Brockville School principal Tania McDonald said staff at her decile 2 Dunedin school have spent the past two days creating packs for their pupils to take home because many of the families at the school could not afford laptops, tablets or mobile phones.
‘‘The packs have literacy, numeracy and some other research projects for them to work on.
‘‘In the pack, there are some websites that the children can visit if they do have electronic devices.
‘‘We are also sending two reading books home with each pack. These books are from Duffy Schools.
‘‘We are sending the message that reading is the most comprehensive way of developing your thinking skills.’’
Mrs McDonald said the school was trying to avoid the situation in which pupils finished their two-week school holiday and sat around for another two weeks or more, not continuing their education.
‘‘That’s absolutely what we’re trying to avoid. It would be detrimental to their learning.’’
She said for the rest of this week, staff would work out ways to continue their pupils’ education if the lockdown was to last longer than four weeks.
‘‘Our next step is to create more packs, which we can drop off at children’s homes.’’
It would also be a good time to catch up on school jobs that staff seldom had time to do.
‘‘There’s always work to do.’’
