Planning for teaching without resources

[PumpkinPie2016]

I am attempting to do some planning for September and in all honesty, I'm just tying myself in knots.

In September, due to covid, we cannot;

Give out paper resources such as worksheets/printed diagrams/questions because we cannot use gluesticks. We are minimising what is passed between pupil and teacher.

Can't use the textbooks as they would pass between bubbles. We have e-versions which can be displayed on the screen.

We have visualisers in each classroom.

I have low ability sets in Y10 and Y11. We are pushed for time to cover content due to covid disruption. Ordinarily, I would give them copies of notes/questions/key diagrams just to save time and ensure the information is in their books for revision purposes. SLT want books to be a learning tool so the information is important.

Maybe I'm over thinking it but having previous experience of low ability sets, they can take a huge amount of time to write things down and if we are not careful, the whole lesson could be spent writing stuff down and not actually practicing questions.

It's stressing me out now Does anyone have any tips/ideas?

Topic booklets? Essentially, all your worksheets, notes, diagrams etc. in one booklet that you hand out at the start of the year/topic. Work through it chronologically. No different to handing out an exercise book at the beginning of the year, you dont have to touch it again. I hole punch mine and use treasury tags to tag them to exercise books. Project mark scemes for self or peer assessment. Bit of leg work to set up initially, and one or two ocasionally get lost, but I like them.

@MasterGland apparently we can't make such booklets due to the cost of printing them/state of books. Bit infuriating

Thinking it's going to be a case of doing the best I/we can and giving notes/knowledge organisers when we can. I think they are still getting knowledge organisers as planned.

Just thinking I may be able to have some stuff printed and go around and staple it into the kids books.

That way, only I am touching the stapler (could even get away with not touching their book) but no different to live marking which we can apparently do.

When we brought in booklets we made the case that we were just using our printing budget for the year in one go, but I can see how it might raise eyebrows in the finance office.

Could you set homeworks to "make notes from pages x to x on the online textbook"? Then use class time to practice the content? Depends on the class, I know. I had a bottom set once that never did a single piece of homework for me.

Or if they struggle with note taking, setting the homework as a series of closed questions, to answer from the text, that then becomes their notes for the topic?

Jesus they're letting you do very little. Can you put your notes in a Google Drive and share the link to them? You could give them a QR code to scan or email/text the link out.

@SionnachRua making the notes accessible online might be a way forward -I could email links out to parents as well so that they are aware of them.

It's hard-I understand that school want to keep people safe etc. and of course, I absolutely agree with that but we are going to be seriously limited!

Our head is great as are SLT and it isn't their fault, it's just going to be a tad stressful for a while.

I think I will investigate online methods of sharing notes etc.

Can you print worksheets out onto sticker paper - so they just peel the backing off and stick in removing the need for glue sticks? Might be expensive but could be worth it for low ability groups perhaps

We have been told similar regarding a skittle resources as possible - I am dreading it

It all seems a bit like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic to me. Surely the greatest risk of transmission is from the people in the classroom? If the situation is ok to return with little/no social distancing and no masks, then surely transmission via paper isn't a problem. It just seems like creating teacher workload for the sake of it...but I digress, none of that's in your control.

Hole punch the books and use treasury tags to put sheets in. Cheap and easy solution.

What subject?

Do the lower sets effectively learn all the information? Or would you be better off focusing on a few topics in depth?

@Hercwasonaroll this might be the time to try that out. I have often wondered with very weak groups if it would be better to skip the hard bits of the spec and spend time drilling, and redrilling the core concepts, and those that appear ever year. Very tempted to do that with one of my y11 groups in September ( very weak/ low baseline to start with, lots of behaviour issues and about 35% have engaged with the online provision)

What subject are you Rosy? I'm maths and very few students learn everything in the spec. Other subjects used to baulk at the idea but this year they're all for it!

Where has the idea that glue sticks are such vectors of transmission come from? Can’t they all have their own? Or a roll of sellotape?

@Hercwasonaroll I am tempted to try the hole punch/treasury tag thing.

I teach science and in all honesty,the pupils who are less academic don't learn everything on the spec even in normal times. There is just such a huge amount of content, as there is for all subjects, and the language of Science makes it inaccessible for some. No matter how much we try to explicitly teach the language/concepts.

I am considering leaving some of the harder things, particularly at first when we can't use as many resources.

@parrotonmyshoulder no idea The list of equipment sent last week to parents says they should bring a glue stick of their own. Whether they will or not remains to be seen!

I think treasury tags/me stapling for those who don't bring a glue stick could be the way forward.

Yes science is difficult to teach everything. Bit like maths! I'd definitely be focusing on them learning 20 things well over 30 things badly.

I'm also being super critical over printed resources and asking myself "do they actually help long term learning?". We're going mixed ability maths so will have it print some stuff to differentiate effectively but lots of stuff will be projected. I'll print quizzes and in some cases examples. But if the examples just sit unused in a book it's kind of pointless printing them despite SLTs best intentions.

Glue sticks we don't have enough for one each. They'll get lost by day 2. I hope we see a way without glue to be honest!

Stapling could work I guess - just one hand on the stapler and washing!

Herc science, really difficult to teach everything to the weaker sets, but expected to do so

Seems bonkers that you're expected to teach everything. We'd never even attempt it in maths. Even foundation tier students if they're on the 1-2 border will cover less than a student aiming for g4.

Primary school here - each child will have their own glue stick.