The Ninth Republic - stand by for the return of Year 10

[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.

You can play here only if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the toffee vodka is hidden.

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

If you come with a stick to beat us with then please do so elsewhere and not in the staffroom.

Thanks! I think if the teacher has a tablet it is easier to 'mark' and return as you can use a stylus possibly on it? Obviously schools have money for all this tech... think that is what we are thinking though, photograph/scan using that app that takes a picture and scans to pdf then upload for us to look at.

@MrsHerculePoirot have you seen whiteboard.fi? Each student has a whiteboard to write or type on and you can see all of them. I'd advise trying it out with a class you can trust!

A poster has just claimed she works in a school all of a sudden. She isn't a teacher basher oh no!

I leave you wit this post form Jan 2020
Go back to teaching as long as your a good teacher to all, I'm fed up of my kids going to school to be taught by teachers that don't want to be there! My kids are well behaved, hand homework in etc but most teachers are unfair & I think it's because they hate there job! Don't teach if you hate kids & don't take the naughty kids behaviour out on our good kids!!

It's really easy to annotate student work on google docs.
Can't speak fro teams but submitting work is a piece of cake on Google Classroom. It's the one thing that works really well.

edu - there's probably a better way but I use paint 3d to annotate a photo of work. Pain in the arse but I'm getting quicker at it!

@Piggywaspushed Agree my school use google classroom and DD's use teams. Teams look cumbersome compared to google classroom. @MrsHerculePoirot - you could try Dr frost it has a whiteboard function and if you set tasks you can set that they have to show workings. However I find the website for me is not user friendly!

I use loom, having a picture of yourself is optional. You can just show your screen and talk. I've also made my own visualiser using Lego and my phone - works quite well for recording how to answer calculation questions.

Out of interest does anyone know if our sad tree friend on other threads has ever claimed to be a teacher, or do they just not like teachers?

Ah so if the HAF is simply what happened last year, does that mean it's targeted at disadvantaged children? That's better than giving the middle class kids yet more home learning at least, isn't it?

someone has recommended an app to me called 'loom'

I use screencast o matic. Get an account, it's free, it's ace. I couldn't get Loom to work as I wanted it to.

Out of interest does anyone know if our sad tree friend on other threads has ever claimed to be a teacher, or do they just not like teachers?

No idea. Is that not the NHS consultant? Or the one who has had to go off on stress leave or something? Anyway, I poked the tree with a stick earlier. Couldn't help it, same things posted over and over.

Do you guys put videos onto Teams or something? We have to put them onto youtube and then link onto our class webpages. It's clunky, but it works well enough.

I've just finished all my recorded lessons for the week. Thank fuck - gives me chance to just do reports tomorrow and Thursday without thinking about bloody videos.

My SLT question was because I need to have thought about some stuff by Thursday at 3.15. I have a few thoughts, but already know that other SLT are not happy about them. Love it!!

I've just been reading something from fft about the grades submitted to the exam boards (and presumably fft?). Unsurprisingly they have found that the grades submitted this year are higher than the grades issued last year. The proportion of grade 4 and above is higher this year than last in almost every subject. ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/06/gcse-results-2020-a-look-at-the-grades-proposed-by-schools/

That's been reported in the press too. Not to keen on this since I have a year 11 DS1...

I gave lower grades this year to my class.

MsAwesomeDragon

The problem with the data that they have is that for some subjects last year was the first exam year.

Also it doesn't take in to account different cohorts.

For me this years cohort is much better than last years.

it's only the same story that they were saving up for a 'real year' to provoke debate about 'rampant grade inflation'...

Urgh I bit on the thread in AIBU. Absolutely hideous.

Is that the one that OP would not move to staffroom??

Interesting link, our cohort last year was a significantly weaker in my subject with this years cohort more comparable to the previous year. I did A LOT of analysis of it! And my grades were fair.

@FrippEnos

MsAwesomeDragon

The problem with the data that they have is that for some subjects last year was the first exam year.

Also it doesn't take in to account different cohorts.

For me this years cohort is much better than last years.

Completely agree! That and in addition for my subject at least, my current Year 13s were the first to sit the GCSE 9-1 course which much better prepared them for the A Level and so many more of them genuinely aced their mock exams that they did end of Feb/beginning of March. I am sure that is the same for many other subjects.

I’m so annoyed that the exam boards will probably not consider factors such as this and have resigned myself to have them drop the grades for such spurious reasons! Oh well, I guess we have all had to deal with a lot of crap this lockdown-what’s one more kick in the teeth, eh!?

Thanks for all the ideas. I'll have a little play. The problem I think is getting the students to write on it, so they would need to write calculations or whatever using their mouse if it was online somehow. I think they probably need to write on paper and just hold it up to the screen in a live lesson and take a picture and send it to me if it is work done outside of lesson if that makes sense. In my classroom I'd go round, find some lovely work/common misconceptions and shove them under my visualiser for a class chat because I can see what they are all doing... obviously can't do that live on Teams!! Really appreciate the ideas and have noted them all down though in my notebook to investigate further!!!!

Of to have a nose...

*Off - damn it

piggy the 'schools should be open for the summer holidays ' one

I need a lie down!

Our grades were about the same as they normally are, very similar proportions to the last few years since the new GCSE came in. I had actually forgotten that last year was the first one of the new GCSE for some subjects, in maths the new syllabus barely feels new any more. But yes, you would expect the grades to go up the second year of a new exam style as the teachers obviously know a bit more about what to expect.

I wasn't commenting as a criticism of anyone setting grades, although I probably didn't make that clear enough. Just a comment on the data that is being reported at the minute. It will be interesting to see what the exam boards do with that data. I really hope they have a decent plan for standardising the grades and not just a blanket downgrade of everyone.

Can I ask, how are people's performance management appraisals looking? I had an interim meeting and I can't actually fully meet two of my three targets because of lockdown but my manager seemed surprised when I mentioned it! Bit worried now, even though I'm on UPS3 so it's not like there's any extra pay in it.

Has anyone else's local Fb page got a tutor advertising a little summer school to help children "catch up", based in a sports club house, so lots of outdoor learning.....?

Apparently she's booked out after only a few days advertising, which she attributes to parents' concern for education. She's offering mornings for KS1 and afternoons for KS2, I think. Not sure how many weeks it's for.

She's also received a donation of cash from someone apparently.