The Fortieth Republic - Schools are safe but they are vectors so go online

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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

Miss lockdown 1 for the same thing.

@echt literally told DH this today as he was anxious about the lessons so he went too fast. I said 'think cbeebies presenter'😂

Teams now has breakout rooms. I'm so excited.

@MrsHamlet

Teams now has breakout rooms. I'm so excited.

Yes.... when I get a bit more confident 😊

Ok so I had a class who kept randomly unmuting themselves today so I tried to mute them all and they seemed to be able to carry on. Is there a way I can mute them without them being able to reverse it?

You can also add a poll to teams and they can click finished or not finished.

I'll have to write about breakout rooms on Friday when I have a free.

I'm pretty sure you can but I can't remember off the top of my head

You can mute them in the meeting options.

@EvilEdnasEnemiesOfEducation, agree with @MrsHamlet
Start with a teacher led intro, i also use classkick or whiteboard.fi to do whole class questions, usually recall from last lesson.
Bit of verbal Qs as i do input.
Then set them off on a task for 10 mins or so.
Get up, jump around( or go make a coffee and stretch) keep off the meeting until time is up
Also ( why i am quiet on here now) stay off tech at night. I’m on book 4 of 2021 already having had to quit my silly games on iPad habit.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

You can mute them in the meeting options.

Yeah that's what I tried to do but when I went back to check it was unchecked. It wasn't too much of a problem as reminded them about being recorded and that SLT could 'use this in evidence'

Would that work writing in class notebook do you know?

@monkeytennis97 If you create a meeting in the calendar, then go back into it and click on "meeting options", there's the option not to allow participants to unmute themselves.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation, thank you for the Desmos stuff. Had a play last night and showed the card sort function to a colleague today. She's transformed a paper sorting exercise on sampling methods to Desmos for us all to use .

@DreamingofBrie thanks! Will try this can I unmute them during the lesson to answer a question and remute them straight after or will they then be muted for the whole lesson?

I used breakout rooms today with my Year 13s. Was very useful.

I clicked on the icon with the big person and little person next to each other and it then asked me if I wanted to populate rooms myself or have Teams so it randomly. I put randomly and it told me with this many students, it would put pupils in rooms of 5. When I wanted them back, just clicked on the icon again. Very pleased.

Only issue was one group needed more time and I struggled to put them back into the same rooms. Will have a Google later!

@Monkeytennis97 you can mute the whole class, but then you have to leave teams to allow them to unmute ( as far as i know, would love to be wrong about this)
So for my ridiculously needy y7s, and my very naughty y9s, before the meeting i go into settings

@Loshad thanks x not sure if I could cope technically with leaving teams and then going back in whilst they presumably are all waiting for me.. is that what you meant?(sorry being a bit slow here).

@Monkeytennis97 that is what I mean, I don’t know of a work round other than that, sorry.

@Loshad ah ok thanks, maybe when I get a bit more confident 😊

(I think it's awful that teachers aren't being given more training on all of this!)

I just saw a tip on twitter to write three answers in the chat and the kids like the correct one. That’s quick to organise!

*Loshad thanks x not sure if I could cope technically with leaving teams and then going back in whilst they presumably are all waiting for me.. is that what you meant?(sorry being a bit slow here)

Yes, it's easy, and the class will still be there.

As for training, could the school set up a dedicated Teams PD for the whole school so staff can ask questions and share ideas? This is what we had at my school and it saved a heap of time and effort. We had one hour's training ( not the school's fault) and this was invaluable.

[quote Monkeytennis97]@DreamingofBrie thanks! Will try this can I unmute them during the lesson to answer a question and remute them straight after or will they then be muted for the whole lesson?[/quote]
I think you can unmute them, but I've never tried that control .

Sitting in bed eating brie. Day off tomorrow to get smallest dc set up on remote learning as he's on his own for Friday. He's very chuffed with inking pad, but the pervy glove doesn't fit 😅.

I think one of the issues is a lot of the tips on Twitter etc are for Teams. Radio silence about Google Classroom.

Noble that's a great idea!

Brie there are some collections of stuff pre made on desmos. Tomorrow I'll try and find the link.

I know I am spoilt (sorry) but i have 2 screens at home so share one for PPT etc and keep teams main screen on the other. Really useful as the kids can do hands up when they have finished a task and I can see if I need to put an extension question in the chat. Would work using a phone too.
Going to try the breakout tomorrow. Thanks for the tip

No such luxury as two screens here but we do all use our phones to monitor the chat at the same time.

For whomever asked before: