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?

@WentworthPrison in this day and age you can’t escape technically in teaching st any level - I suggest you look for solutions not put barriers up. Elsewhere in education people have had to adapt and learn to use technology differently- if you are passionate about teaching and your class you would be bending over backwards to plan prepare and deliver lessons online. Its also a bit late now to be planning for Monday. You should be ready now and looking if needed at how to adapt no whinging and being defensive on here.

What the pandemic has shown us is that there are a lot of work shy teachers happy to let others take the strain while they make excuses about technology the union or safeguarding- rather than just getting in and finding a solution and doing what you are paid to do

You can read the guidance from the DfE here. It's "remote" learning, not online learning.
Live online lessons are neither recommended nor mandated.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools#res

*Its also a bit late now to be planning for Monday. You should be ready now and looking if needed at how to adapt no whinging and being defensive on here.

What the pandemic has shown us is that there are a lot of work shy teachers happy to let others take the strain while they make excuses about technology the union or safeguarding- rather than just getting in and finding a solution and doing what you are paid to do*
Give her a break! She's on holiday and until a few days ago was expecting to be in her classroom teaching face to face.

I'm a primary teacher. We used class dojo during the first lockdown, and my school was open for key worker children so staff worked in school on a rota basis. I filmed myself teaching each morning and uploaded the videos.

The children and parents then watched the videos and did the work set. They then either took photos of the work or did their own videos which they uploaded into their own portfolios on dojo. I then 'marked' the work and gave a written comment/ feedback and awarded dojo points.

I filmed 5/6 lessons each day and spent about 4 hours each day going through all the portfolios to mark the work. If a parent didn't sign on for 3 days we had to ring them to check all was ok. Any child on an IEP got additional support videos and a weekly phone call.

I definitely worked the whole time! From 8am til about 5/6pm each day. As well as all the home learning, we were expected to complete tons of online training and had to email the certificates to our admin staff each week.

If we close again we will be doing exactly the same again.

@MrsHamlet Thank you for that. You’ve just shown me that just providing daily worksheets really is insufficient. I did not say ‘live’ lessons. That would be ideal but even prerecorded lessons would suffice. Here are a few of the requirements according to your link..

teach a planned and well-sequenced curriculum so that knowledge and skills are built incrementally, with a good level of clarity about what is intended to be taught and practised in each subject

use a curriculum sequence that allows access to high-quality online and offline resources and teaching videos and that is linked to the school’s curriculum expectations

provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, delivered by a teacher or through high-quality curriculum resources or videos

select the online tools that will be consistently used across the school in order to allow interaction, assessment and feedback and make sure staff are trained in their use

Looking at the above points, what our school is doing is really not good enough!

[quote KiwiKit]@MrsHamlet Thank you for that. You’ve just shown me that just providing daily worksheets really is insufficient. I did not say ‘live’ lessons. That would be ideal but even prerecorded lessons would suffice. Here are a few of the requirements according to your link..

teach a planned and well-sequenced curriculum so that knowledge and skills are built incrementally, with a good level of clarity about what is intended to be taught and practised in each subject

use a curriculum sequence that allows access to high-quality online and offline resources and teaching videos and that is linked to the school’s curriculum expectations

provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, delivered by a teacher or through high-quality curriculum resources or videos

select the online tools that will be consistently used across the school in order to allow interaction, assessment and feedback and make sure staff are trained in their use

Looking at the above points, what our school is doing is really not good enough![/quote]
So the school have already told you what they've put in place and all your child will get is work sheets and a group call on Monday and Friday?

@WentworthPrison Not planning for online classes was poor planning from your school. I would certainly take this up with SLT. I am a teacher and had never taught online prior to covid but had the summer months to wrap my head around synchronous online teaching. It s actually fine once you have given some thought to it.

@AccidentallyOnPurpose Yes. We are in one of the boroughs that was told on Wednesday. We received letters from the school today outlining the remote learning plan.

Worksheets uploaded onto teams. That's it. My daughter will attend the local hub but it's not school. They play and do arts and crafts and we'll have to try to catch up in the evening when I'm I'm finished working.
I'm a lone parent and I could cry thinking about it.

Ensuring that although I am at home, I do not become the teacher. The school will need to provide more than just resources. I can buy those myself. I will suggest timed live teaching sessions via zoom.

I think we need to bear in mind that what a small child does at school on a normal day is a lot of playing, moving around, having a drink, hanging the coat up etc - with 30 not very independent kids this all takes ages! Then there's a lot of Johnny, where are you supposed to be sitting, or oh that's a lovely picture Betty x 30!. Or it is learning through play. 5 year olds don't have the neural development to sit and listen quietly while a teacher talks at them for very long at all - so people wondering why the class teacher doesn't just go live at 9am and lead the learning till 3pm are being totally unrealistic - your child would not cope, and it would require parental supervision to stop them wandering off and schools don't want to presume every child has a parent at home who can give up 6 hours a day. That said, just worksheets isn't good either. If your school isn't offering at least some live contact every day, even just 10 minutes of how is everybody and do we know where to find what you need to do today, and how did you get on yesterday, then I would be raising this with the school, absolutely.

Compared to our wonderful secondary the primary is rather rubbish.

They have seesaw set up. Guiding by last time. Teacher will post some maths, english and science or art each day.

It is not particularly leveled to ability though and mostly busy work or twinkle sheets.

So we will ignore it all and do are own thing. I have work books, use websites and primary son reads constantly. So that works better for us.

School will ignore us ignoring them because head is a little scared of me

[quote KiwiKit]@AccidentallyOnPurpose Yes. We are in one of the boroughs that was told on Wednesday. We received letters from the school today outlining the remote learning plan.[/quote]
Thank you I really wanted to clarify.

I guess wait for Monday , see what comes in and in what format. If there truly is no lesson (even a YouTube video , white rose maths type lessons , powerpoints on the new subject etc) and particularly if it's new content then I would complain.

Unlike the last lockdown,the curriculum is still ongoing now instead of suspended and there has been guidance on what schools should provide for home learning.

Even keyworker groups now can't just do arts and crafts and play all day, they are supposed to learn .

There are many options and ways to provide learning that aren't live lessons , hopefully your school is actually planning to use one of those, because "just a worksheet " is not good enough anymore.

@Biscuitsneeded

I think we need to bear in mind that what a small child does at school on a normal day is a lot of playing, moving around, having a drink, hanging the coat up etc - with 30 not very independent kids this all takes ages! Then there's a lot of Johnny, where are you supposed to be sitting, or oh that's a lovely picture Betty x 30!. Or it is learning through play. 5 year olds don't have the neural development to sit and listen quietly while a teacher talks at them for very long at all - so people wondering why the class teacher doesn't just go live at 9am and lead the learning till 3pm are being totally unrealistic - your child would not cope, and it would require parental supervision to stop them wandering off and schools don't want to presume every child has a parent at home who can give up 6 hours a day. That said, just worksheets isn't good either. If your school isn't offering at least some live contact every day, even just 10 minutes of how is everybody and do we know where to find what you need to do today, and how did you get on yesterday, then I would be raising this with the school, absolutely.

OP's son is in year 5 ,not 5!

We get some English and maths that are the exercises they’d have done in school. The English doesn’t work for us at all so I’m going to go through it and see if we can agree a week long project that teaches the same skills. I find maths worksheets ok but nothing seems to sink in. We’re treading water at best.

I find this sad - the variability of provision and the willingness of teachers is so different. Our (independent) school was brilliant, we had 45 minutes of whole class English, and then 45 minutes of maths in small groups, half an hour of guided reading and an hour of topic/science/RE etc every afternoon - the kids also had assemblies etc. The kids had to take photos/scan their work at the end of each day and it was marked overnight and feedback was given every morning. They used google classrooms and it only took a day or so to figure out - they could use the chat bar to ask questions (or put their hands up) and they could use google hangouts to socialise.

My older three go to a state secondary which was average first time around but which are doing a full live timetable this time using zoom - I’m so grateful to the teachers for their efforts. My eldest has already done his mocks before Christmas so I’m grateful for that - again the variability will affect this years Year 11s so much 😢

@BooksAreNotEssentialInWales

We get some English and maths that are the exercises they’d have done in school. The English doesn’t work for us at all so I’m going to go through it and see if we can agree a week long project that teaches the same skills. I find maths worksheets ok but nothing seems to sink in. We’re treading water at best.

If you're willing to share what the English is, either here or by PM I might be able to help.

Thanks. My mum’s a retired teacher so I’m hoping she can give me a hand. It broke my heart fighting with dd over school work may-July (wales so only got 9 hrs in total in school) and so we have to try something else. She was miserable and resisted. It was grim.

23 March-July. Sorry no edit button but you know what I mean.

@KiwiKit glad to be of help. I'm all ks4-5 but I'm sure the guidance says 3 hours per day for primary
@SnowballedMum you can suggest live zoom lessons but the school is not obliged or mandated to provide them

How the fuckety fuck do you expect primary teachers to have detailed plans in place for something that up till about 5 mins ago they didn't know was happening? (I am not a primary teacher).
Honestly some of you are piss poor excuses for human beings. I hope you feel proud when you look in the mirror.

Video lessons, no more than 10 mins instruction. Maths, writing, foundation subject daily, story read Jackanory style with some discussion questions. Uploaded to school website and to youtube for those who don't have computers but do have smart TVs. All work completed by only pencil and paper or in delivered paper pack. Some differation where appropriate. In lockdown 1 we gave them a whiteboard and pen, a lined exercise book and at end of April, a maths workbook. We did the vid lessons from after Easter holidays, I looked the other day and my first one was recorded on 3rd April. They could take pics of work and email in for feedback- we did marking vids, so they self marked.

We'll carry on the same as our parents liked it. We now have Teams, so daily chat/tutor type sessions of 15 mins, probably in ability groups of up to 6 kids.

DS's Yr 4 class were in isolation before Xmas. The approach taken was:

• Regular Google Meets lasting about 20 mins each during the day for Maths, English, Reading and Foundation subject. The class had a chance to chat to each other then the teacher would explain that session's work with the children raising their hands virtually to answer questions. If anyone was confused, they could stay on the call while the teacher explained again.

• Work following on from the lesson was uploaded to Google Classroom for the children to go off and do and upload. While the children were doing this, the teacher checked the message feed on Google Classroom to see if anyone needed help, and gave brief feedback on uploaded work.

• The school were very clear that while the full-on timetable would work for some, it would be too much for others due to technology access, parents working, child's willingness to engage etc. So there was no requirement to attend all or indeed any of the Meets. They also didn't need to complete the set work before the next Meet or complete all of it. The school did contact anyone who hadn't attended any Meets or submitted any work for 2 days, to check everything was OK and whether the school could help further. Families without technology were given printed workpacks.

It was very impressive and a huge improvement on the 1st lockdown. DS works quickly and as an only child, the lack of contact with any other children is tough for him. So a full timetable with lots of interaction worked really well and I let the school know how impressed I was.

His school isn't reopening next week. It will be interesting to see whether the need to have keyworker children in affects what the school can deliver. I'm hoping it will at least be fairly similar to what he had before Xmas.

My DD is Y5. Her school was a mess in lockdown 1, but Headteacher published a new plan in September - heavy reliance on MS Teams - and we've had several opportunities to see it in use when the bubbles closed.

They get:

1. today's work posted on MS Teams by about 7.30am

2. 9am online MS Teams with teacher, maths lesson. She explains the topic for around 20mins, then the kids go offline to do the assigned work and submit it by 10am in MS Teams. Teacher stays online for anyone who needs extra help.

3. 10.30am English in MS teams. Same format as above.

Teachers is available online until 12pm, so is the TA and she joins the online classes too. ( I expect she spends the afternoon trying to mark the online work, and planning for next day, but she has responded very promptly to kids questions, dozens of them, mostly very inane and repetitive.

4. After lunch they do whatever other work has been set online in MS Teams by teacher eg watch pre recorded School assembly, do guided reading, science, geography, etc. Usually it's something to read or watch and then something to do, and submit back online by 3pm. School has relied on a few particular websites to support home learning for maths, tables, English and spelling, these seem to work well.

5. feedback is individual comments to online submitted work.

6. at 3.10pm teacher does a 20 min wrap-up MS Teams call, very casual just chatting about the day.

7. on Friday a longer weekly wrap up for an hour including Headteacher awards for the week.

I'm happy, impressed and surprised by the huge turn around, as the school isnt very tech savvy. The teachers seem calm and in control and not freaked out by the technology.

If as a parent you couldn't spare ANY time to help your child during the working day, you just need enough to limp your child through the curriculum essentials, with daily contact online with classmates and teacher. It doesn't need to be perfect.

I hope your School can deliver what you need OP.

Also, a child working at home doesn't need 5 hours of learning time. Lots of school time is faff. Especially at the moment with handwashing hell. Even in school atm I only get 3 and half - 4 hours lesson time in. At home you could do that in 2 easily. It's intense for kids to do 1-1 or work alone.