building blocks are set to prepare for the remaining years in school, so the focus is being placed on buying additional software and books for our new cohort to really stand them in good stead.

Finally, our Business and Economics department have created a wonderful plan which includes using I Marcouse A-Z business online sessions, having additional staff tutorials, providing focussed exam technique sessions with selected pupils, and delivering a number of other refresher courses.

Thank you to Hasmonean’s wonderful staff who have gone well above their obligations in ensuring that our students are able to realise their potential.