How many secondary schools are offering a full timetable of lessons?

[bendmeoverbackwards]

I want to get an idea of what other schools are doing.

Dd's school offered no teaching during the summer.

Now they seem to be doing a mix of live lessons and 'non contact' lessons. These non contact lessons consist of work being set for students to complete.

They say they need to strike a balance between live lessons and non contact lessons but I'm not sure why. Can any teachers explain please?

Secondary independent. 100% live although with that age sometimes you are on the call to answer questions but they are working independently on something.

100% live. I’m going to lose my voice/the will to live! Talking to a computer is bizarre. Kids next door have complained about being forced to stay looking at a screen all day. I’d rather do a mix to have a change of scenery for me and the children.

Secondary. No live lessons.
Only started today, but at least 4 hours work on there today so that's fine. They didn't start until 1pm, but got it finished.

Oh and also recorded and uploaded to Teams so if children can't access at the time or want to watch again for whatever reason they can come back to it another time.

Following timetable but:

Lessons are 50:50 live input and tasks. After input we stay on the meeting, kids leave and just log back on if they need help with the tasks. It works well.

Lessons are now 50 minutes in the hour to give kids a screen break between lessons and to get a drink/loo etc. SLT recognised kids were finding it a bit much last week.

Today seemed far better than my full teaching day last week.

It's the prep and differentiation that's taking hours behind the scenes, assigning everything correctly, setting up the lives with right settings etc.

@MaddieElla

Sorry but "dumped on us without warning", "none of are trained on Teams". You've had months to know this could have been coming.

Your school and your attitude is seriously lacking.

Well, yes and no. Mainly no actually.

Williamson announced that schools were legally required to provide remote learning if/when there were school closures, not not sure that 'live' was specified.

That was in October, since when teachers have either been in school teaching or trying to have some sort of Xmas break, anticipating either having to administer lateral flow tests to pupils or going back to the classroom.

Don't forget, on Sunday 3rd Jan, the PM was on national television telling everyone that schools were safe, then they were closed the day after, meaning teachers had to rapidly sort out key worker/vulnerable children, FSM etc.

I seem to remember that it took a lot of people alot of time to adjust to remote working last spring, and that was without 30 young children posting emojis and showing you their cat (primary) or multiple groups of different aged children most of who won't have used an online platform before.

Our DC have to follow their usual timetable and have a mix of live lessons and set work, which might include pre recorded audio or video. I imagine that live doesn't suit everyone and not everyone can access every live lesson. Plus I guess the staff might also spend some of their time teaching or supervising children who are at school.

(Or indeed their own children if they are working from home.)

Recorded lessons following normal timetable. Students can stick to TT or do lessons at a time to suit (e.g. if sharing a device). Live support available throughout the school day for every subject.

We have been teaching online- we just haven’t been doing it via Teams. There are different - valid, useful, accessible ways to teach without using the Team format. We had until yesterday, the option of using Teams or not, most people weren’t because of the various issues already raised. In fact the day before I had double checked that my format of a video by me/ notes/ questions/ feedback and being available to answer messages all week was still ok and was told yes. I haven’t been doing nothing for months and suddenly been told to get my finger out, I’ve been doing it differently for months and I’ve suddenly been told to change methods. It’s unsettling and a ball ache and it comes on top of the cancelling of the GCSEs with no plan B , which I’ve taken badly as my GCSE sets have worked their socks off to stay in the running and my DD is also year 11. I suspect I am being overly negative because it’s not been a great start to the week- what I wanted to say was in answer to the OP was that live lessons are not the only way of doing things and because there are pros and cons, a mix is probably the best way.

2 state grammars and sixth form.

Every lesson live on line. Lesson time is normally an hour, they do a 40 minute lesson on line then 20 min independant work left to finish off line. This is to reduce screen stress.
year 8 told this morning that they will no longer get the independant work as it was piling up as homework. (I think their lessons will get longer instead) Year 11 still getting it, but they are doing it in the 20 minutes they have.
register taken every lesson and we are phoned if not there.
Last lockdown, work set, power points etc, but not any live lessons.

BUT
this means that I need to have 3 laptops for 3 kids working live online.
We have excellent broadband, unlike many rural families, but with 6 of us online, 4 streaming live lessons, (we have a student too) it is a stretch.
For families with one laptop, I am guessing that staggering th eonline lessons and mixing them with set work allows siblings to access school and parents to get some work done too

A lot depends on the child.
dd2 really needs the inline live interaction and found last lockdown really hard, just watchin prerecorded power points.
dd1 happy to do the prerecorded, but she got bored and did about half the set work.

Usual timetable, tutor time live, ten min line intro for each lesson then set work. It’s a million times better than last time as so structured plus they have to finish work in lesson time which also helps - but she is already exhausted .

Camera on laptop she uses is broken so he enjoys sitting there watching her classmates do live PE

Thank you for all your responses. Looks like our school isn’t that unusual doing a mixture.

I’ve been a bit worried about my year 9 dd who seems to have fallen behind since March but I suppose a lot of children have.

Ideally I’d prefer more live teaching but I get that it can be stressful for having back to back lessons, staring at a screen for all that time can’t be good.

I teach in a state secondary & we have been offering live lessons for those isolating at home since start of October.

Last week we did full week of live lessons at same time as usual lessons. However feedback from students/parents is that this was too tiring and intense. If you have ever done a full day online training you might understand that it's hard work.

We have tweaked slightly for this week and some subjects are setting projects e.g. art/drama/music and we have shortened lessons to 45 mins instead so both students and staff can move around for 10 mins between lessons.

Both my kids are stuck in bedrooms - DD has full day of live lessons at her state secondary. DS has 30 mins in the morning and 30 mins in the afternoon.

I feel so sorry for the young people going through this. It will require a lot of determination and resilience on their part to deal with wfh on their own, stuck to a laptop all day.

I personally think they need to be back in school on some sort of rota so small classes of 10-15 max.

bendmeover

I’ve been a bit worried about my year 9 dd who seems to have fallen behind since March but I suppose a lot of children have.

Do try not to worry - a lot of children will have fallen behind. Not just academically.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/whats-working-well-in-remote-education/whats-working-well-in-remote-education

Private school, DS has live lessons 8am to 4 pm Monday to Friday with time for lunch and break.

State school with a year 7 and year 10 pupil. Both are getting a full timetable of live lessons (based on their timetable when they were in school) including tutor time and assemblies, every day via Teams. I think some lessons involve teacher input at the start and then they are given set work to complete and submit for the remainder of the lesson (without having to be online) but every lesson involves some live interaction with the teacher.

State school Y8. Full day timetable which covers every subject with 50 min live lesson, which generally don't have any teaching (teacher saying there is task - heres what to do) and then 50 mins to do task on google classrooms. Tasks mainly homework type activity.

I think it sucks for lots of reasons - too much on line, little genuine teaching/learning, no differentiation (DD has EHCP) and same time for each subject means too little maths and English.

DD would be better off following what Y6 DS primary doing which is much better and aimed at pupils whose only online access may be Mum or Dad"s smart phone. 5 minute teaching videos on you tube for English, Maths and then one diff subject each day followed by 45 minute activity to do offline. They've also supplied worksheets and SATs books (ha ha) for those that whizz through that. Class zoom in smaller groups at 2.00 pm to share work. Which can also be emailed and marked.

All day online lessons.9am- 3pm
However, the school has reduced the sessions from one hour to forty five minutes because many students found it difficult to focus.
I prefer a mixture of live sessions and Pre recorded sessions which means that students can still have some interaction with teacher/other students but also gives the parents some respite as they are able to look at the pre recorded content when convenient

Large State academy here-
Summer was 50% live lessons but now every lesson is zoom normally for a 30-40min intro then they complete a task for the rest of it

DD yr11, her GCSEs haven't been cancelled...yet. No live lessons. Some videos, Google classrooms and teachers are supposed to reply to emails. Google comments keeps getting disabled because of kids making stupid remarks. No phone calls.
It's not great, but better than last lockdown, we had one phonecall for all of it and that was only because I phoned and complained. Emails often went unanswered or took weeks.
DD is annoyed at the lack of live lessons, but I'm grateful as I don't think it's healthy. She's never had a live lesson and I think the novelty would soon wear off. Plus our broadband won't run Teams, though Zoom is fine.
I will add her school is shit, there are some fabulous teachers who are carrying lots of non fabulous teachers.

I teach in a secondary school with a pretty rural catchment. We trialled live lessons last summer, and found that a lot of families had issues with broadband if they had e.g. two kids on live lessons plus mum/dad trying to work from home. Engagement was really poor.

This time around we are going to offer optional live lessons, one lesson a week per subject, starting tomorrow to "suplement" the work we are setting via our online platform (a mix of recorded powerpoints and videos, independent tasks, activities from external providers). We are still moving through the curriculum as normal.

The hope is that this will work better for our students and families and also help reduce screen time.

Apparently, we are already getting complaints about "too much" work, and none about not enough.

@SusannaSpider

DD yr11, her GCSEs haven't been cancelled...yet. No live lessons. Some videos, Google classrooms and teachers are supposed to reply to emails. Google comments keeps getting disabled because of kids making stupid remarks. No phone calls. It's not great, but better than last lockdown, we had one phonecall for all of it and that was only because I phoned and complained. Emails often went unanswered or took weeks. DD is annoyed at the lack of live lessons, but I'm grateful as I don't think it's healthy. She's never had a live lesson and I think the novelty would soon wear off. Plus our broadband won't run Teams, though Zoom is fine. I will add her school is shit, there are some fabulous teachers who are carrying lots of non fabulous teachers.

Yes her GCSEs have been cancelled. It's a national decision that has been taken already. Schools still teaching though as will need to do teacher assessment. Unless she does iGCSE which is taking place internationally and no U.K. decision confirmed yet.