Live lessons or not (primary)

[cautiouscovidity]

Do your primary age children have live lessons? Mine (age 11 and 9) do not and I'm getting a bit frustrated and concerned for them about their lack of contact with school and other kids in their class.

I kind of understand the school's reasons (safeguarding and not discriminating against families that have more than 1 child but only one device) but even a single daily live lesson would make a difference I think.

In my group of friends (6), all of our children attend different primary schools and most are having some online teaching. Ours get daily short videos from the teacher and some exercises (English and Maths) to do and send back.

That is utterly unacceptable.

Not discriminating is bringing them all down to the lowest common denominator. Those that don't have laptops should either be provided with them one way or another or they come into school and learn there using the IT.

It infuriates me some schools giving such a substandard education

We don't have to teach live lessons if we're not comfortable about it and none of our staff are doing it.
They use Oak Academy for any lessons and no parents have complained that their children are not getting live lessons from their own teacher.

We have live lessons, 3x 20-30 min slots that introduce the key work of the day then they do the work themselves

Works incredibly effectively

Plus school has surveyed for lack of devices and WiFi etc to support families

Mine does. He gets an hour live lesson in the morning and another in the afternoon, there is a drop in one in between for children who have questions /are struggling. The rest of the time they do work that's been set either by the teacher in the lesson or set inline. I think it's a good mix. Not sure if there's anything that you can do though if your dcs school have decided not to do them.

Our academy Trust is not doing live lessons (across 9 primaries).

I recently did some governor training and the advice given is that pre-recorded lessons (be they Oak Academy, BBC or given by school) can be just as effective as live lessons. Don't forget the teachers are in school teaching the vulnerable and key worker children, as well as negotiating online platforms.

We don't have live lessons, and I'm glad about it, we can organise her time table in a way that suits us.

She has a once a week check in with a small group from her class and the teacher.

I worry about the interaction, but she Skypes her friends and it's still not the same. She missed actually seeing them.

Year2 have 2 live lessons per week
A teams class call every day at 10am

And lots of videos every day like a live lesson which you pause and do your work and hand it in at the end, which the teacher comments on.

It's getting better

Nothing for us

It seems that we're not alone then.

I suppose I should be grateful that it's better than the last lockdown in that at least we're getting daily work. Last time we were directed to Bitesize / Twinkl and left to it with a call from school once between Easter and half term and then fortnightly thereafter (mine didn't return to school at all during the summer).

We don't have live lessons - and I'm bloody glad about it! It would be very difficult for us to set up our reception aged child on a live lesson at a specified time when we are both WFH and trying to juggle homeschooling at the same time as our own meetings/work.

We do, however, have pre-recorded videos for each 'lesson' which are about 10 mins long. These typically introduce the task and provide an explanation about the content. This works brilliantly for us, and my DC is just as happy seeing a video of his teacher than he would be on a Zoom. I actually think a Zoom with KS1 children sounds chaotic and DC would end up totally distracted by the others! The pre-recorded videos are great in terms of being able to pause them to have a quick discussion to check DC is following. We wouldn't be able to pause the teacher during a Zoom.

I was annoyed we didn't have live lessons but after the class just having their first zoom catch up meeting I'm bloody glad we don't!

I don't know what the older children are doing but DS1 (reception) gets 2 prerecorded lessons a day from his class teacher. I think this is ideal as DC can see their own teacher and also it doesn't discriminate against working families like us (DS can't get into seesaw by himself so we usually do his school work on our lunchbreaks).

Plus you can pause and rewind the complicated parts!

If youre getting videos I think theyre often as good as, if not better than lives. Lives can be good for feedback, questions etc. But for the delivery of new information, I think a video is probably more user friendly.

Yr 1 child.

Mornings
3 live lessons a day
Phonics 15mins - no follow up work
Maths and English 20mins each - 10-15 mins follow up work.

Afternoons
One recorded lesson - wider curriculum about 30 minutes and then about 30 mins follow up work.
Also a PE session and (end of day) story time. Both of these are optional.

I think it’s a good mix. I do have to supervise the English and Maths lesson and help with the follow up. In the afternoons I have to pause the lesson so we can talk about what is going on. If I was working we would definitely be struggling.