The Thirty-Sixth Republic - New Year approaching, no clear idea of what is happening next week and has Gav been sacked yet?

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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.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

You can play here 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

Do not give the staffroom password just in case it attracts the wrong sort

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 booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

If you come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

If anyone here ever downloaded maths ppts from the TES about 8 years ago there was one person whose ppts were all yellow backgrounds with an insane amount of stuff on each slide. The content of the slides was generally decent but my gosh the yellow. If I saw their username I'd know to move on!

Mistry Maths?

Hope you're ok, Gleaming. Keep talking if it helps.

Regarding worksheets that someone else has created, can I ask primary teachers about the Twinkl snobbery on the main boards from parents? I'm seriously beginning to wonder if stories about teachers posting videos of themselves riding their bikes, playing with their dc, always accompanied by complaints that only 1 Twinkl worksheet per week with no other contact yadda yadda yadda are actually an urban myth? The same story seems to be trotted out on a regular basis!

Anyway, is Twinkl really that bad? If so many teachers use it, I'd have thought it was pretty good? I have a free subscription to TeachIt, and don't know where I'd be without Corbett Maths and Dr Frost - I'll always link to their videos for anyone who is absent from class.

Re: writing stamina. We tested the writing speed of y7-10 in December 2019 and in September 2020. A shocking number have dropped their speed dramatically - to the point that 25% of y11 are technically entitled to extra time!!

I thought the phrase was ‘magpie-ing’ and it was positively encouraged? Even more so if it is left as a present on the photocopier.

Glad the yoga helped.

End of 1st term reception kids are a PITA. They just seem to suddenly lose the plot.

I think we'll need a new republic by tomorrow, by the way!

I unashamedly bring a portable hard drive and download all resources before I leave a school. My kids all mention that my calculated colouring has the name of a different school on it makes note to guillotine the bottom off the page next time.

I used twinkl to find stuff for my ds before the school got their stuff organised, I'd never used it before. It was certainly not quick to find work on the topic I wanted (telling the time) that was at the right level and would fill a full "lesson". I think parents complaining think it's some kind of Twinkl "lucky dip" with the teacher pulling a completely random sheet out of the Twinkl bag.
I have only put my legs up on a wall in the midst of ttc (in the mists of time) so need to try it for relaxation tonight!

www.yogajournal.com/how-to/legs-up-the-wall-pose/

I actually have never camped and never intend to - so was actually just toying with the idea really, apologies! (Well, have always said I could probably be persuaded by someone tall, dark and educated, with whom I felt truly safe. Because I like the ethos of camping. But also value comfort, warmth and a lockable front door)

A half pigeon???? Sounds like a side dish at a Tudor feast to me (don't do yoga either if that's what it is?!)

I'm using twinkl for literacy intervention and I don't care.
My useless knob hod once berated me for using a scheme of work from Teachit. I got the full finger pointing treatment. What he didn't grasp was that I'd written the bloody thing in the first place.

I'm off to watch Ripper on netflix. I saw someone was recommending a book on the victims earlier that sounded good. The documentary shows how the media and people only became really outraged when he killed an 'innocent' girl. Probably not good bedtime viewing actually

Twinkl’s search facility is awful.

I think a lot of the snobbery is to do with the idea that everything is so much ‘worthier’ if you’ve created it yourself.

I have a subscription to twinkl (I do let others in the department download stuff too, but since I asked for it, it's mine!!) I use it for my nurture groups. They find it incredibly difficult to access the resources we use for the mainstream groups. For example, both my nurture groups are going to be learning to tell the time in our week of online lessons (then we can hopefully do the entry level test for that module when they come back). Corbett and Dr frost just don't go easy enough for them!! Twinkl does have worksheets that are easy enough for them, I just need to find them in amongst all the other stuff that's either too easy or goes too hard. .

We also have a mathsbox subscription. Do you use that too? It's very good value.

I have been a bit surprised by student teachers purely using worksheets from TES though (and not mentioning the fact!) I think you need to be able to produce a decent worksheet in order to tell which ones are worth downloading!

Don't they call it 'hive mind' now? I get unreasonably annoyed on a subject FB group when people demand resources from the 'hive mind' rather than just bloody having a go themselves. I think it's just the term though - sets my teeth on edge.

I use White Rose, Twinkl, Classroom Secrets, Hamilton (via stem.org.uk), ncetm - I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I usually have to take things out to get it down to the level of my class, or put a lot of EAL stuff in them. I also have a hard drive full of everything I've ever used/downloaded/nicked off others. Thought that was normal, no?

Yes, you do need to know what you want from a resource before you go looking. And I have a rule that if I can't find what I want in 5 minutes then it's probably going to be quicker to make it myself than faffing around looking for something that doesn't exist. I created my own worksheets quite regularly when doing my PGCE, they were crap, but I learnt why they were crap and the next ones were better. Now, when I make a worksheet there generally pretty good, and I make a point of sharing them with anyone teaching the parallel group so they don't have to reinvent the wheel as well.

@SaltyAF

Don't they call it 'hive mind' now? I get unreasonably annoyed on a subject FB group when people demand resources from the 'hive mind' rather than just bloody having a go themselves. I think it's just the term though - sets my teeth on edge.

That's not unreasonable. I write resources etc with a group in mind (hence bare bum man because I know Henry will be incensed) - I might reuse them but they're always tweaked in the delivery at least. Except the literacy intervention stuff from twinkl which looks awesome 😂

Yes rule it's perfectly normal. I use anything I can get my hands on!!

If I can’t find something decent on Google, there’s always Ten Ticks.

We also have a mathsbox subscription. Do you use that too? It's very good value.

Love Mathsbox. Such good value, and I love the skills checks as a quick 5 min starter.

Numeracy Ninjas too, especially for the lesson right after lunch. The children get straight to it, whilst I get myself sorted.

I made my own resources mainly during PGCE and generally write my own lesson slides still for ks3 and 4. I remember making a fabulous PowerPoint for area of shapes where my triangle chopped itself up and slid into half the space of its corresponding rectangle and similar animations for parallelogram and trapezium. Took me HOURS. I was so proud of it though .

I've not tried numeracy ninjas, but I'll look into it. I love anything that the kids can just get on with as a starter while I get us sorted for the rest of the lesson. I tend to be quite old fashioned and just write questions on the actual whiteboard rather than do PowerPoints.

YES!!!! I know those powerpoints with huge amounts of unneccesary tabs at the top with wanky titles. Took ages to remove them when the content was otherwise decent and I wanted to use one recently.

My major dislike of twinkl is that so much of it is pdf and has answers attached. The parents in the first lockdown would message in if their dc couldn't just stick their answers on the sheet and had to print it or view it and make their own docs or, you know, actually write stuff down at home.

The number of 'I don't have any pencils or paper' when we set even easy and enjoyable art tasks too! And we are in a relatively well off area.

For every parent who demands online lessons there's 5 others who are either struggling trying to work at the same time on the same tech, or who have very little at home to use. Like a lad in my class who is capable of using it, but vies with 4 other siblings in a busy household and just cannot get on with online learning.

I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks, whatever way the decision for Primary in Wales goes. It's 2 shit choices I'm afraid.

As someone who is cv (but not cev by a narrow margin) I object to the fact that our county also demanded without question that we work from our classrooms for the few days we were shut to pupils for. The kw kids were in the hall with TAs and teachers were teaching remotely and doing other planning and prep. But we had to be in person in case any parent complained that we weren't in. Despite the message being that anyone who can work from home should.

I use twinkle for my SEN nurture class. They are lovely but reading ages vary from 0-11 and who has the time to differentiate for that?! I paid for a subscription myself for this class.
Yr 10 and 11 it's exampro all the way.
Yrs 7-9 I find something I've used before, or TES, or if in desperation I create from scratch. I create a "skeleton" PowerPoint for each SOW if there isn't one already though - with links to videos, BBC Bitesize quizzes, interactive stuff, PHet etc, each holiday before I teach each topic.
Really CBA this holiday though. We've been playing boardgames, sledging, learning to ride bikes, doing craft etc instead.

We've been playing boardgames, sledging, learning to ride bikes, doing craft etc instead.

That sounds so much more fun!! Do more of that!! Obviously I don't mean ignore school completely, but don't knock yourself out doing absolutely everything. It's too much. You need a break.

We've been playing boardgames, sledging, learning to ride bikes, doing craft etc instead.

I was going to say that sounds so much more beneficial to you at this moment .