What should we expect from a primary school during school closure?

[Pitaramus]

Its clear to me that schools won’t be back for some time. I’m trying to work out what I should expect from my children’s school during this time without being unreasonable and expecting too much.

Me and DH are working and have 2 primary aged children and a toddler. We’ve been cobbling together work for the older two during the days to keep their routine over the last two weeks of term and the holidays and taking it in turns to do homeschooling / childcare / our actual day jobs. It’s tricky!

I was hoping that from the beginning of this coming term the school would provide some online teaching to actual teach the children rather than just send them off to get on with worksheets but we’ve now been told they’ll be setting a bunch of work a week at a time. I don’t think it will be marked, just set and then they will be left to get on with it.

This leaves me as the teacher which would be fine if I didn’t have a two year old and a job! In the circumstances I was hoping for a bit more from the schools.

Both my children’s teachers are child free and from what I can tell they are on a rota to be in a local school with key worker children (I think once a week). So this isn’t a question of them not having the time to do more. They are both really enthusiastic teachers and seem to enjoy their jobs.

Is it unrealistic because of the age of the children to expect them to be able to teach the children remotely, say by sending videos and then setting work and marking it and providing feedback? Obviously there is no perfect solution but I need to understand the reason why they are approaching it the way they are and not doing more so as to decide whether to contact them / the headteacher or whether to just leave it and carry on as I am. I don’t want to be unrealistic or unreasonable in my expectations.

I’d be grateful if any teachers could give me an insight into why they are approaching things in this way or whether they could be doing more.

I’m not sure @CalleighDoodle. I don’t really know what to expect vis-a-vis marking. Whatever they would normally do if the kids were at school I guess.

I would’ve thought we could upload our kids work and get some kind of feedback on it. We’ve had quite a lot of resistance from our children to doing the work in the first place and I’m sure they’d be more compliant / make more effort if they thought their teacher was going to look at it.

@girasol my thoughts exactly re zoom! Although I don’t think online lessons would work for the younger half of primary school it should be fine for most 8-11 year olds.

It seems to me that the private primary schools are insisting that they can deliver the same teaching remotely (so as to justify their fees) and the state primary schools, or at least some of them, are saying that very little can be done remotely m and that parents shouldn’t stress about it because it won’t matter in the long run. I’m struggling to work out which is correct of the two.

@pitaramus

With the younger children marking is often done with them - further up I would expect it to be done with some sort of discussion some of the time.

Due to a lot of academic research, marking and feedback are a collaborative process, in which children are part of the evaluation. We don’t tend to have rows and rows of ticks or essays to accompany work. They don’t have impact at primary level.

With my little ones I’m sending a lot of happy faces, thumbs up, exploding star emojis, etc at the moment, more to motivate them than anything!

The feedback I give them in normal circumstances is often part of my lesson. Marking informs what you do next. If there’s lots of mistakes it’d be addressed in the first part of the next lesson or during/at the end of that one - if they’ve all got it I’d tell them that too. If a group are struggling, I might work with them next lesson and address the misconception. I might stop a lesson and bring those children back together and re-teach.

I can’t teach a ‘lesson’ at the moment, so it’s more difficult.

Marking needs to have impact. Sometimes a ‘tick’ is enough, sometimes it’s a conversation, sometimes a new activity, sometimes a worked through answer- the child then attempts to correct and then it’s discussed again.

In English, you might mark over work, and ask the children to improve it based on given criteria - this would include the children identifying aspects like spelling, punctuation and grammar independently.

Very rarely would I mark extensively after the lesson and simply hand it back - sometimes I do, but it needs to be engaged with to be worth doing.

I think that these many threads asking for live teaching show how much teaching has changed in the last few years. It's so totally different (particularly in primary) to what most of today's parents will have experienced themselves.

Teachers do not stand at the front talking for whole lessons with children quietly scribbling away at their desks. So even if live teaching went ahead, it would be short, sharp bursts of teacher talk interspersed with lots of verbal feedback for individual children. How would that work over zoom? A teacher couldn't realistically look at each child's work and give feedback during the lesson. 29 other children would have to ignore a large proportion of the lesson.

I know the majority of children in my school don't have sole use of a tablet or laptop, many don't have any use at all. How would these (in many cases, already disadvantaged) children access the learning?

I’m not sure @CalleighDoodle. I don’t really know what to expect vis-a-vis marking. Whatever they would normally do if the kids were at school I guess.

Marking in many schools now is done 'live' during the lesson, accompanied by verbal feedback from the teacher and possibly demonstration with physical equipment (eg counters, base 10 in maths). Yes books are usually then marked after a lesson, but children would be required to respond to that and make corrections at the start of the next lesson before any new teaching could begin. The logistics of 30 sets of parents uploading work for that day and teachers marking it ready for the next day would be difficult to manage online.

If it's a case of just marking correct answers, perhaps ask that the school provide mark schemes or guidelines with any tasks they send out?

I really think this is mostly a case of schools not being able to do right by everyone. Children's home lives are so varied we just can't cater for every single one with such short notice.

Don't worry, our school is exactly the same. I can understand they don't want to teach online, it would just end up with parents watching in the background and sending comments and questions. I wouldn't expect the teachers to open themselves up to potentially dozens of crazed parents wanting clarification about the class work. I also can't see how work could be marked, realistically.

The most useful things you can do at primary is learn from the world around you. My brother was severely asthmatic as a child and home-schooled by my mum (who left school at 14 with no qualifications) for months at a time for several years, he developed a love of maths and jigsaws which turned into a love of puzzles and simple electronics which turned into a love of computing. He got an Oxford degree in maths and became a software designer for a bank earning a bomb.

So - don't stress too much. Just focus on the core stuff - reading skills, spelling, writing skills, maths, times tables. And fill in the gaps with loads of art, sports, games and TV.

This has been quite helpful, thanks. I’m beginning to see why zoom teaching possibly isn’t all that great. I still don’t buy into the safeguarding aspects but I can completely understand that the teachers wouldn’t want the pressure of all the parents watching! And also, logistically, it doesn’t seem to fit with the modern day teaching style which is more active learning and less of a lecture from an adult.

Re the reading material, my kids school has signed up for an online service called Epic (or possibly Get Epic) which has given free access to lots of kids e-books, could be worth raising with your school? Also our local library has an ebook service which I have had an email about but haven't tried it yet. My oldest DD reads a lot so the Epic thing has been very handy (although like me she prefers real books to reading onscreen).

It would be one thing if teachers were saying that it's not effective to try to teach children remotely @Beebie2 and @Saoirse7, but according to the posts that I was actually responding to, the objections from teachers have focused on fear of being turned into memes or porn bombing (whether or not these are teachers' main concerns is another point, that's not what we were being told).

I'm not suggesting schools should be producing an hour's Zoom lesson with 30 5 year olds 'participating' - that would - clearly - be ridiculous. However, I cannot see any reason why teachers could not produce short (eg 5-10 minute maximum) pre-recorded lessons on, eg, phonics or maths, or anything else for that matter for parents to watch at home. Twinkl are doing it (actually they're doing much longer lessons, but with teachers teaching from their kitchens, no need for anything fancy), Mr Thorne does it the BBC will now be doing it, it's not rocket science for a qualified professional! Instead parents are left flailing around trying to 'teach' concepts to children that they are entirely unfamiliar with themselves (I had never heard of a split vowel diagraph and still have only the vaguest idea what it is), often while simultaneously doing their actual job.

I appreciate that in a classroom there is a whole lot more to teaching than just standing at the front and holding forth, obviously there is no way of teachers simply reproducing an entire lesson 'remotely', but it's bitterly disappointing that (what I hope is only a small minority) of teachers are apparently rolling out frankly embarrassingly poor excuses as a reason not even to try. This is not to detract from the many dedicated teaching professionals who are doing a sterling effort at the moment, but sadly that doesn't apply to the whole profession by any stretch.

There are zero safeguarding or other data protection issues from pre-recorded lessons, none @SallyLovesCheese @serialtester. Children would not be participating and no children's data would be involved. This is what my colleague's partner is already doing, with older children (he is doing 10 minutes of history teaching then instructing the kids to pause to get on with the relevant exercise, then doing another 10 minutes' teaching).

I'm sympathetic to the fact that many families don't have a tablet per child, @waspfig but at the moment my kids school is setting the majority of work via learning apps so that doesn't really cut it as a reason either. And they're not even bothering to point us to YouTube vieos @TeenPlusTwenties, so I'm having to do all that research myself.

*parents to watch with kids at home.

Girasol, teachers reserve the right to not have themselves posted online. Nowhere in the terms and conditions of a teaching contract or indeed anywhere in life would anyone have to put themselves in the position should they feel uncomfortable.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't feel comfortable filming a 5/10 minute video of teaching. It wouldn't come naturally to me. My teaching consists of a lot of discussion with my my pupils. I don't stand and dictate what something is.

DD's teacher makes audio files to explain the concepts for the lessons so no video. Teachers might be more comfortable with that than video lessons. But of course that depends on children being able to access them, how many children don't even have access to the internet at home in the UK, let alone their own device?

girasol - i think, going forward you will find teachers doing that. They havent done this before. They've had ten working days to totally change how they teach - perhaps whilst still being on a rota. Where i work they have spent easter preparing short recordings. But there is also no point re-inventing the wheel if the bbc, twinkle and so on have recorded the same thing.
The safeguarding thing that stood out for me with zoom, when i sat in with my sons PE, was that i could see the bedrooms/kitchens etc of 30 children. Some of their parents i dont like or trust and wouldnt let them know where i lived. I was really uncomfortable with that amount of info being shared in 30 houses.

@girasol

If existing videos eg mr Thorne / bbc / white rose maths / twinkl are directed to specific children, with directions, what’s wrong with teachers using them? 🤷‍♀️ I couldn’t create anything anywhere near as good!

There’s some AMAZING stuff out there, created by illustrators / musicians / authors / museums - far more engaging for the children. Well my parents think so anyway! And I guess that’s what actually matters.

🌻🌻🌻

While we have had some tasks set through the website - maths/reading/writing/art - it’s in a list of tasks to get through and submit online. Don’t think there’s been feedback.

What I appreciated most was a lovely email to all parents from the headteacher that placed massive emphasis on the mental health and happiness of the children, said that it was impossible to balance competing demands of work and home learning and that the main priority was trying to spend time as a family in a happy way. If work gets done, then great. If it doesn’t, don’t worry, we will catch up when we are back.

That was so reassuring and took pressure off. Ds2 in year 5.

I expect the teachers are actually busy. Adjusting to setting work to be done at home is tricky, just as me adjusting to my job being done from home is tricky. Many are parents and will have their own children off. Many will be shielding/self-isolating/sick. Many will be in school looking after keyworker’s children.

I’ve emailed ds2’s primary school to say how much I appreciate the work that has been set and their support as well as ds1’s secondary school that has the set up that a good morning email is sent by form tutor at 8.30am. A response from child expected by 9am. At the beginning of each lesson the teacher emails the class with work to be done. Work done and emailed back by the following morning. It isn’t seamless and some teachers clearly not so au fait with setting online. But they’re trying, providing some structure and also checking in on how the kids are feeling/coping rather than piling the pressure on. Good for them. They must be desperately trying to sort out year 11 and 13 grades.

If there are existing videos out there that work for the kids, then great! I don’t necessarily need it to be my children’s teachers giving the lesson.

However, I wish our teachers would seek those resources out, use their professional experience to determine which of the resources are suitable for which kids and then tell us as parents what to sit the kids in front of. Maybe some teachers are doing that.

I think children respond better to things their teachers have told them to do than things that mum and dad have told them to do!! And I have also picked out some completely inappropriate stuff for my kids these last few weeks (both too easy and too difficult) and only realised once I’ve tried to get them engaged with it - it would be great to not have to spend half my evening lesson planning (badly) for the next day!

In my school, it's not down to individual teachers what is set. The Head has complete say over what we do, and each Key Stage follows the same format, set in a pack for each week (daily maths task, daily literacy task, daily topic task, plus reading, spelling practice, times table reinforcement and online maths portal).
So, even if I wanted to spend hours perfecting my online persona to teach via Zoom, it's not our school's policy, so it would be a waste of my time. It does, however, take much longer to plan the activities than normal, because they need to be accessible, manageable, challenging yet not too daunting, not solely reliant on computer access, and not involve printing. That is quite limiting, especially when you factor in that we haven't taught all the concepts behind what is on the medium/long-term plan for the term ahead, so we have to base it on what has gone before, but move it forward.

Expect nothing. Your kids will come to no harm having no education for 3/4 months. I'm sure there's things you can teach them

🌺🌸🌼🌼🌸🌺

What are the flowers about?

@beebie2 I agree there are some fantastic resources out there including the likes of Mr Thorne et al, and there is no necessarily a need for teachers now to create videos for their own classes. Unfortunately my children's school has shared NONE of these resources with us, I have come across them only because I have spent many, many, many hours researching learning resources over the last few weeks, and trying to teach myself how to teach primary school children, putting together curriculum relevant activities from a variety of sources (not just the same couple of apps used by the school which don't work most of the time anyway).

It sounds like @Pitaramus is in much the same boat, the parents are being left to do most of the home learning preparation badly and inefficiently themselves when the teachers could do a much better job much more efficiently because they already know what is relevant and what our children are supposed to be learning.