HOTW has adapted and changed to enable all staff and pupils to still be connected and learn together due to the coronavirus.  Each week, different collaborative activities will be released for teachers, students and pupils of different ages to take part in. Sharon and another primary teacher, Jennifer Gillespie, created each of the challenges after consulation with those involved in the project.  The challenges are broken down into 'Chilli Challenges' to enable inclusion through differentiated activities. The challenges are released on the HOTW Facebook Group page to notify all members that the latest challenge is sitting on the Twinspace and to enable questions and queries to be answered.   The challenges were also opened to teachers outside the project through promoting on the Facebook eTwinning page to enable children from other schools to join in the rich and engaging learning that was taking place.                                                             

Challenges:

                Challenge  1                                        Challenge  2

             Challenge 3                                           Challenge 4

                Challenge 5                                            Challenge 6

                                                 Challenge 7

Sharon has agreed to coordinate a series of webinars for us all to come together and sing and sign. These webinars were created for various reasons: enable the community to stay connected through the use of msuic and Makaton, provide a stress-free time during a very stressed period of time for teachers and student teachers to come together and have fun whilst learning.  The latter was very important as many teachers have noted that the sessions help their health and well-being.  Once teachers had settled into the online world of learning, pupils were invited into different lunchtime sessions.

Find out how we are getting on by clicking on the link below and why not join us whenever you can. Details of all sessions are posted on our Facebook group.

Webinars:                                                                                                   

At the end of the some schools involved in the project and some student teachers came together online for a Can You Guess What I Say and Sign activity. Pupils shared words or phrases that had been used in the project by saying them in their own language whilst using the signs.  Everyone had fun trying to guess what was being said.  Once again, this activity was fully inclusive due to allowing children to speak in their own language and allowing all to either do one word or a phrase, for example, on pupil gave one word for 'bear' whilst another pupil used a variety of words from diffferent activities to compose her own sentences.  The recording of the online activity can be viewed below:

Alongside the music and Makaton webinars, Sharon also organises Everyone Is A Learner webinars where teachers and student teachers learn from one another in the project alongside pupils teaching other pupils and teachers.  The webinars are rich learning opportunities for all with well over 100 participants attending some of the live webinars.  Due to the webinars being recorded and shared.  All the webinars can be accessed below: