As busy parents and carers struggled to come to grips with their children’s remote learning, one school found a solution that let each family do it “their way”.

When teachers at Baulkham Hills North started reorganising the school curriculum around remote learning, they quickly realised students would struggle without the support of their families and carers.

But how to best engage parents who themselves were struggling with the massive changes to home and work life created by COVID-19?

The solution was a Learning from home hub that parents and students could easily access from the school website.

Every family has had its own challenges to overcome during the remote learning period, but the hub meant they could access the school’s Learning from home program in a way that suited them.

The site included a veritable cornucopia of useful materials: ‘how to’ guides about online learning programs; daily schedules and links and documents for the week’s lessons for each grade; engaging and interesting online roll call; wellbeing check-ins; live-streamed weekly assemblies; downloadable offline work packs and library resources; fitness activity videos, EAL/D language learning activities and translated information for parents, and; a page of links to encourage enquiry-based learning projects.

The hub helped students feel connected with the school while they were learning from home, thanks to daily roll-call videos, live-streamed assemblies and messages from staff and students.

For students logging in to the hub, their day began on an upbeat note with a video created by Baulkham Hills North’s very own ‘Crazy Librarian’ and her special guest teachers, which also acted as a prompt for students to mark the roll.

The school continues to use the hub as a learning resource for students and families. Parents and carers can access it from any web browser to check in and assist their child remotely with their school work.

The hub’s popularity is clear from the weekly traffic to the school website’s home page, with unique page views exceeding 2,000 during the remote learning period compared with about 280 per week previously.