Are your pupils still engaging with home learning?

[MinnieMousse]

I have a KS1 class. Families are generally nice but have never been the most engaged and almost none are doing any of the home learning. I sent home work packs to cover the first two weeks of home learning but almost straight away started putting up work on the website as per our school policy - a week of maths and English activities and a grid of other activities to choose from. I started putting up video explanations of some of the Maths and English activities pretty early on as I thought there were some families who would lack the time/ability to explain tasks.

I also tried to think of as many practical/offline activities as possible as I teach in a deprived area and thought many might not have a lot of internet access. We had an existing digital platform that I set tasks on and have subscribed to a couple of others for reading books, online games etc. I email parents weekly, attaching the work as screenshots in case they can't download documents, and always ask if anyone would like any paper work packs.

I never got more than half the class watching the videos but that gradually dwindled until after half-term only one child was watching. I am now back in school teaching a bubble 4 days a week and I use the 5th day to catch up on calls to my own class and set the home learning, which usually takes me over the weekend to prepare as well as I try to think of more ways to make it accessible and engaging. I have stopped the video explanations now I'm teaching most days as they are time consuming and nobody was watching, but I have videoed me reading daily chapters of a story book which I send out to try to keep the connection. They get very few views either though. There is one pupil that I know is doing the work and sends me photos. Around 5 or 6 others engage online so I give them feedback and rewards. I have sent out certificates to any pupils that have engaged.

I know families and children must be feeling pretty motivated by now, but other classes don't seem to be having the very low levels of engagement that my class have. I feel like I've had to work harder to keep them going - I am the only teacher that's made videos for example - but fewer children are joining in. We've done school-wide sports competitions etc and my class always have fewer entries than anyone else. SLT have said we must always put out the message that wellbeing is the most important thing, which it is, but I feel a bit disheartened that they aren't doing anything at all.

I don't feel there's much else I can do. I wouldn't mind doing a "live" session with them on my day out of class but school are discouraging Zoom and we haven't got Teams set up properly yet. Also, I very very much doubt there would be much participation! I just feel really sad that I've ended the year so distant from my class.

Secondary here, deprived and disengaged students and parents. My engagement rate is 10-60%. 10% in Year 10 - yes, they will sit their GCSEs next year, 60% in Year 7.

6th form the absolute exception with kids giving 100%, but they are a tiny class with highly ambitious and motivated people,

Nope, my KS2 class seem to have given up now. Probably about 60% regularly emailed work before and I know a few more were also doing it but not emailing it, but now
I'm getting virtually nothing back.

Secondary here. I started with some doing everything straight away, some doing very little and a big group in the middle who were working a bit erratically.

Now it’s more polarised - after lots of chasing, I have about 2/3 working well and 1/3 doing nothing at all.

Very variable then. I think with secondary age a certain amount of chasing can be done - not that it will necessarily make any difference! - but at primary it very much needs parental facilitation. I'm not holding out much hope for increased participation this week with the hot and sunny weather....

Just to warn you about live lessons. My engagement went down when we started these! Attendance to the fine, but fewer students submitting work!

I have primary aged children (KS2). I will be honest, I am finding it very hard to keep them going with their school work. My motivation is waning even though I know it is important that they do work and therefore I find it more difficult to motivate them, and that is nothing to do with the work that the teachers are setting.

But we are doing as much of the work as we can, though we are not always loading it up to the online platform - I am keeping it organised though so they can show their teachers everything eventually.

I'm a secondary teacher and single mum of a ks1 child. To be honest we returned very little work, I jjst didn't have the time to supervise it (she is back in school now) and when we did have time together I didn't want to it to be an endless battle so I went with trying to find educational activities she enjoyed rather than following the work. I know how demoralising this can be for the teacher though! My students have gone down from about 40% returning work to less than 10%.

I get the distinct impression from my children's secondary that engagement is decreasing quite a bit now, even though it's a very "academic" school.

It's dropping quite quickly now I notice. And any parents I call are not really engaging even in conversation with me.

I am planning for 86 children. In the first week of this term I was getting around 50 views of each video. I've just looked at last week's and it's under 20 for most.

They take such a long time to do - I'm going to scale my effort back I think, even though it's 4 weeks to go. Better to use my energies on trying to plan next term's stuff I reckon.

As a parent (I'm a teacher) I'm now focusing more on reading, spelling the common exception words and key maths (we are following white rose.)

I'm upping reading eggs. He's just gone onto the reading eggspress level and loves it. It's really challenging so I feel is covering a greater depth, and an area I feel he's weaker in.

I'm looking at all the other lively things that are planned and picking what he might engage in or I do it in a different way, but trying to juggle a toddler and work too is hard. So that's my focus.

My year 10 class should have submitted work to me yesterday 8/25 did.

A few weeks ago that would have been 20.

Yes, I agree engagement has been dropping- even though we have some kids back in school, so there ought to be no excuse. I'd say there's a really committed 25% still doing everything, with then maybe another 25% doing bits and pieces.

At the start of term, that was probably closer to 50% with 75% doing some work.

I think all these talks of "catch up" programs may have made people feel that there's no need to be working right now- as they can catch everything up next year.

I'm starting to get really worried about our current Y9/10 especially.

16 kids have looked at today's maths lesson. Out of 86. And I think that's alright. Haha.

40 at the English lesson

The other thing is the impact of being able to meet up with friends.

I've had to dial down some work on some days to be able to fit in an SD meet up.

For their Mh, that's definitely v important.

My class were very enthusiastic to begin with, but now with 2 weeks to go I am lucky if I get 3/22 pupils returning work.

I've started doing a Learning Grid with more generic activities and they colour in the jobs they have done (P2). That seems to be working well.

I think all these talks of "catch up" programs may have made people feel that there's no need to be working right now- as they can catch everything up next year.

I think that is definitely true.

I've had 4 kids log on at all. 4. I teach 9 classes. It's a joke. It's not just me though, it's the same across the school. We offer live lessons but not one student has attended so I've stopped. Year 10 have apparently said it's OK because I can catch them up next year. I feel like saying to them "I'm leaving (which I am), there will be no catching up. You will have an NQT who has had only weeks of training and never taught a GCSE course before and the exam board have just announced they are changing the exams, so you won't have time to even cover all the topics next year. Good luck!" 😔

As someone on the Republic thread pointed out: catch-up work over the summer could be easily covered if they just covered the work that's already been set.

You cannot catch up 3 months worth of work in a few half hour tutoring sessions.

The schools who haven’t taught new content over the last three months will be in the best position as at least all the kids will be in the same boat and it can be addressed in lessons. But I don’t think you could get away with not teaching new content to Y10 and 12.