Those of you with dcs at secondary schools with good, easy to follow home schooling instructions, tell me more about it

[effingterrified]

Basically, my dc's school has provided incredibly complicated instructions, using multiple different platforms and given vast amounts of work that no child could actually do.

There's so many random and unconnected materials and organising to do it all is so complicated, my dc does barely any of it and is really put off.

From talking to other parents, they also feel the school's approach is unclear and unhelpful, so I'd like to contact the school with suggestions of how to simplify it and do it better.

So if your dc's school has given your dc really easy-to-use and engaging home learning activities/programme to do during lockdown, could you share the kind of things they do/structure of the programme, so I can make suggestions to my dc's school?

Thanks.

You're being given suggestions and things you can try - if you don't like them or they dont' work for you feel free to do it your own way.

Are you beginning to understand how it might feel to try and cater to 30 kids of differentiated ability and learning styles and disabilities etc yet? You are whinging away because you can't differentiate resources and approach for one child who you have known since birth! Imagine what it's like for us teachers who have to try and do it for 180 kids a day with 30 at a time packed into confined spaces and technology more fitting to 1990 than the 21st century. Imagine whilst you try to do it there is someone wandering around your house who isn't capable of sitting in a seat and intent on poking things in people's ears. Imagine one of your children is blind and another is autistic and another is really fucking angry because their dad left last week.

Good lord you people!

Thanks, everyone.

With the exception of TheHoneyBadger - who doesn't seem to appreciate that parents might find it hard to teach their own DCs because a) they are also doing it alongside working full time in many cases b) may be trying to teach multiple DCs of different ages with limited access to appropriate equipment/technology at the same time c) during a pandemic so they might be, you know, ill?? and d) are not themselves trained teachers!! FFS.

Ihatemyseleffordoingthis - your year 10 DS's experience sounds very similar to my dc's experience, so I sympathise.

Interesting to hear how different schools are dealing with it; also interesting to hear how many dcs are apparently angelically and obediently getting on with the set tasks.

I don't have a dc like that but admire those that do. That's MN dcs for you, I suppose!

my dd y10's school sounds like ihatemyselffordoingthis' son's school too. It's frustrating and stressful as dd is overwhelmed and is getting too many updates and additional requests. It would be better to either have a daily online classroom or one request for each subject each week with all the work on there. She had 10 show my homework pieces for one subject all with different due dates and details of different platforms/passwords so spent most of her day just navigating and little learning. Some teachers are more helpful than others. Laughed a one lazy one who set the work then sent the answers telling them to mark it, convert it to % and send her just that! Not impressed with how the school are handling as my son in y9 's school is far better organised.

We have work on Google Classroom and the lessons follow the timetable. In Y10 some lessons seem to have the work with a video explaining what to do in the work published first for students to watch and refer back to then an activity like a quiz to bring everyone together at the start. Then about 10-20 minutes discussing and explaining the work on google MEeT and chat
Students do the work then. but the teacher is there live and doing it too so can show examples and answer questions. Students email if they don’t want to show their question to other people
Finally a chat at the end live for questions and looking over the work done. So more like an actual lesson

I think everyone just wants to get back in the classroom

It must be so frustrating to be given random work across platforms, loads of stuff with no explanation, no marking, no contact and stuff to print out rather than do online - it makes me really cross for some of the kids on this thread

This makes me feel inadequate. I have a year 10 ds. I don't have anything to do with his work! His school expects him to be logged onto Frog at the normal time and complete all work as per the timetable. Teachers are available by email in the timetabled session if needed. Some work is marked, some isn't, as it would be at school.

It didn't occur to me that I needed to teach him too. I have smaller kids who I am expected to do more with, and I do, but a 15 yo? All I do is throw a sandwich in n the pit at lunch time!

@DonLewis I'm doing minimal input with my year 8 and 10 as well. It's hard to have input when some of their subjects are things I've never studied! (Wonder how HoneyBadger thinks I'm supposed to be able to help with computer science/coding homework when I didn't even study IT at school. And the work we are getting isn't "suggestions and things to try" it is work that has to be completed - with minimal feedback as to whether its correct. I had to learn some maths stuff so I could 'teach' ds2 because he had no idea what to do. Checked against the answers teacher sent home. Couldn't fathom how she got one of the answers,no reply to the email we sent. Ds1 looked and concluded she got it wrong. Shes only human. These things happen. But it is frustrating. )

My kids schools are all doing it very differently.
DD school leadership have said that in order to streamline, each teacher must send out work only once per week- so if 2 lessons that week, the work for both lessons sent at once. Expectations are clear, amount of time expected to spend is clear.

This has helped DD hugely. Work can be set on itslearning, teams, or emails- but an email always sent from the teacher weekly saying where to find it.

DS otoh, has to check 4 different places for work set, which is proving more challenging.

I think all my teachers are working v hard to get it right. Teething issues- yes. And the tone of emails home to me hasn't anyway been great.

I'm v glad my kids aren't expected to be in online lessons all day- live- our internet couldn't cope- they have to take it in turns if they have video content to watch.

One school is using SMHW. They follow the timetable and work is posted there in the morning. Some is via Zoom, some is independent. Where things are handed in this is done via OneNote. Everything needs to be in by the following morning. No homework. It’s very clear what needs doing and we as parents have really good visibility. The lessons I have witnessed have been fun and engaging and they are really enjoying them.

The other school is using Teams. Fewer video lessons and more expectation they will get on with it. Again, they are following the timetable. For dd in year 10 I’m concerned she will miss key components that she will struggle to keep up with. She is motivated and smart but she’s finding it tricky and I don’t have any way of seeing what is needed apart from if she shows me. And it’s definitely less engaging and creative which I assume is because they are worried about covering GCSE content.

Am I the only one that finds Google classrooms very frustrating and un-user friendly?

You have the ‘stream’ and the ‘class work’ areas. On stream there’s a bloody massive list of comments, suggestions, questions, discussion - but with the odd bit of necessary information thrown in so you have to read it. Then class work is a list of documents, most of which appear on stream but some of which don’t. Uploading work is hit or miss as there seem to be 5 different ways to do it.

Ds (with my help) is finding he’s spending more time on navigating the system than actually working. It’s incredibly frustrating.

DS is in Y10, his school’s approach sounds like @RomaineCalm.

They only started back from Easter holidays this week and didn’t have ‘live’ lessons before they broke up. So much work must have been done over the Easter holidays to get everything set up. They ask for parental feedback and are going to tweak a few things to the process next week following the feedback they are getting. So far cannot fault it.

But some parents on MN might not like it as it is pretty full on and the pupils have to be sat at their desks at 8.30 for registration and they get homework too. We are lucky that DS likes the structure and has embraced it with no complaint and we can pretty much leave him to it.

My year 7 DS has a stupid amount of work. He does Joe Wicks at 9am then he's at it constantly till 8/9/10pm. He's getting homework and classwork set via Show My Homework but there is no logic to a lot of it. No idea what is classwork or homework or if it's one lesson's worth or a week's worth as it's always more than a 50 mins lessons worth of work. He has no time for scout badges or coding or all those practical life skills social media seems to think he should be doing. I'm trying to be patient and hope they figure it out but it's been 4 weeks now.

I don't need to teach him as such. He appreciates brainstorming of what he should do next or how to go about something and I've shown him a few tricks with Office 365.

@worldsworststepfordwife

It's really not feasible for staff to be delivering live lessons. There have been many threads on here explaining why. Lots of teachers have their own children at home too.

The school should be giving direction on which things to complete are priority. For example we're setting lessons and then also enrichment work. The lessons are the core work and enrichment is extra for those who want it.

We're using Microsoft Teams to set work. Accessing different online platforms for different subjects is normal. Different subjects often have different websites.

Mrs Wombat 9am -9pm is far too much, especially for a year 7 . Are you going to intervene? Look at the work to see? Talk tot he school?

No teacher would want a child working that much. Maybe you could have a time he has to come away from the work? So turn the computer off at 4?

If school really is setting that much then email the school and explain how long it is taking.

That's not healthy or sustainable.

@SquashedFlyBiscuit He does have an hour for lunch and a couple of hours break in the evening around dinner time before he starts up again. He had a similar amount of homework before the schools shut. Yes, I'm going to intervene.

@MrsWombat

I echo PPs, there is no way that schools can expect that level of work. It's too much. Ime some places have forgotten that students don't spend a whole hour working in school. At best they probably do 40 minutes. However when setting online work some leadership teams have been hell bent on "there must be an hour of work".

I'm sure you will have seen the many threads on here where teachers are damned if they set too much, and damned if they set too little.

I have a year 10 at one school and a year 8 at another.

Both have a variety of stuff but that's because different teachers have different styles and different subjects suit different platforms too. I don't really mind the jumble, the teachers are doing their best.

(Wonder how HoneyBadger thinks I'm supposed to be able to help with computer science/coding homework when I didn't even study IT at school. — I don’t expect you to but I don’t expect a teacher to feasibly be able to perfectly support the hundreds of kids they teach either. Baring in mind they too may be at home looking after children and home educating them with the same lack of technology others are pointing out.

Don’t expect perfection from teachers, your kids or yourselves. It’s a pandemic with last minute school closures, no childcare, limited technology for working from home and homeschooling your children for ALL of us. Teachers included who like me are probably also having to run around getting meds and food for elderly relatives on top of taking care of their kids and working from home and worrying about it all.

And they are suggestions. If you’re school hasn’t made that clear call and clarify. I was asked why my son hadn’t accessed the platform and said we are doing our own thing and ensured that was ok and no one would be in trouble. After that call the head sent out a letter to parents ensuring all of them knew not to stress or stress their children and to just do what they can and what they feel is right for their family at this time.

Ds is year 8. We’re good to read and study at least one gcse English lit text and work on maths. That’s it. People are over worrying imo

Hi OP.

I’m a teacher and a parent.

We are setting work at scheduled times by email then providing answers/model responses later the same day. Students without IT are given hard copies of the same work. KW children in school are following the same schedule.

We know that uptake will be very patchy, so much of the work is consolidation. There’s no point in teaching new content - a) because it won’t done as well as actual teaching and b) because we will have to reteach it because of very patchy uptake.

If the way your school are doing it isn’t working for you, then email the school.

I’m not following the home learning for my DC because I have got a printer at home and the work set for them is worksheets to be printed. I’m doing a combo of the online stuff available and a couple of relevant year group maths/English workbooks.

@SmileEachDay - not sure which year you teach but how badly do you think the lack of new content being taught (and I totally understand why) is going to affect year 10 students?

I've a dd in yr 12 and her school using Show my homework, regular work set daily and regular contact from staff. They're helping with the prep for university applications just incase school closed until Sept.
My younger dd is yr9 and attends vocational boarding school. Her school switched to virtual teaching this week using zoom and Microsoft Teams; normal school day of 9am-6pm as they're following usual timetable. Its improved my dd mental health having some normality back and staff have been brilliant

Y9 here, child expected to do 3 hours per day in total of core subjects and their GCSE choices.

I just got sent the expecations for hours of study - Y10 was due to be sitting GCSE exams about now - they expect for week 3 hours core and 3 hours non-core.

The year 12 are expect to do 3 hours a week

They expect 5 total hours a week for my year 8.

None of this bares any relation to what has been set - Y8 has had a lot more work than Y10.

They using mainly microsoft teams being set weekly work or fortnightly possibly with few links and left to it - though many teachers are really good at reponsing to questions on there. There are a few outside applications - all bar one used before.

They are both doing entirely new subjects areas - partly as there's not time to not do so for Y10 and they just seem to be carrying on with Y8 yearly plan with a few adjustments.

I'm trying to get Y10 to do bit more and trying to get Y8 to meet the school deadlines.

The communication hasn't always been great but has settled down a lot and teams does seem a good way or setting the work but the kids were all used to the software before school closed and a few teachers had been trained on it - though many more had steep learning curves.

Thanks @TheHoneyBadger school definitely haven't made it sound like they are suggestions but we will just do the best we can. Luckily ds2 is bright so can pick stuff up quickly. I'm not expecting perfection from anyone but just wish it was a bit clearer re which bits of work are most important. I think most teachers are doing an amazing job, especially the ones who aren't particularly IT literate. The teacher who has been in contact most re lack of completed work is for a subject he is dropping at the end of this year anyway

I'm also trying to teach useful life skills while we are at home. Meal planning and budgeting, basic DIY etc. DS1 helped me fix the washing machine at the start of lockdown.

@LuminousAmber I get totally lost using Google classrooms (honestly I think I have the IT skills of a dinosaur) . Luckily for me DS1 has been using it for a few months so can help me and ds2 with it (different schools).

Thanks all. :)

I'm surprised by how many of you have dcs with daily video lessons - my dc's school has zero video lessons, and I was under the impression that teachers had been advised not to do it, eg inews.co.uk/news/education/coronavirus-uk-livestream-lessons-home-school-neu-teaching-union-2521107

I certainly don't want video lessons, because I know my dc will just refuse to log on. And with both me and dh working from home, I don't want the bandwidth taken up with this, given we may both have work video calls.

I'm curious how many of you saying you have daily video lessons have dcs at private schools? Or are not in the UK? As I don't think it's common at UK state schools?