The Twenty-fifth Republic - circuit breaker before/during/after half term

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Oh Salty ☹. How will these measures work while Manchester refuses to go into tier 3, even while their NHS workers are begging them to? Many just won't comply.

@SaltyAndFresh

Looking forward to spending my half term in lockdown 🙄 So much for a few days at the seaside. Am in Wales where a 17 day circuit break is in the offing.

Are they saying that’s schools to close as well?

I just don't think a circuit break in England will work country wide because of the disparity in cases in different areas. People in tier 1 won't comply.

Me and dh just had this discussion that I work in a tier 2 area yet we live in tier 1. We're breaking the law daily for one reason or another. Childcare mainly.

Probably secondaries after half term for a week. In their wisdom, my area decided to extend half term the is week back on June, in exchange for a day in summer. I live but don't work here so it's all kinds of a headache.

@Augustbreeze

BCF from the Numbers thread predicted (on a Christmas thread!) that very hard restrictions will be brought in at the end of Nov for a few weeks, so that BJ can give us all a "week off" for Christmas and win everyone's hearts.... 🤢, but I can see that she could well be right.

Because of all the tier stuff that's happening at the moment they can't suddenly change the rules yet again next week, they'd really look like they don't know what they're doing then ().

I'm now on a fortnight's half term and it feels very luxurious....

A friend and I had that exact conversation yesterday about Boris giving us a 'week off at Christmas'. I've already had the chat about Christmas and our family has decided were all just doing our own this year.

Jeremy farrer on Sophy Ridge put a great argument across for a circuit breaker and a Nationwide approach.
He also said people are complying more than we think.

Gove on the other hand was useless.

I've not been on that uni thread much recently, piggy, so I was disappointed to find an anti lockdown stance...so many on that thread reporting positive cases in their student dc or their d's flatmates too, you'd think they would take it seriously.

That neu thread is making me think I need an extended break from MN. Before I go can I pick the brains of anyone who is already beaming lessons home from the classroom when some students are in and others are at home. We've not been officially told we're doing it after half term but being an old timer I'm pretty good at reading the signs and know it's coming. The idea is really stressing me out to the point that I am seriously considering resigning, so need to think carefully how I'm going to do it.

Feels like the only people I know IRL who are still taking it all seriously are those with medics in the family.
We’re on hour 74 of SI after my test - still waiting for results. Kids stir crazy and claim they’re ‘starving’ (they are not!). My symptoms have all but gone now. Obviously we’ll continue SI until the result but can see why people don’t! 2 days off work/ school and a sunny weekend indoors.

Whereas I know there are more cases in secondary and more transmission from symptomatic kids there...it really feels like primary is being neglected. We have cases. Every primary in my area has had cases. Yet no masks, no distancing, just keeping year groups apart to limit those isolating when a case requires it. And now to be not included in any extension of the half term too.

Just stay on this thread and off the main boards, Count?

My school doesn't have the tech to beam lessons to isolators so I'm really hoping that means we won't have to. We don't even have the tech to do live lessons for year groups that are off.

Cases in primary kids were dropping, which was weird, but seem to be rising again, which is worrying.

I really hate that 6 months later there's still so much we don't know about kids because no one has researched it properly. (Or when they do it's dismissed because it's India).

Sir Michael Wilshaw has put his money where his mouth is and returned to teaching to replace self-isolating teachers www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-chief-schools-inspector-michael-wilshaw-urges-retired-teachers-to-join-him-in-the-classroom-t0kbsh7dh

I kind of hope the school is bog standard no ventilation no social distancing and that Sir Michael is moved to do something about it.

Count I just stay on this board and a few lighthearted ones. Anything with education or Corona is avoided.

Before I go can I pick the brains of anyone who is already beaming lessons home from the classroom when some students are in and others are at home. We've not been officially told we're doing it after half term but being an old timer I'm pretty good at reading the signs and know it's coming

I know one teacher who is using their desktop in her classroom to teach the 15 kids there. She has a laptop to teach the 15 at home. It all sounds pretty dreadful to be honest.
I don’t think we could do that at our school. The internet is pretty poor and I doubt it could handle 10s of lessons being steamed all at once.

@CountDuckulasKetchup we are currently training everyone up on this. I was fully against it but actually think it’s fine.these are I think the main points:

• students listening in have cameras and mics off at all times.
• teachers webcam is off at all times so no images of teachers/students beamed home
• share screen with students so they can see what the students in the room can see on your projector board
• front load your lesson with the teaching and then when students are working independently you can ‘end’the remote bit. We are suggesting 20 mins ish but I’d teachers want to live stream for longer they can. We would suggest muting yourself when independent work going on.
• students can leave questions in the chat but teachers not expected to answer in the lesson
• when questioning/whole class discussion echo back what students say as we found the mic picked up teacher at front but not students clearly sitting further away
• think about what you write and where. At home students can’t see whiteboard/marker pen so either prepare ppt or whatever or write on interactive board if you can or use a visualiser and piece of paper. Depends on your school set up.

We also put our starter up on teams so home students can do that whilst we take register. Then we close sims then we allow them into meeting from lobby.

Please ask anything - I would say practise with yourself (eg I had a meeting just for me and recorded myself) and then a colleague (get someone you trust to watch you and feedback re what student at home could see and hear).

Does that help at all?

@CountDuckulasKetchup sorry meant to say we have cheap webcams on every desktop now for staff meetings via teams. Just usb ones that plug in but work as mic.

I don't understand how a "circuit breaker" linked to half terms will work if you're on half term this coming week?

At home students can’t see whiteboard/marker pen so either prepare ppt or whatever or write on interactive board if you can or use a visualiser and piece of paper. Depends on your school set up.

This is where it would be impossible for me as a maths teacher. I write on boards a lot. I rarely use powerpoints. We don't have interactive whiteboards and we certainly don't have visualisers.

When I was doing it at home, I wrote on OneNote on my ipad and shared the screen - my home is better equipped for teaching live lessons than my school!

Cases in primary kids were dropping, which was weird, but seem to be rising again, which is worrying.

I think there was a generalised mass pattern; two- three weeks into term a lot of cases (certainly rhino virus thingy went sky high) and two weeks self isolation.

Back at school for 1-2 weeks and the pattern starts again.

Very roughly

Same noble. Our live lessons aren't working because of the Internet speed in school.

I would say that was the case for almost all of my colleagues, too, Noble.

We did some live and some asynchronous lessons from home during full lockdown. We literally couldn't do any live streaming from school, though, because of woeful tech and Internet. No webcams, mics, interactive whiteboards, visualisers, absolutely non-existent WiFi and very temperamental broadband. Students at home isolating are just getting ppts or short prerecorded videos, plus email or phone support.

@MrsHerculePoirot, what platform are you using?

We can't even get 30 laptops logged on within one lesson before the system collapses.

Thanks MrsHP that's really helpful. The front loading thing is one of the things that's stressing me as our kids have short attention spans so I normally do a series of quick info dumps followed by a quick task and this won't work for those at home. But if I do the front loading it won't work in class.

I've trialled it so can do the mechanics of it OK.