#508 Virtual Tour – Mile Cross Primary School

Having the virtual tour available on our website works really well for us. It’s obviously better if children and parents/carers can take part in a real tour, but this hasn’t always been possible. It’s reassuring for us that we can offer an alternative and we’ve had really positive feedback from families who have visited the site. Children can go back to the tour again and again, and it can be shown to others too, enabling our children to share their school experience with family and friends who may be geographically distant.

The pandemic has forced all schools and settings to change the way that transitions are supported. The virtual tours project has been one part of that change and taking part in it has prompted us to look more deeply at other ways that we can use online resources. For example, alongside the tour we are signposting parents to the NOA Preparing for School videos and to resources on the Just One Norfolk website.

We talked to Joe at ‘Insight’ about the filming process. We decided which members of staff and which parts of the school were to be included. We prepared the environment to make it look appealing, for example setting up the role play area, small world and construction areas so that children would get an idea of some of the activities they might enjoy as well as what the classroom looks like. We made sure that areas like toilets, pegs, and the snack table were clearly labelled. The tour also included the dinner hall, playground and early years outdoor area.

All early years staff were filmed introducing themselves to the children as well as the head teacher’s welcome outside the school.

Feedback from parents was very positive. Many of them watched it several times and it was felt that this was a really good preparation for starting school in the circumstances.
As staff have changed, further films have been created to keep the content current.

Creating the tour was time consuming, but this was time well spent, since the tour gives a unique insight into school life at a time when we cannot welcome families into the classroom as we usually do.

All of our class teachers now film introductions for the families of children coming into their classes in September, which are shared on our YouTube channel.

It did take quite a lot of staff time preparing for the tour, but this was so worthwhile and we feel that the NOA investment in the tours was a really valuable one.