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!'.

It's the mistakes on the maths slides that are infuriating, they correct the figures half way through the lesson with no mention of it so you are left bewildered. My DD is easily upset by not understanding her lessons so this adds to it considerably.

A bit of a rant ahead:

My Y1 really doesn't get on with them, I said on here the other day I watch him just glaze over as soon as they come on! Which is unfortunate because his school sends nothing but OA links for ALL maths, English and topic! 😩

I used to teach his year group and am a SAHM now so we have started doing our own thing this week.

The maths was generally too easy until this week when it has managed to confuse him on subtraction which he could do before he started!

The English is tedious (I think we will both scream if we hear the word (AwOnGaLeEeEmA one more time), and the topic assumes a level of writing which a lot of y1s will find inaccessible (my DS included). It all seems a grand waste of time when I could be helping him with basic sentence writing which he so desperately needs!

Agghh. Mrs Smart and Whale Rider. I have no desire to watch the film, it looks so dull. Well it’s been ruined by Mrs Smart and her monotone now.

My dd was given a few yr7 history ones last year and really liked them. One or two geography as well, all good. She had to isolate for a couple of weeks in yr8 and was asked to do a few maths ones. The teacher seemed to completely over complicate things. Perhaps great for maths whizzes or older students but just confused dd. So I ended up watching the video to get the idea of how to teach the subject then teaching her myself.

As for the French, dd and I are doing the French together. I’m helping her btw - dh is French... But dd refuses to learn / speak. Dual nationality French child, who won’t speak French 🙄. So she’s being bribed.... We started on the yr8. But some of it was too difficult for dd and I find the listening tasks really poorly explained, which was frustrating dd.... and even one baffled me. Despite being fluent, having a degree etc, I had to ask dh to work out what the teacher was getting at lol. (I will interject that it was about 2.5 months post major surgery and I’m chronically ill so not firing on all cylinders...) So we have now gone to the beginning of yr 7. Yes, it’s relatively easy for dd. But it will build up and she can get it as she goes along...

I have to say I really do rate them. While I have a limited experience of Year 6, and can't comment on other years. What I can see (and I used to train teachers) is:

They are using methods that are the gold standards for teaching. They make it clear what is going to happen in the session, they make their expectations clear for the tasks. There is good recap and the sessions are planned and progress well. The quiz before the next session is engaging and allows to check progress.

We are three weeks into Year 6 music, science, geography and PSHE and they have been great at making me feel like the gaps I have are being well supported.

It is an amazing resource and that it was pulled together so quickly is something I think the UK has reason to be proud of.

I also think you have to applaud the bravery of the teachers to put their work out there, their faces out there - it takes a lot of courage to step up like that.

Yanbu. I just don't think recorded videos are engaging. My child love learning but they were turned off by oak.

We are using Outschool for some live lessons and they love them. They come out buzzing. You have to work the filters but there is some fab stuff. This link will get you a free class to try
(up to $20 in value) httpss://outschool.com/?signup=true&usid=oJXLafjD&utm_campaign=share_invite_link

We are using a tutor for maths and English and they get so much more enthusiastic for sessions with her than another turgid video from school/oak.

I just don't think, having observed my children, than we can pretend that recorded lessons are anything but a pale imitation of a live lesson. They lose the buzz and engagement of live teaching.

I am sure the teachers at Oak are excellent but it just isn't the same as a teacher being able to respond the the class and change pace /tone/ pause and ask questions etc.

We also hate the oak learning. He much prefers his own teachers lessons but our school is almost exclusively oak, 3 sessions a day of it!

So repetitive and dull.

@Watchingbehindmyhands you sound like everything a teacher should be

I still remember little spontaneous jokes etc from my favourite teachers at school. Those moments when they reacted to things going on in the class room and brought the energy into the room

I love Miss Emms! DS did 'firework maker's daughter' last lockdown which was great, and now we're doing her Space unit.

We tried another teacher's Fire of London lesson and it was pitched way beyond year two level.

Haven't looked t it but i loved the bbc lessons last lockdown

it's killing my 8 yo's enjoyment of english and creative writing. dull, patronising, slow, tedious.... pointless to be honest. I get why they have the "lessons" but actually would prefer to go off grid and just do our own thing, in fact next week I may do just that

I’m a teacher and don’t rate it. It would save me many hours a week if I just took advice from senior management and used it more widely but my job is to teach not to copy-paste links.

Some lessons are better than others but the majority seem to be very dull, dry, patronising... the science I’ve looked at has been much better than the English.

I do occasionally resort to it when I’m failing to get a point across myself after numerous attempts to teach it in other ways. It’s not a magic wand though.

I realise that for some teachers it is really hard to provide a better alternative than oak, and in these instances I suppose it’s better than nothing. But I think the majority of self-respecting professionals would pick a different option if possible. I’m fortunate to have extremely supportive sensible parents helping to deliver the education to the kids. Not all teachers are so lucky.

@Watchingbehindmyhands

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!

Agreed. I’m using it to deliver some new learning in science but alternating between oak and fun practical activities

I think many are pretty good. I have seen quite a few of the Y6 lessons during the last lockdown. The English, Spanish and Science were good. I think anything gets repetitive after a while , but the English used some excellent, challenging texts and were well structured and planned. The history was incredibly challenging, but really interesting. We started off finding it pitched too high but ended up loving it. Some students, even those who were not high flyers, were very engaged and they really encouraged the students to think. The issue with any remote learning is it won't meet everyone's needs perfectly. As children are watching them without interaction from classmates, it can get dull and it is easy to then pick holes in them. They are also meant to be accessible to a wide variety of abilities and accessible without additional help. Given all these constraints, they do the job.

I’m a secondary school teacher and am not impressed with the content in my subject.

Following the guidance that the government wanted to have our whole curriculum for five year groups online by the end of October, we though it would be useful to map our curriculum with theirs and use the lessons that were relevant. They had done it all in a different order to the topics we teach, but if the content had been good it wouldn’t have mattered as we would have used it mapped against our own schemes. However, we haven’t used a single lesson of theirs and instead spent the whole summer creating our own resource for teaching five years worth on online teaching. Not an easy task but I’m happy with the quality of learning the pupils in my department are receiving. A shame that it cost so much!

@Ilovelove

I have to say I really do rate them. While I have a limited experience of Year 6, and can't comment on other years. What I can see (and I used to train teachers) is:

They are using methods that are the gold standards for teaching. They make it clear what is going to happen in the session, they make their expectations clear for the tasks. There is good recap and the sessions are planned and progress well. The quiz before the next session is engaging and allows to check progress.

We are three weeks into Year 6 music, science, geography and PSHE and they have been great at making me feel like the gaps I have are being well supported.

It is an amazing resource and that it was pulled together so quickly is something I think the UK has reason to be proud of.

I also think you have to applaud the bravery of the teachers to put their work out there, their faces out there - it takes a lot of courage to step up like that.

The Oak Academy teachers are being paid both by OA (who, last time I checked, were refusing to disclose how much under "it's a pandemic" clauses) Their schools (if they are salaried elsewhere) are reimbursed should they have to take time off for their OA duties.

Nobody dragged the teachers kicking and screaming to do it.

As I said, I've had a look (always on the lookout for a presentation and worksheet that's better than mine- who wouldn't be?) But while I've used a multitude of extra resources from a multitude of places, Oak isn't one of them.

I tend to put a link to an Oak Academy lesson or WRM into our Seesaw activities as a backup for children, who are for whatever reason unable to attend our live lesson that day. I'm not sure how many are watching it but I think it's ok as a backup. I speed them up when I go through first but the speed tends to be ok for the little people I teach, most of whom have EAL.
I teach both in class and online all week so I don't have the time to make extra videos.

We tried the Maths for DD in last lockdown but they were much too hard - she was in Y1 and was a bit behind but it was the response format and the language level rather than the Maths.

@Fuzzyspringroll can't you just record your online lesson?

I quite like oak academy, we do spelling, reading, writing, grammar, geography and science on there, set by school. I sit with DS11 while we do it though as I don’t think he d engage alone.
However we have spent three weeks in a suite of lessons learning to write a newspaper report, it suited him brilliantly as it was step by step with no overwhelming ‘big writes’ that he hates, each lesson was for a small part of the report. Yesterday was the last lesson so we thought we would just be putting it all together and handing it in to his teacher. Oh no, we had to write a whole other newspaper report about something entirely different!! We were fuming!!!

Another vote here for the fabulous Mr Furber, teaching Latin. His lessons are great!

And what about the long term of the quality of teaching in our schools?
We are being pushed to use Oak Academy lessons as a model of good practice for student teachers, NQT's and teachers who are underperforming....

@drspouse I teach mostly in class and my kids at home use Zoom to join the in-class lesson. If they miss that, they can use the Oak Academy one. I wouldn't want to video my in-class session. I'm pretty sure I'd have to get permission from all of the parents. Not keen on that at all.