Drowning in a sea full of tiers

[Cismyfatarse]

Next thread. DD's birthday so can someone link.

yep, i can appreciate that the whole curriculum would be hard but there could be modules covering some standard things that would at least give a bit of breathing space. I'm too far away from school years now, particularly primary but short modules on things like the 5 times table or using pronouns or the vikings or in secondary, the cells of plants or gasses or something.

I don't know really. I suppose I envisage something that could be on-line content or a workbook that could be printed out and issued to families with no tech depending on how the school sees fit.

@ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas you’ve totally misunderstood my post!

What I mean is that the online learning thing clearly isn’t working for anyone, teachers, parents or pupils. So why carry on?

Call this lockdown a holiday. No learning required. Furlough teachers so they can oook after their children.

I've said repeatedly I don’t envy teachers. You’ve got this wrong!!

For me pooling resources across a cluster wouldn’t work. I teach p1. My work for next week is personalised to the kids. You could share some topic work/ science etc but it wouldn’t work for me or my class in literacy and numeracy. No easy answers.

This is nuts. It was my musing on how to handle this 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't any of us are actually disagreeing, just trying to work out something that would help all. If there was stuff that was generically relevant to a group of DC of similar ages and abilities that would cover basics and common topics that filled part of the curriculum for classes, it would free up some time for teachers to work on their own specific content and for Q&A and marking etc. However that is still a huge ask if the same people are also supervising their own DC.

But it's still the same for other parents who are wfh with closed schools, they may not have to homeschool if they just decide to cancel lessons but they will still have to occupy their children and work at the same time

As i say there are no winners in this leastwise the children

There's no single solution, but some sort of coordination and lesson pooling would surely help for many. It feels like teachers have been pretty much left flapping in the wind. Even things like device availability - make cohorts of schools with similar demographics, or have a few lesson options (if it was done across a whole council) to suit different levels of tech engagement.

The SG have massively dropped the ball - I don't believe for a moment that their modelling didn't indicate at least a non trivial possibility of schools closing again given that the West went to tier 4 at the very start of winter and it was always going to get worse. Getting devices for everyone is a budget constraint but some sort of lesson planning really didn't need to have cost much at all

@mondaywine

For me pooling resources across a cluster wouldn’t work. I teach p1. My work for next week is personalised to the kids. You could share some topic work/ science etc but it wouldn’t work for me or my class in literacy and numeracy. No easy answers.

There would be trade offs for sure. But considering some kids are going to get 1 piece marked a week and it's the start of a new term it doesn't seem insurmountable.

Thanks @WouldBeGood, I did misunderstand you so I'm sorry for that.
I am hopeful that the BBC Bitesize offering on tv will keep one dc fairly occupied while I work, and I will do the stuff from school when I can fit it in. I think although what we can offer isn't as good as being at school, it's a lot better than offering nothing so I wouldn't be in favour of it being viewed as a holiday. I'm looking forward to telling ds later that I'm logging onto his school work from his Xbox!

Did some online teaching today which was OK and also spent the morning running the key worker hub. Loved seeing pupils in the flesh and am so glad I signed up to do this as, selfishly, I want to do some interacting in the real world each week - if only with a handful of pre-teens. I am hoping to pick up a few more shifts.

And, in other positive news, MiL (87) has an appointment for her vaccine on Wednesday morning. I was skipping a bit at that. It helps enormously when it is not unknown folk on the telly but someone you love and see all the time.

Two reasons to be cheerful.

The third one is that suspension of parking meters means I can park in the city centre so icy hilly walk from the car to school on my weekly trip.

Anyone else found anything positive today (hopefully not a COVID test!)

Nobody is having a pop at teachers.

It certainly makes sense that teachers should be provided with resources they can link to. In the first lockdown BBC was asked to provide 3 months of education resources for every Year group and the curriculum of the 4 nations.

Oak Academy was also set up.
ScotGov has created e-sciogl (Gaelic word for school, don't get upset about my spelling, E-school would be easy for a dyslexic bear).

These are things that teachers should be tapping into, it's pointless for every teacher to inventing their own wheel.

Got an email through. Seesaw is main thing. Daily assembly with HT at 9 Numeracy 9.15, Literacy at 10.30 and other stuff at 1 and 2 but tasks will stay up to be done at our own convenience.

School is pretty well entirely composite classes (fun for teachers, handy for child coming to P1 after doing reception last year!) and DD is in P1/2. Feel sorry for the teachers as the ability ranges are likely to be huge in composite classes. Certainly her homework has been different to the other pieces I've seen on the 'homework stars' page, so obviously some differentiation happening...

I'm interested to see what tasks they set for her as she's found most of the homework very easy so far this year.

Will also be interesting to see how her accent evolves - she's a real mix of Birmingham/Black Country (previous school), posh southern English (home) and a growing hint of what is presumably East Dunbartonshire (or whatever the teacher's accent is) in stories learned at school. If most of the phonics are the YouTube Jolly Phonics songs I'd assume she'll head back towards English due to lack of other influences, which will be a shame!

My gripe doesn't lie with individual teachers. You've been dealt a crappy hand in this too. I have no doubt you're trying your best. But Education Scotland and SG and LA education depts should've seen this coming and been prepared for it. National plans on place, built capacity, some centralised ready prepared content and ways for children to engage, guidelines and tools for schools and teachers to get things going quickly. There are some really simple things that could be done aren't happening, that other sectors have pulled off very quickly and with little resource. The expertise and creativity and innovation just isn't there. I'm sure there's pockets of best practise but it shouldn't be a lottery and ultimately it's children and families that suffer the consequences.

What my children were offered last time was terrible, they were really let down and I'm hoping this lockdown is different.

Sounds good @Cismyfatarse. My positive thing isn't a specific thing that happened, just that I had a few WhatsApp convos today with family and friends and I realised that I don't have a huge circle, i'm not big on sociability, but that everyone I count as family or friend brings something good to my life and I would not be without any of them regardless that we may not meet or talk often. Soppy shit, but hey! :o

Agreed re all the ideas for national planning. If we could see this coming (but of course didn't have time to prepare) then surely they could too?

I'm still furious that they cancelled the exams and just casually expected us to pick up the work. An entire other establishment exists to set, mark and moderate exams and then suddenly we were just supposed to do it as well as our day job. An absolute joke!

Sorry I'm so angry today!

There doesn't need to be any online learning till next week - school doesn't open till Monday! It's great some schools are already on the ball tbh.

That's good new CIS, the vaccine is our best way out of this, I only know one person (NHS) whose had it so far.

Someone comment on kids neglect. It's so true. I wonder what SS would have to say 'I'm phoning to report 'a friend' her kids spend all day in the kitchen watching telly, while my friend faffing on a laptop in the front room'.

Why can’t teachers just teach their lessons online?

Not goady: I just don’t understand

Or by teleconference as my work is?

I agree there must have been ways to centralise some of this and take some pressure off individual schools and teachers. But it would have taken a massive amount of planning starting months ago and it's too late now. The wheels of government turn so slowly.

Thank you teachers, I think you are amazing. Our primary school have been so good. They have tried so hard to keep a sense of school community going, I feel like if things were getting too much I could contact them and they would care and try to help. And taking the time to make parents feel that way in the middle of everything else can't be easy.

I could cry when I think about all this so I'm choosing to bury my head in the sand.

As in. It’s Monday at nine, I teach French to S1 class. Instead of them coming in, I’ll teach it over videolink

Lockdownbear, the threshold for social services intervention is far higher than that. Poor parenting yes, neglect, not quite.

My dp and mil were vaccinated yesterday 🎉 both nhs staff.

3 of my SIL have been done, and my nephew, and my friend's DH. It's nice to see it happening.

@wouldbegood I think in workplaces that are used to that kind of tech it's a lot easier E.g. I use breakout rooms on zoom to facilitate partner and group discussions but teachers on Teams dont have that functionality and can't supervise what's happening in each breakout. I use polls to take a snapshot of the room and check understanding, again I don't think teachers have access to that functionality.

Lots of classroom based tasks are much harder to translate to online. Teaching is no longer one person stood at the front of the room dictating a lesson to a class, ita far more than that.

@Invisimamma but it would be better than nothing for secondary children?

I work for courts and tribunals, and whilst teleconferencing is far from ideal needs must.