What are your primary schools remote learning plans?

[KiwiKit]

Just that really. For those of you that are in areas where schools have shut. I’m not too pleased about what our school has put in place. No online lessons at all, just new work uploaded daily and a quick group call on a Monday morning and Friday afternoon. Exactly the same as the first time schools shut in March. My DS is in year 5. What are your schools doing?

Apologies for assuming you were a teacher, the rest of my point still stands *

We're having Teams work which we'll work through with him to make sure he understands. It's a new system to March when we had worksheets that we submitted online for feedback (although we opted to prioritise getting him fluent with his Reasoning as he had the 11+ coming up then). I'm sure we'll figure it out, it's not forever 😊

First closure we had work set every day on “Glow” With the teacher available on Teams chat. This time they are doing video lessons. No idea how it will work.

@WentworthPrison

I'm not being defensive. I just think schools can't win. We haven't even been told if we are open or closed on Monday. How is that conducive for us planning high quality learning? It's not. I've never done video lessons or live online lessons. I wouldn't know where to start and I honestly despise seeing myself on screen. There's also the potential for parents to film me teaching which some irate parents are actually highly likely to do.

It's a bit like asking a contractor to do a job remotely. It's a completely different job and skill set. I'm not an actress or a computer expert. I'm an expert at face to face teaching as that is what I'm trained to do and have 15 years of experience in.

I sympathise that schools and teachers haven’t been given enough time to prepare. But there should have been an online plan from October so really there should already be an online contingency in place. And yes you may not be an expert at teaching online but switching to online and live sessions is exactly what contractors and other jobs have been doing since March. My team switched to audits live on teams with client audiences in March. It took a day or so to set up but after that it was pretty easy, it’s not exactly rocket science.

@WentworthPrison - i also hate seeing myself on camera. I am a barrister and used to speaking in person in a courtroom. Now all my hearings are by video link and I have to look at myself whilst trying my best not to look at myself and also trying my best to be persuasive! This is not what I signed up for either. But I had no idea that a pandemic was going to happen and as people are relying on me, I have to keep doing my job in a less than perfect environment. Same for you surely?

We have contact twice a day over zoom, but the lessons are prerecorded so they can be accessed at any time. There will also be the expectation that it will be done, and you will be chased if not, more than the last time. In real life we got many more complaints that it is too much than too little, despite what you read on here, and we've put more on than before due to the new framework, so I expect there will be more complaining once parents realise this.

@WentworthPrison

Good for you stormy. Perhaps you could offer me some training.

On a different note, I never signed up to be filmed/recorded doing my job. I 100% don't want to do this. I'd be happy to teach face to face: individuals, groups or my whole class. I just do not want to filmed doing my job and shouldn't be asked to.

A blanket “no” seems a touch unreasonable given the current circumstances.

I appreciate there are reasons why it can’t be done but your reasons don’t really sound that great (eg you despise seeing yourself on camera?). All sorts of jobs have had to be done virtually over the last year, with plenty of people who’d never done it before. And I don’t think I’m making a “race to the bottom” argument, as it’s not actually a huge ordeal.

And to answer the question, on line provision was dire during the first lockdown. We have been told that there will be 3 on line lessons a day via zoom and the rest via google classroom. 🤞

My secondary DC is getting live lessons every day and they'll be taking the register before each class to make sure pupils log on. It sounds like it's going to be pretty full on! At my DP's primary school he and the other teachers in his year group are going to take a lesson each – ie, one does maths, one does English, one does topic – and stream it live but then also record it for pupils who don't log on because they know that parents might not have enough devices for all their children to use so they can watch it later. But we're in London and we've had a bit more time to prep than the rest of the country!

@MsJuniper Wow, that sounds fantastic! Well done and thank you for working so hard to keep things as normal as possible for our children. I wish my DS was your student! You sound like a wonderful teacher.

It completely changes the audience though doesn't it whereas other jobs that have gone online the audience remains the same and therefore the job is essentially the same. My audience will now be my class and a group of VERY irate parents who've potentially been given 1 day notice of "closure" (as proven by many of these posts).

We've had an online plan in place since Sept 1st but until now it didn't include us delivering lessons. We've used online teaching resources such as the videos from White Rose Maths Hub etc. I don't think I can deliver better videos than the ones I've chosen but I'll have no choice but to get it all sorted in 24 hours.

First lockdown we had a few twinkl sheets and one Y1 & Y3 workbooks that dc had to work through.

Now we have 30 mins Zoom session at the start and end of the day. Dc is expected to get on with set work in between.

How it’s going to work in practice, I don’t know. I have one dc off school and another at prep, 5 miles up the road in the next county still going to school as normal. I’m a lone parent WFH, I’m dreading the upheaval as undoubtedly they’ll expect the daily zoom catch up whilst I’m on the school run or on a conference call!

I mean a subject each, not a lesson. So he'll teach maths every day, etc.

Last spring/summer

Y2: form time with teacher 30-45 min each morning, one daily maths and one daily English recorded lesson with given activities to submit via seesaw. In addition, one weekly presentation and longer assignment of each science, arts, PE, History/RS/Others and music (quite a lot of weekly assignments, but flexible in terms of when). All marked that week.

Y4: daily lessons 8.30-about 3pm according to almost normal schedule delivered via Teams. Each lesson seemed to contain a live lesson and an online activity. Arts and PE needed to be done with own materials / recorded and submitted.

I think our now Y5 will be similar as before and current Y3 more similar to what Y4 was last year, but we are still waiting for details. We will probably try to do more writing as we were told that the written work of all students were behind what it would have been in a normal year.

dn in reception last time wasnt given anythng to do dont know if it was just her year though

@MsJuniper My DD needs to be at your school!

I have a y3 and a y1 in an inner city state primary.

They both will have zoom lessons doing maths and literacy with either their own class teacher or the other teacher from the year.

My year 1 will also have phonics and group reading every day.

Year 3 have various breaks to go away and do work (i.e a maths worksheet or an introduction to a story) and then reconvene on zoom.

In the afternoons it’s prerecorded lessons, they usually have mindfulness and then a prerecorded topic/humanities/art where work is set. We have to email this in to the class teacher to be marked. (Year 3 send their own via Google docs).

They also have a zoom performing arts session and PE session every week.

We had an outbreak in the Autumn and I was really impressed by how the school organised it all and how the teachers managed everything. Even more so after reading some of these replies.

This time round the keyworker children will access the same lessons as their peers at school but be supervised by TA’s.

We’re tier four but kids are currently still due in. However the school introduced Microsoft Teams before Christmas when they had two classes isolating. We had two live lessons Tuesday to Thursday with related work to complete and upload.

The lessons were short and they were fun. My six year old loved seeing her friends on screen. Two per day was more than enough, it’s hard enough being glued to a screen and video calls all day myself, it’s way too much to expect from a child.

We have all had to learn new stuff to get by. For me, I have had to adapt to keep my job. Whilst schools were closed and lots of people were furloughed I think lots of businesses and workplaces adapted in a way that perhaps schools didn’t, and your change is coming now. I totally understand the worries about being filmed but you know you’re good at what you do?

I think our school is doing a video lesson in maths & english every day, plus work uploaded to learning platforms.

If your school isn't doing any video lessons and isn't using Oak Academy, I would contact them and ask why.

OP my DCs are at a private school so I appreciate that they have resources not available to all state schools. They had two live online lessons per day (maths and English) plus one pre recorded lesson (history, geography, art etc.) There was also a weekly live pastoral lesson which was a chance for the kids to catch up with each other, listen to stories from the teacher, take part in quizzes etc. Live lessons are not necessarily as good as they sound for younger children as they need a lot of parental support. To try to counteract this, my DCs teachers would record and upload the main part of the lesson (the teaching part) so the children could complete the work at a more convenient time if parents were working etc. However, older children can work more independently and my then year 5 coped fine on his own. Work was submitted after each lesson and usually returned to us within 24 hours. I have the upmost respect for my DCs teachers. I will never forget my DS2’s year 2 teacher putting on different voices and dressing up to tell stories to the kids. It was a privilege as a parent to see the effort that they made, day after day.

@WentworthPrison most people, me included, have t never signed up to be recorded or deliver stuff online, but we have figured out our and are now delivering stuff online because our job needs to continue.

Loving the chracteristic 'can do' attitude from Wentworth.

My kids primary will do a combination of live lessons, live 'community time' and set work, sometimes following a pre-recorded video, sometimes a work sheet sometimes both. Work is required to be uploaded and will be marked. Every day.

There is already precedent for teaching within the classroom and online simultaneously - as that is what happened when certain kids in the class (but not all) needed to isolate last term. There was also a couple of days when the teacher was also isolating and the classroom was looked after by a TA but the lesson was on screen.

Like many, many other professions have had to do during the pandemic, teachers are going to have to move with and adapt to the times even if they have never received specific training to do this. To be fair, some teachers are doing this willingly. The teachers in my kids school are perfectly able and willing to do this (and their previous school too).

I realise I'm coming across as inflexible but believe me schools have adapted so much already: ready for instant bubble closures, track and trace, additional hygiene and cleaning measures, different seating arrangements, no group learning, no shared resources, timetabling of outside spaces, lunchtime protocols, online assemblies, constantly changing risk assessments, how to update parents when they can't access the building etc etc.

Suddenly there's yet another spanner in the works and to be perfectly Frank, I'm done.

The college I work at has been so proactive in learning how to use the many, many teaching tools available online. It's not ideal but we can do a live lesson with breakout rooms, google forms for submitting work for feedback, a jamboard where the learners and students can post messages of write notes etc etc....

I would expect every educational institution to have spent the past 9 months doing the same to be honest.

Surely suppling worksheets can't be classed as teaching? That's just providing resources for parents to teach isn't it?

Already you can see a massive difference in provision for children. It's lockdown 1 all over again.

Most professions have had to adapt and move online in some capacity. Doesn't really matter if we don't like seeing ourselves, it's a pandemic and we have no choice but to press on.