School only providing 1 hour of live interaction a day!

[NotLookingTooGood]

What is everyone's school experience? I am going a little crazy. We have live online learning of 2 increments of 30mns (maths & english) a day + homework that we have to supervise.

What is everybody else's experience?
The school is relying entirely on us to do the work.

Ours is really good. 3 30 min sessions a day, very structured and clear activities and daily individual feedback. My son is reception though so any more screen time would be too much for him, he can barely concentrate for that long and needs to be active.

noblegiraffe, I love you. Always spot on.
I realised I actually have some amnesia over the last few days; the pressure has been immense and the days so looong. It's been so full on, there are chunks I can't remember I can see perfectly co-herent emails I have sent and an upload to Google Classrooms I have made, but have absolutely no recollection of it! Early staff zooms at 7am, corresponding with parents until late about technology, coaching a mum feeling low, liaising with outside agencies re re-sceduling prior appointments, clarifying issues with zoom links and learning packs, advocating for families with IT Support, trying to get hardware allocated, and none if that is even related to creating learning experiences, face to face, online or on paper.

Nothing live. Which I'm glad about as it's less restrictive and more inclusive for those who may have fewer devices than people needing to use them.

My dd is in year 6 and has Zoom check ins each morning and afternoon. It's great, they're given their work over Seesaw and the Zoom sessions are to check in with the teachers and receive feedback and encouragement and for the staff to gauge how the kids are finding the work. I eavesdropped on my dds today and it had a lovely friendly feel and the whole system seems to be working really well.
Surely you don't expect all day live schooling OP?

@noblegiraffe Why not? It's a virtual class and his classmates are there too, doing the same work. If he was in school he'd be sitting in front of the real teacher, as it is she is on a screen. She's doing a far better job than me

My son's school also checked that we all had devices for each child we had and if not they lent to us which means every one has at least got a laptop for the live lessons. Some in my son's class have 2 other children at the school so need 3 devices just for the children.

BBC is providing daily lessons.
We provide 3 hours core online daily teaching per school.
Mixture of recorded and live lessons.
In Reception class all morning is core learning. Which with a break is 2.5hrs.
Afternoon is everything else with play.
Rota to enable teachers to be class teaching and recording lessons.

30 minutes teams meeting twice a week.
The rest is powerpoints followed by worksheets.
We didn't even get feedback today.
Not impressed so far but its early days so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt for now.
Not sure how I can keep up motivation until easter if this is all we get.

My secondary age dc are both getting a full timetable of lessons via teams. Ds1 15 is coping. Ds2 who only turned 11 in July was in tears today because of the pressure of completing all the work before the next Teams session starts. He only had half an hour for lunch and was still working at 4.30 to catch up on what he couldn't get finished in the lesson.

If your dc are primary age be careful what you wish for.

Yesterday about 40 mins all day. Daily form 15 mins
Music 25 mins
Live but with cameras off

History is excellent. He does nearly an hour live and sets topics. He gets them questioning things and even I find it interesting and thought provoking 👍that was yesterday.
French isn't great. She wiffles in French then asks the students to listen to recordings in French then answer questions. I love this..... But my DD has NO Idea what they're saying. Teacher is no help.

I listen whilst I wfh. Music was very difficult to work by though!

Daily morning and afternoon register. That’s it.

@Delatron

Live lessons are not a nightmare. For my DS in yr7 they have been a god send. And for working parents. I can’t sit and help/supervise.

I need someone else to direct them and teach them.

Last time it was a nightmare.

For a fairly independent 11 year old that's fine.

My 6 year old lasted about 30 minutes in his live lesson and that was with me sitting next to him fully involved in keeping him engaged in it. Every time I got up to do something else he found a reason to leave the screen.

@BubblyBarbara

What a nightmare.

It means parents can actually work from home rather than the half arsed job many people are doing here.

Keeping my child in front of a laptop all day would be a full time job.

As a teacher I would encourage people to contact Ofsted if they aren’t happy with the learning provided. It would be great to see Ofsted doing something useful for a change.

Hopefully they will go onto these schools to ‘investigate’, see how overstretched the staff are and be roped into something before they even realise. I personally can’t wait to see Amanda Spielman helping out the midday supervisors in the reception lunchroom of a busy inner city primary. They’ll be using cutlery like a pro in no time.

@herethereandeverywhere

But all the teachers are working 12-15 hour days aren't they? So what are they actually doing?

Well for the last 3 days I have had a mixed bubble almost the same size as my normal class but made up of 4 year groups trying to deliver 4 different sets of planning at the same time whilst also providing as much remote learning for my children at home. Many of the children in my bubble I do not know and each year group has several different ability levels in it. I have several children with additional needs in my bubble and 1 TA to support due to staffing issues. I have spent my 20 minute lunch break making phone calls to parents to ensure we have made contact and I have then spent my evenings commenting on all uploaded work, responding to parental emails and having remote meetings about how we can go about delivering more video/live interaction for the children staying at home. Despite all this we have had complaints that:

• we have set too much work
• we have not set enough work
• we don't teach live
• they hope we don't expect children to do work at certain times because they are fitting it in around their jobs
• devices aren't working
• they want to decide themselves what their children do at home
• they haven't had a phonecall yet
• they had a phonecall and think we are checking up on them

Etc etc etc

Its been 3 days, give the schools and the teachers a chance

Yr 6 - full timetable and prep from 8.15-5.30. Live form time every morning and live lessons throughout the day, fully supervised. Even live sport lessons every day. I really don’t have to do anything for DD except provide lunch. Her school was fantastic last lockdown with plenty of live lessons and an organised school day but they’ve really gone above and beyond this time. Hopefully it’s the last time though. Nothing beats being with your friends.

1 hour a day is brilliant! I'd be happy if ds school offered 1 session a week but they aren't doing any and I'm gutted about it.

I'm absolutely terrible with homeschooling, I really struggle to engage ds at all and embarrassingly I'm horrendous at maths so when he asks if it's right I do an ermmm (then google!) he's yr 4.

We get a daily grid with worksheets etc, I've had to go out and buy a printer today because it's an impossible task getting him to sit and write out the questions and answer

I kind of see the dilemma to an extent as some parents would find live learning a massive bind as they are working and so it’s good to be flexible on when the child studies - but on the other hand, what are the teachers doing all day?! They normally give 5 hours of lessons a day and manage to plan those lessons and mark the work, what has changed now that they couldn’t possibly do a couple of hours live learning a day for those who were able to do it, maybe recorded for those who weren’t?

Dh has a traveller family. They have no Internet. Every morning they climb the local hill, download the work onto a phone, go hope, copy out worksheets by hand and do the work. At the end of thd day they climb back up the hill and send photos if the completed work back to school. They are incredible.
Y7 has morning registration them work set for each lesson, following standard timetable. Teachers are online and accessible during class times.

Y4 work involves videos, worksheets and written tasks. 1/3 of the class are in school so the teacher is delivering teaching to them whilst fielding queries etc from kids and parents at home.
I think they're doing a great job!

What are those with dcs in private school getting please?

[quote Haggertyjane]@noblegiraffe Why not? It's a virtual class and his classmates are there too, doing the same work. If he was in school he'd be sitting in front of the real teacher, as it is she is on a screen. She's doing a far better job than me [/quote]
People generally frown upon hours of screen time for little ones.

They tend to move around a lot and be hands on and active in classrooms too, not staring at the teacher.

They normally give 5 hours of lessons a day and manage to plan those lessons and mark the work, what has changed now that they couldn’t possibly do a couple of hours live learning a day for those who were able to do it, maybe recorded for those who weren’t?

Training in PPE for coronovirus testing.
E mailing hundreds of students / phoning hundreds of parents
Meetings to train for new way of doing things at short notice
Teaching key workers / vulnerable kids
Marking / feedback
Covering for anyone off sick
supervising breaks

It's unrelenting.

Our school haven’t actually told us what they plan to do yet, they just sent us a few maths & Twinkl worksheets for the remainder of this week, presumably whilst they get it all sorted out.

In the first lockdown the staff did a marvellous job but we’ve had a change of leadership & the communication this time has unfortunately been seriously lacking. All other schools in my local area are already up & running with their online learning & have had lots of support & communication from their schools so not sure what’s going on with ours. Sounds like most of you on here are also up & running to some degree.

They normally give 5 hours of lessons a day and manage to plan those lessons and mark the work, what has changed now that they couldn’t possibly do a couple of hours live learning a day for those who were able to do it, maybe recorded for those who weren’t?

Well I’d love to provide you with a detailed list of my daily tasks but this is the first evening I’ve finished work before midnight all week, so I think I’ll pass.