AIBU to think that Oak Academy is not that great?

[choosingcrumble]

We've been following the lessons about Whales Rider. Talk about destroying any love of a really great story. My son loves the film and book and now just wails 'No! Not Whale Rider again!'.

I use the history ones for my KS3 students to get content information before they do my tasks as they are clear and accessible for everyone - I just tell them to skip the tasks and make notes on the information to use later. They could listen to me say the same stuff but that seems a bit pointless!

Our school sets some oak lessons for year 2 maths and mostly they are very good I think - enthusiastic teachers who go at a sensible pace. We are even doing some extra year 1 ones to help our child catch up as her maths is a bit behind.

But there is one yr 2 teacher who my child groans at the sight of now - her lessons are dull, slow, and awkwardly presented, and needlessly bogged down in laboriously explaining the lesson plan and ‘key words’ at the start - as if 6-7 yr olds will care about that! It’s very much just reading out what the PowerPoint presentation says in this teacher’s case which is never going to work well.

OP, not sure that is necessarily the fault of oak academy and more the fact that if you want to suck the joy out of a book, use it to teach people literary analysis and criticism.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies and a number of shakespeare plays were forever ruined for me thanks to secondary school English.

I think it's fine personally. I mean nothing is brilliant right now is it?

The year 2 ones we’ve done for maths & English have been good. The English is a bit ambitious for my 6 year old though.
We do skip some of the tasks but generally I think they work well for a video lesson.

My year 4 and 5 DCs have been doing the year 5 oak all year - they've been off school as shielding and the work given by school has been patchy (no complaint to their school, I understand that providing work for those off school isn't easy). But they love it, as much as any child loves watching maths videos anyway 😂 they find it much more interesting than the work set by school.

We are taking them out of school completely soon as they've been off for a year, but will continue using Oak.

Quite frankly they are being taught which is better by a teacher than not. Seriously does everyone that is complaining have the time to read the national curriculum, plan and teach a lesson?!!! The ones we have had are certainly not passive. We have had ks2 science and religious studies.

Well it depends what alternative is on offer.

During the last lockdown dd (then yr 3) was set maths work without any teaching (no live or recorded lessons). Oak academy was a life saver in explaining some topics so she could actually understand the work set.
Yes Dp and I could have spent hours trying but we both work (and aren’t teachers).

This lockdown has included recorded lessons from the school so we haven’t needed to use Oak.

We get several Oak lessons a day. The majority have been fine. My Yr5 needs help with the computing ones.
They could do with a parents section so the parry know what the child has supposed to achieve by the end. My elder DDs teacher produces a worksheet for each one. My younger DDs teacher doesn't (but that's not a criticism of a system where a teacher is having to simultaneously teach half a class and support the other half at home).

Half way though the first lockdown, my Y6 DS was told to follow the Oak Academy lessons and it totally demotivated him. Some of the lessons seemed OK to me but others seemed over complicated and the tasks were not explained well at all. There were some of the maths lessons where the answers to the tasks were wrong (I suspect they had changed the question and not updated the answer) which made things tricky.

DH is a teacher and uses Oak lessons sometimes as part of his online teaching but he says you need to choose which ones to use. In his opinion there are some that are just monotone and others that are a bit 'try hard' and over complicate everything.

@evilharpy

My daughter is in Y1 and her English lessons are on Oak Academy. They are beyond awful. Mind numbingly dull, patronising (they're 6, not 2), there's just nothing to like about them.

We have maths on White Rose and although the subject matters we've been given is shockingly easy for a Y1 class, the delivery is much better.

If WR is shockingly easy the school isn't teaching it right.

Application is the challenge.

The only thing my son enjoyed were the assemblies.

They are clear I suppose but very, very slow and dull. If we can we skip the video and just do worksheets set.

DS loves the music ones he's been set, but mainly because it's his actual music teacher that's teaching it!

I think like most things it is a bit hit and miss. We have had some on there that provoked good discussion. I was a little unimpressed with one of the PSHE lesson setting the task to wrote to a family member to get them to eat more healthily , because teaching children to start telling others what to do will always end well .

We have had a couple of maths ones that were atrocious and I switched them off because they confused ds1 , we just taught the same concept in a different way which ds1 teacher is totally on board with.

Some have been decent though , ds1 is y3 and some of the english ones have been pretty good.

It's the same as everything really , DC learn differently so some lessons will suit one DC and not another. No different to the live lessons from the school. Our teachers take turns delivering the lessons and one is clearly really struggling with online learning. Its apparent , she struggles to work the programme , put slides up, can't work out how to see all the children at once so only ever calls on two children...ever. it causes the other DC to be completely demotivated which several parents have been vocal about , but ultimately she may be a great in class teacher but not everyone will cope with this delivery well.

Everything will be hit and miss at the moment , the schools are trying.

My dd school used them for English during the first lockdown, she was year 5, my dd hated the lessons with a passion. In the end I asked school for alternative work for her because she just couldn't engage with them. The ones I sat through were tedious.

I was planning the home learning for my reception class in first lockdown and looked at the Oak Academy phonics lessons. They were so awful I didn't use them and found much better on Youtube.

My boss wants me to use it. I’m all for minimising preparation work, but dear Lord, the sheer monotony!

My DCs had to use Oak Academy for maths during the first school closures. They hated them.

It's interesting that we haven't had anything from it this time round. Presumably the feedback was universally awful - everyone I spoke to loathed it. This time round the school's provision has been wonderful, really engaging and it helps that the DCs see their own teachers, who are amazing.

We won't use them, they are boring and the pitch is completely wrong.

The mistakes! I sort of got it in lockdown 1, where the lessons were made very quickly, but for the love of God, will the work please be checked!
DS has also discovered the speed up, and now routinely watch stuff at 1.5 speed, and with some teachers double speed.

The Latin lessons with Mr Furber are ace! DD1 did some last lockdown when her school wasn't setting much (she was in yr 5 then).

Since then she has been set a couple of RE lessons and Music lessons and the younger one has been set some Science and music - they gave both really enjoyed them (though they get no live lessons from school and only very occasional short video clips from their teachers, so it might be something to do with the novelty of bring taught...)

Some of it is ok, some not so much. The year 4 science is essentially copying off a PowerPoint but ks3 geography is ok.

I only used it for a bit of what they called "foundation" subjects last year. They were interesting! The Y2 history on the Shang Dynasty in China for example is something I knew nothing about so DD and I watched it together so we'd both learn something
I'll admit Spanish was a bit repetitive, but DD can still remember some of it even though she's doing French in school this year so it had an impact.
Can't speak for the rest of it though, I've heard the English lessons were pretty bad.

For my subject, there is some useful stuff but it is about picking and choosing and not relying on it as a sole source of input. It really isn't a subsitutute for lessons but rather it's something you throw into your box of teacher tricks and pull out at the right moment. The lessons on Oak lack that personal touch precisely because they're just delivering content without interaction of any kind. My lessons are full of sarcasm and wit (because I am hilarious) reacting to my knowledge of my students and their particular behaviours/comments at a given time. But if I was making a video in my kitchen to go on the internet for them to just 'learn something' it would lack any of that personalisation and anything that makes a lesson fun and interesting to be in.

I think the thing I love best about online learning is how the same people who are pains in the backside in class are still pains in the backside online even without their cameras on and a mute facility. I remember over the summer just bursting out laughing at something which was utterly predictable for the child concerned and saying 'oh X, I do miss you and for all the wrong reasons' and he responded 'Miss you too, miss, for all the right reasons'. They are lovely. When they want to be!