Keeping home earning parent friendly

[WomanIsTaken]

Not teaching today, but am having a go at the home learning tasks we have been emailed for my kids. Oh lordy. Even as a primary teacher, and fairly unrufflable, I am experiencing some anxiety!
Can we all make sure that we provide home learning that is easy to access (from a parental literacy / numeracy and ICT capability aspect) and get children to complete with a degree of independence?
For people with more than one primary aged child, this is going to be a challenge. I can see how parents are just going to give up. I teach one of my DCs year group so know it inside out, but the activities set are asking A LOT.
Any thoughts on how to strike a good balance with this, keeping parents of young children feeling empowered and on board, and not overwhelmed with having to participate with scanning / screen shotting / uploading / photographing every last piece of work for teachers to feed back on etc.

I'm anticipating a lot of parents re-thinking their opinions on how easy it is to be a teacher.

The central issue is that as a teacher you know the work will be trying to meet the national curriculum (even academies who don't have to follow it will tend to keep quite close to it).

What should teachers do? Miss out large chunks of the primary maths/English curriculum for over a term in case parents don't understand it/can't or won't do a quick Google? Have students going into the next academic year having not covered most of this year's content? Should next year's teacher have to cover 18months worth of work?

Activities could be kept simple (eg written tasks or online quizzes instead of compulsory big art projects) but the content for primary children is there. How far should staff go... Not put material on about semi colons because some adults can't use punctuation?

I set work using Education City as you can assign a learn screen, activity, worksheet and answer sheet. Sadly, the whole site has gone down 🙁

I am secondary, so it's a bit different, but things we are trying to do to keep work relatively student/parent friendly.

Each task to complete has clear, student friendly instructions, including where to go for support (e.g. bitesize links, youtube videos etc).

Provide ticklists so that students can be sure they have done all tasks.

Think about the IT students have available at home- as far as possible we're trying to make tasks accessible to students who only have access to a smartphone and pen/paper (we also have printed packs that can be collected for those with no internet at home).

Providing examples of what completed work would look like or more scaffolding than we usually would.

Being available via email throughout the school day to help.

The aim is for all students to be able to work independently.

However, it's a learning curve for everyone. Perhaps if you email your child's teacher and explain exactly what you found confusing, they might be able to help in the future.

Our school sent an email with the wonderful "we are sorting out a learning platform requiring minimal parental input" the other day. At the moment I'm using free studyladder for both my kids - I tried doing more "classroom" esque activities and it was just placing too much stress on me - DD1 is challenging for me... beautifully behaved at school but struggles at home.

I'm a secondary LSA with pupils in 2 key stages/3 year groups. As a parent I am just doing my best. Had a moment of amusement yesterday where my 8 year old told me the name of the line in a fraction. I am convinced I never learned this at school. Not that she needed to know it for her work either, but she was helping her 11 year old (secondary) aged sister... This kid is a walking sponge and hopefully I will be able to help her with her thirst for knowledge at this time, even if we suck as some of the other skills.

The line is called vinculum.

Lolasmiles. From your response you seem very confident that
a) All children have access to suitable IT equipment
b) All families can/will engage.
I've slogged my guts out this week uploading stuff to our learning platform for approximately a quarter of my class.
It's utterly pointless doing loads of new learning when it's all going to have to be done again when we reopen.
It's beyond unrealistic to think that all the children can or will access it.

Bsmirched
Given I've also posted about paper copies, schools knowing their students and schools putting things in place for their vulnerable students I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect GCSE students to attempt the work given to them (assuming that staff have thought about which materials they're setting and the way it's presented obviously).

The alternative is to set nothing meaningful for the GCSE beyond revising half a year's worth of content and then hope for the best when it comes to completing the course. Doing the latter is worse in my opinion as those who have access to private tutors will continue, those who wouldn't normally have tutors might scrimp to get them for core subjects and those who can't afford tutors get a rushed diet when schools go back. At least if some of the material is covered at home then there's a few steps further forward.

Nothing is ideal in these times, but giving all students access to material that will move them forward strikes me as the least unfair option.

Lolasmiles
I was coming from a primary perspective so I think we're bound to have a slightly different take on this!

I think there's definitely cross-wires here Bsmirched
I can see what you mean from a primary perspective as that requires a lot more parental involvement.

I think the thing with parent involvement is that some phases and subjects will demand more or less parental involvement and that should be reflected in the work set.

I still think staff can't win though. For example:
Primary teacher A sets their class a series of open ended learning activities rather than formal study and gets parents complaining it's not academic enough, their child will be behind, how am I meant to find time to build a junk model of a castle inside a shoe box, not everyone has craft materials at home/a garden/the ability to walk to somewhere with trees etc.
Primary teacher B sets worksheets and online learning (also available on paper form to be posted home). It's more traditional sit down classroom tasks and they use some of the language of maths/English. They get parental complaints saying I'm trying to WFH so how am I meant to supervise this / there's more work here than they do in a day at school / why should I have to brush up on Google to support their learning / other parents are taking photos of their children making dens but mine are being bogged down in pointless worksheets

Whatever anyone does in these unusual times, there will always be someone unhappy.

Lolasmiles, you are right. Actually maybe the times aren't so different after all!

As a parent of primary children - it all feels so bitty. Handout here, website there, a photocopy I'm getting a feel for the huge amount of work that teachers put in to preparation. Left wondering why it isn't simpler? Surely the national curriculum is the same across the country. I wonder if some streamlining will come out of this.

I wish I could make it simpler and parent friendly but my Head of Year is determined to give the children the work that we would teach as skilled teachers. Most of my children have EAL parents so it makes it even more complex but the silly woman won't listen to reason. I'm so annoyed by this.

I’m a qualified primary teacher (taught for 10years) and I’m not using any of the set work. They wouldn’t be sat doing worksheets or sat at a computer if they were at school. I’m home schooling and feel confident in what I’m doing with them educationally and emotionally. However so many parents on the class WhatsApp are getting incredibly stressed out by unrealistic amounts of worksheets (8 for one day in reception) or elaborate crafts. For some parents, they are trying to compress two or three days into one or the weekend because they have to concentrate on working the rest of the time. It’s obvious that it’s an impossible feat to leave your kids watching cbbc for 3 days then make them do 20-30 work sheets. My personal view is that all this expectation that schools would set work is damaging for children, parents and teachers (and children of teachers!). Unions should have stepped in and stopped it and parents should politely decline to take part in the farce. By calling it a farce I don’t mean to undermine the work teachers are putting in, but it’s clearly monumentally difficult to set work that can be accessed by all, is age and context appropriate and takes into account children’s stress and anxiety at this strange time, especially in lower primary.

I’m a qualified primary teacher (taught for 10years) and I’m not using any of the set work. They wouldn’t be sat doing worksheets or sat at a computer if they were at school

This. In fact the whole of oncemore's post.

Accept it must be different. With the best will in the world, the quality of teaching and learning will not be the same as it would by being in school. In no way am I denigrating the work put in by teachers, most of whom have had to adapt to an entirely different pedagogical model in a matter of days, but it will be different, and with the greatest respect, probably not as effective or engaging as face-to-face teaching and learning.

I'm in secondary, mostly senior groups but with all plan the same approach: no massive to-do lists, manageable tasks to completed in a compact timeframe, quick feedback to maximise engagement.

I don't know how the last will pan out as I teach English, and online marking is painfully slow. Or it is when your typing is as poor as mine is.