No school for us til 9th April at the earliest. Royally fucked off now.

[WeAreFromThePlanetDuplo]

Announcement just made for NI that most kids won't be going back to school until after the Easter holidays, and there's no guarantee of that. So fed up.

A head of a primary school thinks schools are doing a brilliant job.

@Woolff if I were basing my experience on my two daughters (Y8 & 6), I would share that positive view.

Based on the experience of my two sons, however, (Y4 & R), I have an entirely different view.

This is the thing - all children are different and respond differently. So, despite being at home with two WFH parents, one of whose jobs is sufficiently flexible to be able to support them (but which I will have to give up if they don't return in March) and is also very well educated, two of my DC are massively struggling. The work is all there, but my 8YO has a meltdown every time I try to get him to do anything and my 5 YO wouldn't join in his last two zoom calls as they made him 'too sad'.

That's the experience of one family.

Lockdowns do lose effectiveness so they say - we've been in full since 20th December. I can't see it being as strict much longer.

It’s totally disintegrating where I am. Which is only to be expected.

Has everybody forgotten that cases dropped dramatically in the November lockdown when schools were open? We can protect children’s education and control the virus (that gives an average age of death over the national life expectancy).

To be fair despite our own success at home learning and support from the school (although we don't have live lessons) I don't feel like this primary school head speaks for all. It sounds like his school may well have remote learning under control but many schools still don't seem to have and remote learning is not even across the board.

Personally I would like to see infants back for a few weeks then juniors and secondary on a Rita for at least a check in this side of Easter

Easter forms a natural firebreak - rather than woof loads of them in at once post Easter

@gallbladderpain You can have excellent provision, as my DC's school does, but it makes no odds if children won't engage. I am largely following my own path, now,
as it was doing neither DC3 nor I any good to sit at loggerheads for 2 hours for him to produce a very indifferent piece of work. He also wasn't learning anything from it.

A rota even

@TheKeatingFive

Everyone seems to be bezzy mates with an ICU doctor/nurse recently

I noticed that too 🤔

Funny isn’t it, ‘my friend says’

@HauntedPencil

Personally I would like to see infants back for a few weeks then juniors and secondary on a Rita for at least a check in this side of Easter

Easter forms a natural firebreak - rather than woof loads of them in at once post Easter

In theory this is a good idea but it would be very hard for teachers to mange full time remote and in person teaching.

[quote SpencerGregson]@gallbladderpain You can have excellent provision, as my DC's school does, but it makes no odds if children won't engage. I am largely following my own path, now,
as it was doing neither DC3 nor I any good to sit at loggerheads for 2 hours for him to produce a very indifferent piece of work. He also wasn't learning anything from it.[/quote]
We do similar, we follow along the basics of what the children are learning in school so they have covered all the topics but not neccessarily in the way the school have laid it out. We might try to make some of the maths into more practical activities if it's possible as the children tend to engage more with that and the attention span for sitting for hours completing worksheets soon starts to fade away.
When schools are open my eldest child still gets online remote learning but for the Reception child it's an overview of the topics being taught that week, some resources, and suggestions of activities they will be doing in the classroom and we piece it together and add in some additional activities ourselves as it is hard to provide remote learning for that age group.

My best friend is Chris witty and he agrees with everything I say.

Anyway - logistically maybe more tricky for secondary which is why they've gone for whole years but we did it here in the summer term and it was really beneficial for mine.

@gallbladderpain you sound impressively organised! Funnily enough, I find workbooks work best for my 8YO, he likes home learning to be finite with a visible end point. Younger one is flying with reading but his writing is going backwards so I am not pushing it as I am aware that it is easier to pick up than to un-teach bad habits. He's also left handed (no one else in the family is) and I had no idea it can make such a difference.

I have no worries about them academically, my older boy caught up very quickly last time and I am sure will do so again. It's the social side that really, really bothers me. My 8YO has gone from an active, popular, sporty child to one on a very short fuse who bursts into tears at the drop of a hat. He also seems so angry, particularly with me. And has recently started to make involuntary noises around the houses.

It's heart breaking to watch.

Rotas would be better for phasing in to full return than prioritising certain year groups ?

I'll agree with you on that one @HauntedPencil

Better for all children to get some face to face teaching, than some children get all face to face and the rest with nothing.

I almost feels like it's an experiment in NI from the questions asked to the First Minister for their basis on this decision to return 2 coherts but only to have 1 cohert at a time, aparently this will show the impact each cohert has on transmission of the virus and allow them to then decide on the way forward for getting the rest back.

[quote SpencerGregson]@gallbladderpain you sound impressively organised! Funnily enough, I find workbooks work best for my 8YO, he likes home learning to be finite with a visible end point. Younger one is flying with reading but his writing is going backwards so I am not pushing it as I am aware that it is easier to pick up than to un-teach bad habits. He's also left handed (no one else in the family is) and I had no idea it can make such a difference.

I have no worries about them academically, my older boy caught up very quickly last time and I am sure will do so again. It's the social side that really, really bothers me. My 8YO has gone from an active, popular, sporty child to one on a very short fuse who bursts into tears at the drop of a hat. He also seems so angry, particularly with me. And has recently started to make involuntary noises around the houses.

It's heart breaking to watch.[/quote]
I am not overly organised, I wish I was though in many areas of my life
We use some workbooks as well as we find sometimes they just get right to the point of knowing whether they understand the topic or if they don't have a clue what is going on.
Writing ....I cannot give any advice on that, my youngest is also left handed and no one else is in our family either. It just seems incredibly awkward although they seem to manage it well themselves. At the beginning of this I took lots of videos of them writing and sent them to the teacher because like you say I wanted to ensure they were holding the pencil correctly more than anything else because I would imagine that is pretty hard to correct, school just confirmed that yes it all looked fine and didn't seem to suggest we should be doing anything else differently for them being left handed, but I have no idea.

@Fembot123

And some kids hate zoom and online socialising, my DS refuses to do it.

Yep mine, or at least my youngest. Hasn't spent one minute with anyone remotely close to his age since before Christmas, can't cope with Zoom/texting etc, so spends his time alone with just us oldies for company

@gallbladderpain

Rotas would be better for phasing in to full return than prioritising certain year groups ?

I'll agree with you on that one @HauntedPencil

Better for all children to get some face to face teaching, than some children get all face to face and the rest with nothing.

I almost feels like it's an experiment in NI from the questions asked to the First Minister for their basis on this decision to return 2 coherts but only to have 1 cohert at a time, aparently this will show the impact each cohert has on transmission of the virus and allow them to then decide on the way forward for getting the rest back.

Yes I'd like to see some form of rota - always thought it was a shame schools couldn't have found a way to get children in for an outdoor activity on a rota system - nightmare to arrange I imagine

I wasn't aware NI was doing anything with the cohorts and days - I didn't catch the update.

I've just had a look now and that does seem rather odd - so back for 2 weeks and out for a week.

I hate zoom socialising! It's not for me

@HauntedPencil

I wasn't aware NI was doing anything with the cohorts and days - I didn't catch the update.

I've just had a look now and that does seem rather odd - so back for 2 weeks and out for a week.

Yeh it did seem odd at first but they did offer an explanation on how this will allow them to see the impact on R that each cohert individually contributes and to minimise the impact from having 2 back at once. (Keeping R below 1) From having them back seperately from the youngest group and the oldest group hopefully it will give an indication of where the most impact on transmission is (probably highly likely, if any, that will be the older cohert) which they can then base decisions on reopening after Easter. If the younger cohert doesn't then surely they can all just go back full time no issues and maybe in order to balance it out for a few weeks while they are getting full reopening the older may have to be rota based or something like that if it is seen that they are contributing the most impact on the R number.

@gallbladderpain Apparently it can make them hold their elbow up so as not to smudge work as their hand is behind not in front of their writing. This is generally fine but they have picked up that DS2 has
weak shoulder muscles as he's having difficulty controlling his pencil when his elbow isn't resting on the paper. So have suggested some things to build them up.

Who knew?! Every day is a school day, as they say!

@gallbladderpain thank you for talking sense on this thread. I am so, so pro schools going back as soon as possible, especially for primary children where the transmission risk is low, and if I were in charge all teachers would have been vaccinated along with medical staff so we could make schools as safe as possible and get them reopened asap. BUT as a family who has been devastated by the impact that Covid cases have had on the NHS - not by Covid itself, but by the huge impact it has had on staffing levels and hospital capacity - I cannot see people saying that we have to just "get back to normal" because survival rates are high and it's only old people dying anyway etc etc without becoming irate. I'm desperate to see my friends, desperate for DD to get to preschool, desperate to see my family who I haven't seen since DH died - but I am also prepared to wait for those things in order to protect the NHS and stop another family going through what we are.

[quote SpencerGregson]@gallbladderpain Apparently it can make them hold their elbow up so as not to smudge work as their hand is behind not in front of their writing. This is generally fine but they have picked up that DS2 has
weak shoulder muscles as he's having difficulty controlling his pencil when his elbow isn't resting on the paper. So have suggested some things to build them up.

Who knew?! Every day is a school day, as they say![/quote]
It certainly is!
I will keep an eye out for this, thank you.
DC gets annoyed when using the whiteboard because the writing gets smudged so i must keep an eye to see if they are trying to hold their elbow up.
So far the only thing I had noticed was a tendency to write some letters and numbers back to front s,3,d,b etc which I have been contributing to the left handed writing.

[quote peachgreen]@gallbladderpain thank you for talking sense on this thread. I am so, so pro schools going back as soon as possible, especially for primary children where the transmission risk is low, and if I were in charge all teachers would have been vaccinated along with medical staff so we could make schools as safe as possible and get them reopened asap. BUT as a family who has been devastated by the impact that Covid cases have had on the NHS - not by Covid itself, but by the huge impact it has had on staffing levels and hospital capacity - I cannot see people saying that we have to just "get back to normal" because survival rates are high and it's only old people dying anyway etc etc without becoming irate. I'm desperate to see my friends, desperate for DD to get to preschool, desperate to see my family who I haven't seen since DH died - but I am also prepared to wait for those things in order to protect the NHS and stop another family going through what we are.[/quote]
It is awful to know that this is happening in reality. Absolutely heartbreaking for yourselves and families like you.
Due to DC we have unfortunately a lot of experience in the hospitals and i'm not sure if it's just a NI thing but even in non covid times they sit close to tipping point. We have had long waits in corridors with a child on a tank of oxygen because there has been no bed to put them in because despite them being really really unwell there are other patients who are even more unwell and then having to wait 12+ hours in that same spot to get a transfer to a hospital that does have a bed and then once on the ward being transferred to the other side of the country in the middle of the night because they need the bed for a more unstable child who can't be transferred so they have to transfer out a more stable child to free up a bed (and lets be honest any of the children in these beds is really unwell otherwise they wouldn't be in them.) So it is extremely worrying the added pressure that covid puts on an already struggling system and it is frustrating at times to see the lack of understanding into how that impacts us all.
I don't like lockdown either, I don't think too many people would be able to say they do, I can't wait for the day we can get back to 'normal' I would even accept 'relative normal' as i'm sure most people would but not at the risk of people's lives.

@Fembot123

That’s a pretty patronising post *@diggetydoolittle* 😂

That wasn't my intention