The Twelfth Republic - push and glide to the summer break

[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

Still no timetable though.

I'm so glad our SMT are being more sensible than that. Their understanding of the guidance is that it's ok for the kids to be close together but staff have to stay far apart. Inset will pretty much be fully delivered by Teams, with only 4 staff allowed in any classroom at the same time. So the maths department will be split between 3 classrooms to watch the Teams inset on the big screen. We are VERY not allowed to be in the same classroom as staff from other departments!!!!

@mistressiggi it is amazing how stupid they can be. For some of our shielding staff it will be their first day back. Wonder how they are feeling.

Our inset is on Teams too. My first live lesson will be to staff!

www.standard.co.uk/news/health/young-adults-social-distancing-warning-highest-infection-rates-coronavirus-a4498706.html

We have in-person INSET plans too, but in a large space rather than the drama studio we normally go into. We also are running face to face enrolment interviews on the 21st/22nd August so I’m very interested to see how they’ll pan out - usually you are far less than 2m away from a student and usually a parent too, with people each side of you as well, and they usually take 15mins or more. The way we usually do it couldn’t be worse for COVID spread!

That's interesting about the symptoms there

Symptoms strongly associated with a positive test were nausea and/or vomiting, diarrhoea, blocked nose, loss of smell, loss of taste, headache, chills and severe fatigue.

Because that's exactly what I had in late March and no cough. It was like a really bad and long hangover.

@ohthegoats I can answer the Teams audio question. There is a 2 min video that explains it succinctly too. I can also share how I have managed group work in Teams (I'm no expert but y12 all passed the exam I set in June so I guess they learnt something). Could you PM me? I had some surgery today so am a bit groggy at the mo.

@ohthegoats I’ve just shared a ppt (in presenter view where I can monitor hands up and chat). I make it interactive by asking them by name or getting them to do true false using the ‘hands up/down) or putting their answer in the chat (in 3... 2... 1.... GO!). I worry they aren’t listening but when I ask someone at random they always seem to be able to answer so who knows!!!

For some reason lots of students can’t see assignments so can’t get them to work.

I’ve been overseeing lots of other lessons and we’ve found issues with trying to share a video through shared screen or in ppt. What has worked for us is to post the YouTube link in chat and say watch this then come back and do this task/question displayed. They say when they are done watching and then teacher pulls discussion together - it has worked so slickly and no-one has then complained of being unable to see/hear/or it being laggy.

You can share computer sound. There is a box to tick to do so and then a second one somewhere that you have to check isn’t stopping it. You can only share sound though if sharing screen/desktop and not if sharing ppt in presenter mode. We’ve found it hard to make work for all students so tend to share vid in chat. Having said that we found short clips of sound worked when embedded in a ppt and ppt shared fully (and chat/hands up monitored on second device).

I’m no sorry though as only been using it, like you I think, more recently! I could not make students see the assignment tabs or be able to click on it or link to access it though and don’t know why!!!

@Phineyj fell better soon! Your teams advice (and others here!) has helped me and in turn others at my school so THANK YOU!

You're welcome . We got 20 minutes' training on it so you're already better trained than me, and I somehow got through a whole term of teaching with it (and: proudest achievement: At no point did 7 yo DD ever appear in a lesson - and just as well as her preferred lockdown attire is solely her pants.)

Oh if people will still be going live lessons (especially maths) then Desmos is the best.

You pre-enter your questions on slides, can do multi choice, free text (with maths formatting), graph sketching etc and an ‘explain your answer’ box.

You send them a link to the lesson for their class, they don’t need an account, just enter their name, do the questions. You can see who is working on each slide, see their answers and the kids can also share answers so each student sees three other kids answers (anon) so can check for mistakes.

Then you can clip good answers and share them with the class.

We set assignments in Firefly Task, not Teams (I don't think Firefly's free though) If you can be bothered there's a free programme called Edmodo which I used to like for assignment setting. What I like about both Firefly and Edmodo is they automatically record when work is uploaded, you can mark directly in them and you can prompt/advise/nag students individually with anyone being able to see. Although it's annoying when students upload photos of handwritten work, it does make fantastic evidence to support them wordprocessing in exams .

I think my advice is more relevant for essay subjects.

without anyone else being able to see (also correct your own typos ).

How were the kids getting infected in may though? Parents working?

In apr we had a sore throat for less than a day then straight into a dry cough chills. But we all got ill. It was very odd though as i had no runny nose and that continued and actually it's still not as runny now.

Ooooh thanks! Will investigate all ready for next year.

@Phineyj my training consisted of what I gleaned from friends and you guys here and then I in turn trained our teachers. After muddling my way through two sixth form lessons to practise 🤣 luckily I seem to have winged it and people think I know my stuff. Definite imposter syndrome here!

fireflylearning.com/school-closures/ it is free until the end of 2020 (but this is a school solution not an individual teacher solution). We back up all our live lessons as tasks on it so that students have no excuses (they still try...our attendance list has turned into a 'my WiFi is poorly' list...)

@noblegiraffe

Oh if people will still be going live lessons (especially maths) then Desmos is the best.

You pre-enter your questions on slides, can do multi choice, free text (with maths formatting), graph sketching etc and an ‘explain your answer’ box.

You send them a link to the lesson for their class, they don’t need an account, just enter their name, do the questions. You can see who is working on each slide, see their answers and the kids can also share answers so each student sees three other kids answers (anon) so can check for mistakes.

Then you can clip good answers and share them with the class.

I’ve emailed this info to myself....

We set up a Team for a small group of us over Easter and tried teaching each other. We even roleplayed 'the late student', 'the person wandering about the garden on their phone' and 'the person that clicks all the buttons'. It was highly realistic.

www.edmodo.com/ this is.completely free. I trialled it in 2013 but although I liked it, it was too different to what my colleagues were doing to sustain. How times have changed!

Sorry for all these posts. I'm waiting for the painkillers to start working. Another assignment method I've used is for students to save PPTs into personal folders on OneDrive (which is free with Office 365). Then you put the assessment criteria into each folder and share it with their assigned peer marker only. Bit faffy to set up but you could use it repeatedly and claim you were building mastery of peer marking...

Ah, weirdly I've heard of edmodo. No idea why.

I'll pm tomorrow thanks phiney - can't work out how to pm from phone at this time of night. I've got a live lesson with other staff members tomorrow as a trial run. Have sent them the forms quiz they need to do before the start of the lesson, as if I'm doing fluent in 5 or something. Have set up a channel to share differentiated work, so want to know who can see what.

I want to carry on with YouTube vids then work they do online, with feedback tutor type sessions on Teams in sort of ability groups. That would be my ideal.

Edmodo was the system of choice with us for a while, but it fell foul of our GDPR rules for some reason (so did class dojo) and we aren't allowed to use it anymore.

Oh, that'll be because the data's all held in America. Although perhaps better not to enquire how that works with Microsoft...!