April 09, 2020In light of recent events and in adherence with the Government of Dubai’s drive to ensure the health and wellbeing of its citizens and residents, Ambassador International Academy has implemented distance learning for all its students. Using Seesaw, Teams, Century Tech and Nearpod, we aim to replicate as closely as possible the learning experience of our pupils throughout a regular school day. In order to deliver a consistent school day structure for our students, we have put in place the following:
Daily morning and end of day assemblies
To start the day, we conduct daily morning assemblies where students get to see their teachers and classmates live, creating a sense of community and helping to alleviate the feeling of isolation that may be distressing for some of our students. Once attendance is registered, activities and the schedule for the day is communicated to students. This clearly explains tasks and due dates, which help students gain a clear idea of what is expected from them. We also close the day in a structured way, with teachers discussing the day’s learning with students. This approach focuses on monitoring and supporting student wellbeing and progress.
Live Lessons
Alongside daily offline activities, we are engaging our Kindergarten and Primary students with daily live lessons in English, Maths and Science and specialists such as PE/ICT/Languages/Music. The live lessons are very interactive and engaging and both staff and students have embraced this new way of working. The students follow a structured daily timetable and within their days they can experience a balance of online live lessons and offline tasks and activities. We also have live one to one provision to support the students of lower ability and students of determination.
Preparing tasks and tracking progress
Tasks have been designed to reflect the hours within a typical school day and include all the normal learning techniques we use within our classroom such as; online learning and the more traditional paper and practical based tasks. Teachers share feedback, mark assignments and keep a record of all submissions through Teams, Seesaw and the Century Tech platforms so that there is as little disruption to our students' educational pathways. As would be the case if we were physically in school, if we feel a student is struggling we will reach out to the parents to understand what difficulties they may be facing, to offer support and to find a resolution. We also offer extra challenging activities to our most able students.
Weekly meetings with parents
Teachers hold a live meeting with individual parents every Thursday to discuss their children's progress and any challenges the student might be facing. When needed, the counsellor and inclusion team can be contacted at any time anytime to provide additional support for students having difficulty acclimatizing to distance learning. The parents use a very simple online booking system to organise the time slot with the teacher.
Extra Care
To ensure all of our students can continue their education, we have loaned laptops to families that may not have the facilities at home to support their child’s distance learning.
The Principal and the leadership team are also in regular contact with parents and weekly surveys are conducted to ensure that feedback from parents and students is analysed and actions take place to continually improve our programme.
Here is what some of our parents have to say about their experience of distance learning at Ambassador International Academy.
Vimal Singh – Yogita Singh – Grade 3A
To see my child connecting with her lovely teacher and beautiful, eager classmates, on a virtual platform, to appease the hunger for learning, is most amazing. The efforts of everyone at Ambassador International Academy to sustain learning via this novel digital platform is heartwarming. In these anxious and terrible times of death and despair around the world, this is a blessing for our kids. Thank you AIA team.
Rakhi Raghavan – Athena Rakhi – PreKB
It has been amazing to see the efforts the teachers are taking to make the distant learning engaging, interactive, and interesting. The thinking that goes into preparing the materials in advance for each week is highly appreciable; how they devise the most creative activities with resources that can be available at a house. I should say this is also a period for us parents to retrospect (as we manage kids and partake in these learning sessions) on the feats the teachers would have always taken to manage an entire class at school.
Chatty Yuson Soriano – Dorothy Caintic – KG2B
Having to teach my child myself for the past week made me realized that indeed patience is a virtue. Though excruciating that might sound, I deeply welcome the opportunity to spend time with her and understand her learning process. Observing how she perceives, interacts and comprehend her lessons is a welcome distraction to all the negative news everywhere. It is sad seeing them not being able to interact physically - (which a child of our generation “pre computer era” were blessed with abundantly), however, our instinct as parents is rather protective than callous therefore we obliged to stay at home. Thankfully, the kids seems to understand that and is always reminding each other the importance of washing their hands. We appreciate the hard work that AIA has done in ensuring there is a continuous learning / education. Suffice to say.. it does indeed takes a village.
To find out more about how an IB education can benefit your child academically, or to recieve a virtual tour of our campus facilities, email admissions@aiadubai.com or call +971 4 5806999.
