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?

I highly recommend checking out the oak national academy website. It has lessons for primary and secondary on every subject if your school fails to provide you with adequate work.

For primary children I also highly recommend Maddie Moate on YouTube, lots of great science based learning from first lockdown with practical activities they can make and do.

I really don't understand why live or even pre recorded lessons can't happen. (Live is better because questions can be asked in the chat and answered there and then).

I'm a 2nd year uni student and have had 100% online lectures since September, and while my lecturers and profs haven't had specific training to enable them to teach online, they've still managed. As such, the expectations on us (the students) has remained the same as in non covid, face to face years.
My year 5 child had zero teacher input whilst the schools were closed. Luckily he was quite able to just get on with oak academy, with me checking his work, but I know of many children and adults that just couldn't get on with it.

What really made a difference for me with remote learning was being able to directly email my lecturers. Without fail they would get back to me within a few hrs, often outside of office hrs.
This would never be an option for us with school closed unfortunately.

@WentworthPrison

I totally understand. It’s been a really tough few months. We’ll get there.

If it helps, I mostly shove a PowerPoint up on the screen or use a visualiser (although this is often hit and miss as I haven’t had training, either) so I am talking to the kids but not actually appearing on the screen.

Have something to hand if it all goes tits up - short stories you can read or a research topic (if the kids are old enough to be told to look stuff up and get back to you). Remember, you don’t need to be presenting the whole time - the kids need time to do written work, for example. Stick yourself on mute for a few minutes and look out of the window - you’re still there if you are needed, but can draw breath/have a sip of tea.

I wish our primary school had sent out their remote learning plans last term. I am wfh again from next Monday so won’t have time to download zoom etc for DS )year 5) on Monday morning. I’ll be in meetings til noon. If there is supposed to be an adult present during live meetings we won’t even bother to try, it would be impossible.

The school is free to call me each day to query why he is not logged on. Are they going to pay my mortgage so I can free up some hours to retrain as a teacher?

Neon - I reply to parent emails straight away. I replied to one at 6am this morning that I'd missed at 11pm last night.

Thank you Armi. X

@WentworthPrison

Thank you Armi. X

It’ll be ok in the end. Just keep swimming.

In March my DS (then yr5) had 3 or 4 set tasks per day we submitted his work via email.
Last term they had a week at home and they were on Microsoft teams from 9 - 3.30pm, guided reading, literacy and maths every morning topic, art, pe, science etc in the afternoons. Each lesson they spent about 30 minutes online with the teacher before being set work to complete in the remaining time. The teachers remained online to answer any questions. Work was uploaded and feedback given. Hats off to them - they really made it work and it was less stressful (for me as a parent) than in March.

@WentworthPrison I've never been "trained" to lead my team meetings remotely but I got on with it... surely we all learn & adapt to new things all the time?

We’ve been asked to log onto MS teams, upload a photo as a test. but we have no details on the plans in place. Which I find really annoying as I’d like to know.

Key stage 1 primary

Tigresswoods - yeah we adapted to hundreds of changes already in schools. This is another one with potentially 24 hours notice. I think it's ok to admit that I've had enough. Anyway I'm going to bow out now and get some sleep as no doubt I'll need my whits about me to completely re plan everything tomorrow to suit online learning. Night all.

First lockdown the school didn't do any teaching. Now, we have been told to homeschool our kids using oak academy. The school only did 20 min maths lessons during 14days isolation period.

@WentworthPrison that's amazing!
It just wouldn't happen at our school. We're told to email the office and someone will get back to us within a couple of days. I get it though. The workload must be ridiculous.

I get that it's bloody hard for teachers now and can't seem to do right for doing wrong.

Obviously my experience of remote learning has led me to questioning why my school haven't been able to do something similar but I'd never complain to the school or indeed to anyone (except mn...anonymity is a wonderful thing!).

Even just 1 lesson a day live or pre recorded would be welcome and the rest of the time Oak academy, but as I said previously, I have a child that can work relatively well alone.

I think it's complicated because, depending on the age of the children, the actual direct teaching (explaining) will vary in length. The real learning takes place in the interplay between teacher and learner. This isn't always terribly tricky to achieve online with older primary and secondary pupils, but is nigh on impossible to do in a way that has actual impact with younger ones.
There's no way there can be a set formula - what works for each class and school will be totally different.
I think schools need to be having frank conversations with parents and learners about expectations and then working together to find out what's achievable.
It's all fine and well for schools to be providing 40/50 minute 'live lessons' but their impact needs to be assessed. Is it actually the most effective way to teach under the circumstances?

Full on line timetable, live zoom lessons, 5 days a week, google classroom. Phone call from teacher each week. Year 2.

Teacher teaches the key worker children in the same room as the zoom lessons

I get that it's hard for teachers I really do, it's hard for us all but one quick 5 minute video explaining to the kids how to do the work when you send out the worksheets surely can't be that resource intensive. Or a quick ten mins live every morning saying right kids this is what I'd like you to do today.

MsJupiter your set up sounds amazing, I would be over the moon if my DC got half of that level of support.

Wentworth, chin up, I hate seeing myself on screen which unfortunately is a daily occurrence now, it really upsets me. I wouldn't put your face on the videos/lessons just have a copy of the work on screen, as a parent I aren't that bothered about seeing your face (although I'm sure the kids would appreciate it) what matters is someone explaining what is required from the kids.

I have a first class honours degree but its 30 years since I've done long multiplication, DH and I really were completely clueless in the last lockdown. I think teachers might assume because some of this stuff is basic we know the techniques/methods but we don't. I was no help whatsoever to the DC, I was Googling, you tube then not certain I was doing it the way the school teach.

We've a rocky road ahead but hopefully we can all find a balance where the parents don't feel abandoned and the teachers are safe and not being worked into the ground.

@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.

No one is expecting you to put on a show. You essentially press connect and talk normally whilst sat at your laptop. Basic computing skills at the most.

Last time, I taught live lessons in maths and English: 40 minutes (roughly) of each per day. Then work was put up which linked to the input. The children needed a pencil and paper to join in and I taught through powerpoints or sharing whiteboard slides. However, this was awkward so I have invested in a plug-in scribble pad thing for my laptop. But note, I have invested- not my school or the government. I’ve paid for it.

Primary schools have all been given access to free platforms for online learning. But these are not all up and running. I’ve done the setting up of ours, but it isn’t yet live and staff haven’t been trained on it. This will be the case in many other schools.

We already use one that we have paid for over several years. It allows us a lot of contact with pupils, online games, ways of handing in work etc. Not all schools will have a system like this. Theses were not immediately provided for schools.

Wentworth, what a defeatist approach. Most of the world is adapting to new methods for everything as we have to. Call it a ‘can do’ attitude. I know tonnes of teachers who have adapted, plus nhs staff and other vital services. Step up.

Our provision last time was Twinkl worksheets and a weekly phone call which was a checking in chat- all teaching was done by us in between working from home full time and it looks set to be the same again as the school. I'm firmly of the mind that online work sheet setting is not providing an education. If my children complete the worksheets and get everything wrong, then that's that- no teacher intervention and left to me to try and explain concepts that have moved on from my primary school years a long time ago.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the schools with everything being thrown at them with short notice and constantly changing guidance, but as a parent my primary concern has to be with the quality of education being provided to my children and I'm increasingly angry and frustrated as I honestly can't see schools going beck before end Feb.

I don't understand why the type / level of provision is being left to individual schools to decide and implement- it feels like a lottery now with some schools offering a huge level of online educational support and tech, enabling something akin to full educational support whilst others (like mine) are right at the other end of the scale with minimal educational support.

I have complained to my local councillor on it, and raised my concerns with the head as I'm not happy to accept the situation as is, but at the same time I'm not a dick and I appreciate that the school / teachers etc are trying by their best, I just think my kids deserve more than is currently on offer.

Yes ours put up some worksheets on google classroom kids tick a box to say they have done it, nothing is handed in, nothing marked and obviously no feedback. He is expected to self assess everything g with no support from the school from what I can gather.

Teachers in here tell me this is total reasonable and effective teaching for most children but it doesn’t work for him. We pay for an online tutor since having explanations of content and feedback on tasks is what he needs to progress. He will in all honestly do very little provided by the school since I am working and it too inaccessible for him to access independently.

He is year five.

We've been told there's an optional zoom explanation for each day's English and maths.

If it's the class teacher running it with her class I think it should be an improvement on the tortuous videos from last time. But I worry they will do one for each year of 4 classes (100 kids) and that will feel pretty pointless as kids won't ask questions and the teacher can't tell if they are understanding.

I'm hoping they might think out more of a project based approach or something a bit more engaging. Last time they were stuck redoing things they'd already done (I know that was the government guidance but it was really boring and hard to motivate them). Also last time there was a tonne of repetition. We did 3 weather forecasts across geography, science and English. Utterly pointless.

And each time we got 'well done' over seesaw. Again pointless.

Oh and we didn’t get any phone calls at all last time, no content directly from the school at all until they sent his report at the end of term, which as they had seen no work he had done in three months was a bit of a joke really

I feel your frustrations monkey, the support for our DC was absolutely piss poor in lockdown 1.