I wasn’t sure the best place for this, I Hope it can be taken light heartedly like it’s meant to be!
Several of my friends and family work in education in some shape or form (a mix of early years, primary and secondary, teachers TAs Admin and senior management) and in a conversation yesterday we started off with the usual “how do you think going back will work” “do you think we will really be back this year”, discussed practical and actually possible suggestions.......then it descended into some, let’s call them rather unorthodox methods to bring the children back:
- the contamination booth. A pop up tent in each classroom, on arrival and departure the children enter the tent one at a time to be sprayed down with anti bacteria spray (with goggles on of course)
- putting dye into the water supply and soap, so that we know if children are telling the truth about washing their hands!
- Double decker desks! Stack the tables into pyramid style formations so that more children can fit into each 2 meter square cube. PE mats for safety.
- move the whole classroom outside onto playgrounds and school fields! Mark the area into squares, each child has their own square - every couple of squares along on the grid is a pathway which is the exit/ arrival route. Children have everything for the day in their square and don’t leave the square except for the toilet with permission. Teacher stands at the front (or remains in their car) with a megaphone.
- taps are fitted with a timer that sounds off an air horn if the child stops washing their hands before twenty seconds is up
- Supply all teachers with a drone. Teacher remains at their desk, and send the drone over to children to pick up work, take pictures of work they are doing and teacher shouts feedback across the classroom.
- all children are placed in the equivalent of a hamster ball and therefore have free movement
- All children are given tweezers and tongs in order to pick up everything they need - they can only physically touch their own exercise books and assigned pencils and pens and stationary. Everything else, such as reading books, must be opened using tweezers. This will be especially beneficial to early years fine motor skills.
Like I say, this was a conversation descending into madness after drinking via zoom but I thought some of these ideas were pretty good and thought I would share, hoping others on here may have more. (I emphasise, lighthearted!)