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

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

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@noblegiraffe

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!

Maths here too @noblegiraffe. We got some visualisers a few years ago which was obviously lucky. However we’ve also been using the webcam as a visualiser which isn’t ideal but it works enough.

We also tell them which Hegarty/YouTube video to watch also.

For me, once I’d worked out how to get my writing beamed home it is less work than having to provide a whole recorded/or separate lesson if that makes sense. Sometimes I write and they can’t see because I forget or i need the space but I’d the bulk of it is there for them it’s better than nothing. If you doing it would be more work than another way than not worth it. We were just trying to use what we had to minimise workload if we could.

Might be a way you could get your tablet linked to your computer/projector? Only if it would make your life easier in the longer run... 🤷‍♀️

We can't even get one! (the only laptops we have are for children with that as a provision in their EHCP - they just use them to word process and have to email it in from the one spot with WiFi within school!)

@CallmeAngelina we use Teams.

Please don’t get me wrong it’s horrific for all sorts of reasons - but if it means I don’t have to pre-record a whole other lesson I’ll do it.

@CountDuckulasKetchup in maths I think I do that quite a bit so have them in for longer but mute myself/room during independent work and unmute during whole class work as a rule.

Yeah, if you’ve not got the tech/internet etc... it’s not going to work. High numbers of our students don’t have tech, or cba to log in anyway so not sure how that is going work also.

I have no extra time to plan the classroom/online lessons so all I can do is share my screen and use the same lesson as I'm doing in class. The interactive notes don't show up I don't think so I do modelling on a shared-screen Word document. With no training and no time it's the best I can do. It slows things down in the classroom.

Anne Longfield doesn't see a circuit breaker as necessary at this stage.

I'm in a similar situation to Herc - school is in tier 1, half the catchment is tier 2, I live in tier 3.
We're still not being asked to do simultaneous lessons to isolators and those in school, thankfully - just post the resources on teams. But there was a flurry of panicky Friday emails about sending packs of work home to every student for every subject now. We don't have enough paper in the building for that to be remotely possible.

@noblegiraffe

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!

I am doing tutoring from home. I have made my own Heath Robinson contraption as a visualiser for my mini whiteboard using my phone as an additional 'person' in on the call to video it. It works quite well although if you are on Teams, you have to get the students to do "fit to frame" for them to see all of it. I mainly tutor maths and I agree I couldn't work without it.

@noblegiraffe it is FAR from ideal but I’ve sometimes also typed my maths as I speak it into word (like @SaltyAndFresh said I think). It is noring like being able to write properly but even if I do one or two like this it’s better than nothing for those at home. Obvs doesn’t work for all topics.

LBC are asking teachers to phone in now. It's about the extra week on half term. I am too chicken.

How is this happening YET AGAIN!!! Schools being forced into panicked scrambling of resources for a possible no-notice closure which is denied until the very last minute.

I know you all know this but it is just ridiculous this requirement to provide education for those at home with NO extra time, funding, resources anything. Nothing I do is ideal for anyone that I teach and I fucking hate it. I’ll keep going, keep trying, keep supporting our staff in doing the same but the students at my school at essentially fucked. Other schools near us have iPads or chrome books or whatever for all students - either funded or through a parental scheme. We have none of that. I hate that there is such disparity between schools too - in terms of resources/funding etc... why are schools doing different things with respect to marking and touching books etc. Why can’t someone just come and say x y and z are fine to do but not a b and c.

I've got a school laptop and a "visualiser" (it's a cheap webcam on a bendy neck like a lamp). When I've had kids off isolating I've done everything on paper while sitting at my desk, and had the webcam recording it. I project my screen for the kids in class (took a bit of playing to get the contrast/brightness right for them to see it properly) and record it for the kids at home. I pause my recording while they are doing independent work, then record again when we do the next whole class section, etc. I upload my video as the class are doing their last bit of independent work, so the kids at home aren't getting it completely at the same time as the rest of the class, but they're never more than an hour later than the timetable. I haven't had huge numbers of isolators yet, but when I do I may try to use Teams to make it live and let the home kids all questions in the chat, as that's what's lacking in the current procedure.

@RigaBalsam

LBC are asking teachers to phone in now. It's about the extra week on half term. I am too chicken.

Dare someone to do it and we can all listen 🤣

www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1349046/coronavirus-latest-news-schools-boris-johnson-circuit-breaker-half-term/amp

There is a poll on there about closing the schools. I couldn't do it on my phone so had to do it on computer. Look and laugh (in a fatalistic way) at all the accompanying photos of schools🤬

@MrsHerculePoirot

I know you all know this but it is just ridiculous this requirement to provide education for those at home with NO extra time, funding, resources anything. Nothing I do is ideal for anyone that I teach and I fucking hate it. I’ll keep going, keep trying, keep supporting our staff in doing the same but the students at my school at essentially fucked. Other schools near us have iPads or chrome books or whatever for all students - either funded or through a parental scheme. We have none of that. I hate that there is such disparity between schools too - in terms of resources/funding etc... why are schools doing different things with respect to marking and touching books etc. Why can’t someone just come and say x y and z are fine to do but not a b and c.

I know! And then we have to defend ourselves against goady fuckers on here about how we're lazy bastards just wanting an extra week "off" over half term. And I got my arse handed to me back in July for querying the varied marking policy, with some schools refusing to allow it when I'd just spent days marking 6000 pieces of work. My question was interpreted as me being too lazy to do my job without moaning.

For any maths (poss science) teachers who weren’t on the (now full- that was fast!) NEU thread, do check out Desmos for live lessons. You set up your lesson questions beforehand, send the class a lesson code and they sign in (no account setup needed) with their real name.

They do the questions (can do multi choice, enter numerical answers, graph plotting) but unlike mathswatch or mymaths, they don’t do it all and then submit, you can watch them doing the work live. One screen tells you which question each kid is working on so you can nag the ones who are lagging, you can look at their answers for common mistakes and you can share answers with the class. There’s also an option where they can compare their answers to their classmates.

learn.desmos.com/create

[quote noblegiraffe]For any maths (poss science) teachers who weren’t on the (now full- that was fast!) NEU thread, do check out Desmos for live lessons. You set up your lesson questions beforehand, send the class a lesson code and they sign in (no account setup needed) with their real name.

They do the questions (can do multi choice, enter numerical answers, graph plotting) but unlike mathswatch or mymaths, they don’t do it all and then submit, you can watch them doing the work live. One screen tells you which question each kid is working on so you can nag the ones who are lagging, you can look at their answers for common mistakes and you can share answers with the class. There’s also an option where they can compare their answers to their classmates.

learn.desmos.com/create[/quote]
Thanks Noble will take a look.

I take it you're going to let that thread rest now? The overnight trolling has made me quite glad I won't get pulled into any more snapping.

Desmos is great for live lessons. I'm not sure how to make it work with half in half out though. For purely isolating students it is fantastic.

Yeah Ange I’ve got stuff to do today so no thread starting!

I was kind of thinking about starting one on the story about the GREAT SUMMER CATCH-UP money going missing but I doubt people will care.

There was the assumption that kids could catch up in Autumn from missing school in lockdown but what’s happening is more missing school and more catch-up needed.

@RigaBalsam

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.

If you find his BBC News "HardTalk" interview (from August I think - it's still on iplayer) he was hesitant back then about schools and economy opening up at full scale at the same time.

@pussycatinboots weren't all the scientists?!

This was all predictable.

@Augustbreeze
Yes, they were. It's reassuring to know they/you were right all along.

Interesting pussycat thanks

Spent a fortune in Zara this morning but it has not emotionally stabilised me as planned 😅😫

I signed up for an antibody test but got an email about a Covid test instead. Hoping it’s a glitch