Parents - the best thing teachers have tried during lockdown.

[SmileEachDay]

Could you share the single most successful thing that your child’s teacher/teachers have done during the period of lockdown.

Feedback. As a teacher, I make sure I give in usual feedback to every piece of work submitted, even though that’s not the school marking policy, because my own kids love the feedback so much.

Slightly different because my own are primary and I am a secondary teacher but even so!

Form time on zoom twice a week. Let's the Children socialise and keep the 'team' together.

Also feedback on maths questions have been useful.

My sons teacher has been posting video messages for the kids - she is so lovely & they adore her. She often tells them how amazing they all are & how much she misses them & enjoys their messages and photos of what they are doing (school work and unrelated stuff). It’s very sweet & cheers up the kids knowing she’s there for them.

I would agree feedback is so important to keeping the DC motivated. It doesn't need to be much but a good work or I can see you've worked hard on this well done! means a lot.

I think sourcing interesting and varied stuff has been good. We're doing Egypt so making masks/ pyramids, jewellry. They do little montages of the class so can see friends work. It is time consuming for parents though.

Dd's (Year 8) school uses MyMaths which seems really good.

The feedback we've had (not much), has been really gratefully received. More of that would be great.

Primary here. I have been impressed with both my DC's teachers.

Foundation - not only uploads phonics, maths etc, but also has a daily challenge, story book and discussion, short PE activities & loads of links to learning games, games, extra activities to print. Has also made topic wallets and left them outside school to collect.

Year 4 - set up a (moderated) class blog so the children can upload and comment on each other's work, sent them home with extra fun learning activities in a wallet, focuses on the fun in their post with the daily work on, generally really encouraging and positive.

The main message we are getting from the school is not to worry too much if you can't or don't do the work set, the kids will learn from everything you do with them. Just keep them safe and happy.

The teachers have also been phoning every other week to check up on the family, which has been much appreciated. We get emails from the head regularly as well with updates and positive messages.

I can't fault the school, they've been fantastic.

Secondary independent.

They've taught a full timetable and marked work within 48 hours. They've given individual feedback every lesson. They gave dd a merit for her poem that she is beyond chuffed with.

They have been amazing all round.

There's basically no change in teaching except they are at home rather than school. Dd3 prefers it to normal school!

Instead of trying to keep to the usual full day's timetable every day they streamlined the work needing to be covered that week into one lesson for the whole week. This way it works out as three subjects a day. It's fairly substantial but with support dd manages well and it's such a relief to know the work on each subject is done for the week and not have to consider when there will be another lesson and plan accordingly. I could kiss their feet for doing it because we were drowning before they did.

That’s interesting Snow. Similar approach at my school so it’s good to know that’s helpful.

Lots of interesting points so far - is anyone in a position of not being able to access online work and if so, what are schools doing well to include you?

Form time on zoom twice a week. Let's the Children socialise and keep the 'team' together.

Love that suggestion! Mine is yr3. He'd love to catch up with teacher and while class once a week!

Please do this schools!!!

I think the primary school have been dreadful and the secondary much better so things the secondary are doing that the primary are not!

• proper feedback and “marking” at least some of the work, it means my eldest knows if she is on the right track or has totally missed the point of the lesson (important because each weeks builds often so don’t get week one, week two would be even harder
• very responsive teachers really she never waits more than half an hour for a response and the maths teachers in particular has really taken her time to show further worked examples to explain when she is stuck
• interactive form time once a week when they all go on teams at the same time, I am disappointed they are not doing this for some lessons when learning would be helped with a teacher moderated class discussion Eg in history or English literature but at least it is some attempt at interaction and I hope they might build on it.
• material to teach rather than just do. Eg wrote a newspaper report was given along with information on “key features to include in a newspaper report, an example of a newspaper report etc. It was really good to provide a starting point she could build on when writing her own.

The problem with the primary is they are offering no teacher feedback and generic tasks such as “write a poem” but no explanation on how to write a poem. I actually used some of the secondary material to help my younger child write a news report (one of the tasks) because he had no idea and no guidance is given and with no feedback on whether he has done it right and you feel his education is really making no progress at all.

Feedback!

And the lockdown newsletter by and for the kids that primary school is pulling together each week - my dd loves reading that and contributing to it. It’s a mixture of recipes, challenges, art projects, stories, pictures, local bike ride recommendations, anything really.

We're not allowed to do zoom stuff for safeguarding reasons. Not allowed to give our personal email addresses to parents.

Schools are so different- heads have had to make decisions based on what's best for the majority in the school community. It's hard for those who don't fit that majority.

I've got no way for children to hand work in to me. I'd love it if they could.

We've had training on MSTeams now, so maybe we can get some communication going. Thing is, it'll be the same 3 or 4 parents in touch 10 times a day, with nothing from the ones I need to hear from.

Reading a story for my year 1 daughter and her class by video. She loved it

And calling her. That lifted her so much. I just wish they had done it much sooner.