The Eight Republic - half term over - primaries under pressure- solidarity

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff. Baiters and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

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If you are fed up with cakes and biscuits there is now a cheeseboard on offer

Neuro ds was similar at that age is he better with typing? I took him out of school around that point and set him up on a homeschoolers safe minecraft server. He would labour away typing because he was collaborating with others and needing to express himself. Wasn’t physical typing but it was the mental work of how to construct what he needed to say and some attempt at spelling. It acted as a bridge back into writing.

We’ve done English and a maths test this morning after a bit of a crappy week on the homeschool front.

I stayed away from briefings etc yesterday but guess I should look now

Sorry meant to say it wasn’t physically writing. He was doing the typing.

The honey, I tried that the first few weeks but he wasn't really that keen. Might revisit it though. I think they need to get through that barrier though too.

To be fair, at the moment, if he can tell me about it, I'm counting that as understanding the literacy tasks. He's quite capable of writing, we've seen it in his books. I think the context of the classroom helps, impressing the teacher, sitting alongside others who are writing lots (though from what he says, they all get told off for talking!) I don't think I have to worry. I do think we should crack on with reading tbh. He's teetering on being independent, reading for pleasure, but won't read stories. Has to be the very hard dinosaur books at the mo! (Which he cant read!) won't let me read stories to him either for some reason!

That’s also familiar. Have you got a Guinness book of records? That and an encyclopaedia of guns got a lot of use and car magazines strangely.

Probably too soon for you but I found the how to train a dinosaur series very good as the bridge to independent reading. Lots of pictures and creative use of fonts and bold and stuff to break up the page instead of overwhelming with text.

Look like there's been more outbreaks in schools than in hospitals

Thanks Honey, some great ideas. He loves puzzle books actually and also an adult book on evolution. And an easy read Lego Star Wars book. Might find a few of those.

I like the how to train a dragon idea. I was reading the great glass elevator and that seemed to kill it for him (mind you I think it's not a great story.) Prior to that he was happy for me to read any story tbh! Just before lockdown i'd resolved to go to the library much more often...

I think he's completely into natural history and history so much so that that is all he's now interested in. I'm sure it's a bridging phase or something!

He does love reading stories to his younger brother though (as a delaying bedtime thing) so we might make more of that actually.

I saw that great. Was looking at the flu reports. V informative.

It came after the head of the British Medical Association, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said the compulsory wearing of face coverings should be introduced in 'all areas' where social distancing is not possible, and should start immediately

So, like schools then...?!

The R rate is creeping up, cases don’t seem to be slowing down and everyone else is being told to wear masks. Where does this leave school staff??

Gosh, that is interesting great !

How old is he Neuro? Ds used to read those levelled star wars books. Some non fiction type ones. I got lots of marvel graphic novels free on kindle too. He goes through phases of reading nothing, then bookworms again. Beast quest and seaquest turned him into a proper reader.

Also this data www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ would suggest that the r value is between 0.9 and 1 or 0.7 and 1.3 depending on whether your taking the median or including the confidence intervals. Either way higher than we are being told. Which is why I assume there's no scientists there as the government can in future pretend they misread the data.

But he still goes back to his dinosaur encylopaedias the dinosaur stage seems to have been his defining moment.

I cannot get my 7 year old Ds to write. He'll read and do maths but no writing

Neuro, have you read Chris Packhams autobiography, Sparkle Jar? It's a wonderful example of how nature saved him.
My D's is similar - he now only ever reads fishing or shooting magazines. He did used to enjoy Bear Grylls adventure stories. Personally, nonfiction is just as important - I'd just feed his nature interest and maybe get him Junior National Geographic or something?

I can't see my school allowing masks. Crazy when the staff in McDonalds have them but teachers don't.

www.waterstones.com/book/diary-of-a-young-naturalist/dara-mcanulty/9781908213792

There's also this recent autobiography of a teenage autistic boy from Northern Ireland and his love of nature.

Yeah, we've been explicitly told no masks allowed but I wonder if that might change?

Maybe not to teach in but for communal areas, corridors, staff rooms?

I'm interested in the idea of that Head Teacher hinting that children known to be mixing outside school may have their current place at school withdrawn.

Greathat, that link was very interesting, as was this phrase:

There is evidence, from the forecast of deaths for the whole of England, that the increases in the regional reproductive numbers may result in the decline in the national death rate being arrested by mid-June

So basically we can expect a continual daily death rate of 100-250 deaths a day

@CallmeAngelina - my DC's primary head told a family they wouldn't be allowed into school for 14 days after learning that people had been coming and going to their house as well as their lack of social distancing. This is a family who have a school place under the vulnerable category so wasn't a decision taken lightly I am sure.

While I understand the desire for wearing masks/face coverings, I can't see how we would manage it in schools. We would need several fresh ones a day, easily 3-4 or if you consider them getting damp and needing to be changed, double or triple that number.

One of the reasons why they weren't recommended for the public in general was because of the need to practice efficient wearing and removal routines - washing hands before putting on and removing, and again after removing them. Disposing of them carefully, putting a fresh one on when damp and not reusing one that has been taken off.

But I don't know what the answer is. Would I feel safer wearing one? Around some people, yes, without a doubt. Would it make my job harder. Certainly. It becomes a balance of risk to the individual.

Sanitising hands and wearing a face mask did not prevent my parents from catching Covid-19. They believe they caught it from a care home when visiting my dying grandmother. She was old (100), had alzheimer's and cancer, She had a DNR and was not tested or confirmed as covid positive as it would make no difference to her. But just half an hour in her presence while socially distancing is allegedly where my parents picked up the illness.

Personally, knowing my parents, I suspect an element of not following guidance somewhere along the line. But the time between visiting and falling ill fell within the average incubation period.

This was posted on a schools sm page. I think its predictable really.

We had some difficulties at the beginning of the week regarding Year 6 children leaving too closely together, with some of them then meeting up on the way home, but this has been remedied we think.

It is absolutely predictable. The same as asking secondary school pupils to avoid walking in groups together. All they are doing from what I have seen is walking to school and as soon as they get near enough that someone would see them and potentially challenge them, they spread out a bit.

I live in a village and the green across from my house has become the meeting place for teenagers who all meet up there, behind the church and off the more public routes around the village, before going to the park together and hiding down the bottom end, round the side of the school where they are out of view from anyone else using the park. It has been a problem before lockdown as people were breaking the fence to the school down and having small fires in the school forest area. They've patched the fence up but all that means is the teens stay out of the school property. They still have their fire pit and whatnot down there.

Chris Packham's monologue intros for Springwatch this week have been beautiful. He's really read the 'room' well. So nice.

@greathat

I cannot get my 7 year old Ds to write. He'll read and do maths but no writing

Write him little love letters or you stink type notes and he’ll probably reply Ds and I used to write them on paper airplanes and fly them back and forth to each other.

At the end of my first week back, I am less confident in our HT than I was. The 12 desks per bubble was increased to 15 when we had more returners than planned for. The no ball games rule went out of the window on day 2 and I was actually told that we were reminding the about distancing too often, when I had just told one child to stop touching another. Books are now being swapped daily from a general pool but for some reason we still can’t use the books in our classroom. I’m finding it all quite draining. I feel a little let down by our union rep who seems to have agreed to it all even though she is not actually in school herself.