School Closures: How Beyond Will Be Helping

We will open by saying these are unprecedented and uncertain times for everyone. Many of us on the Beyond team are parents, teachers, carers, home educators, former teachers and more. We’re a broad church with varied experiences. We do have one thing in common: a desire to give those that teach the headspace to be outstanding.‘Those that teach’ will soon become a broad church too as school closures take place across the entirety of the UK from tomorrow. Many of you at home reading this blog are likely to be parents or carers who now find themselves in the uncharted waters of teaching your own children at home! You might also be a secondary school teacher (our usual crowd!) suddenly fielding questions left, right and centre from neighbours and loved ones.So whether you’re a parent, a teacher… (or both) we want to communicate how Beyond are going to be helping those that teach during these tumultuous times.You Can Access our Resources for FreeWe want to ensure that anyone who needs resources can access them – as such, we’re making the entire catalogue free for a month regardless of whether you’re an existing subscriber or new user. The code below offers an ‘Ultimate’ subscription to the Twinkl website. The code gives you access to everything Beyond produces – a wide array of resources for secondary-aged students. It also gives you access to everything produced by Twinkl – everything from EYFS to KS2, which is ideal if you’re a secondary teacher with younger children now at home.To get free access, visit twinkl.co.uk/offer and enter the code UKTWINKLHELPS.Our Website Might Look DifferentThe long and short of it is, that we’re going to collate the most-useful secondary resources for home learning here. This will be an ever-growing list during the period of school closures, so pop it in your bookmarks.Much of the website will remain the same, with content broken down into key stage and exam boards. For parents unfamiliar with this system, we will be publishing blogs and videos on how to navigate the website to find exactly what you need.Certain aspects of the site familiar to its current users might notice some features disappearing. Comments and reviews are currently removed – this is a temporary measure as these systems can have great impact on loading times and bandwidth. The last thing we want is the site to be overloaded when people need us the most. As such, we’ve temporarily disabled these features.Our Resource Focus is ChangingBeyond will continue to make resources for secondary-aged students. However, many of our resources are designed to be used by teachers in the classroom and designed to meet the needs of GCSE examinations and the KS3 curriculum. This doesn’t necessarily gel with what teaching at home will look like in the coming weeks. As such, we are shifting focus to make secondary resources that can be utilised by teachers and non-teachers alike: worksheets, reading comprehensions, activities and other resources that won’t require expert knowledge to use – but useful for anyone who has secondary school children at home.Social Media Will Become a Hub for Everything UsefulOur social media channels were previously best-utilised by teachers – from resource promotion, blog content and our teacher-led humour. That’s going to look a little different for a while as we’re aware that a number of people with secondary school children are likely to find their way here via word of mouth or social media.We will be promoting our newest resources, as usual, but we’ll also be promoting older resources best utilised at home too. Our blogs will continue to cover a range of topics, from a range of experiences, on how best to approach learning and teaching at home, how to keep a routine and how to use our resources. Our usual brand of humour will certainly continue, too!We would also like to hear what resources you need the most – so getting in touch with us with suggestions would be something we would welcome.You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.What We Need From You: Share, Share, ShareAn odd request, given that our resources are often only available by subscription but as we’ve said, these are uncertain times. So share the code above (there’s a handy Facebook post here) with your friends. Moreover, if you’re a teacher looking to set work for your class during this time of school closures, feel free to host our content on your VLE or send home to parents via email (Or as a printed booklet as we’re entirely aware that some parents may not have access to the resources often available in schools).In Summary…We will continue to make high-quality secondary resources that give you the headspace to be outstanding. During these strange times of school closures, we understand that who needs access to our content and when they need it may change, but we plan to be flexible, open and receptive to feedback to ensure we meet the needs of those that need us most.The Beyond TeamPS: We also have a range of revision resources here on the blog, too. And a range of topical educational blogs from our teaching community.

Beyond Blog

Secondary Resources

Author: Stuart N

School Closures: How Beyond Will Be Helping

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