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

I said that over New Year - concerning if footballers are spreading it among themselves; they work outside! Dh thought I was naive and said they would probably be illegally socialising too (he's not a sports fan )

Enemy I'd like to know that too.

CallMeAngelina I think you are right. We are stuffed either way. My head has so far said limit of 15 per year group KW class and that our LEA has said this, but I presume it might change?

We've had lots of Teams issues. So hard to be tech support when you can't see what they are looking at!

DH had his new shielding letter which says that ECV people's wives/husbands are safe to go to work..... based on what evidence?

With apologies to math teachers (and possibly science) who I know for a whole range of valid reasons are very pro exams, I am not sure MN is a very representative view . Their DCs tend to be well equipped , well educated and supported and (as one who has lived through sec ed and HE threads) very high achieving. Parents views on MN are very skewed in favour of terminal exams. The government has actually done a successful job -since Gove- of not crediting , or looking into , any alternatives. I threw things at the telly when Gav or someone (probably not him, let's face it !) said a while back that we needed to look towards 'other successful countries' education systems' when talking about keeping schools open and mentioned Finland etc when they ,in reality never look at what they do because they don't ideologically approve.

Twitter is also a bit of an 'exams are great' echo chamber as the knowledge curriculum advocates dominate on there. there was an English teacher (whose bio says 'Gove fan') who was making a lot of really quite hyperbolical noise on there the other day about exams being cancelled and that I thought was odd for an English teacher. We have a generation now of teachers who have never known anything else as teacher, or as pupils themselves and that, I guess, is why a plan B seems so difficult to come up with ,a nd why Scotland has not found Plan B so difficult a concept. It's also , to an extent, why so mnay pupils can't ;earn independently, want spoon feeding and why teaching styles for some can't adapt to a different way other than the didactic chalk and talk, I guess.

On a related note, the DfE guidelines for remote lessons say teachers should avoid 'excessive' internet research in lessons. What is excessive? Why should we avoid it?? Is research bad?? Is it because someone thinks that is lazy?? Is it again about 'busy work ' for teachers? (but not the students I note who just sit there and get told stuff) Shouldn't we be seizing the opportunity of, for once , having IT at their fingertips and teaching good research skills?

So many proclamations at the moment are not evidence based at all but just 'what Nick thinks' or what a MAT CEO thinks, or what EduTwitter thinks.

Or what Gove and Cummings think...

piggy I agree that we've lost sight of how to assess without exams. I think maths and science do find it tricky to assess without them. Coursework now for our students would be so badly done because none of us know what we're doing. We will undoubtedly use some kind of internal assessments to teacher assess.

avoid excessive research I guess this is an attempt to stop repeated tasks like "find out about the Romans". (which some depts were using in March).

Did you see the MAT CEO lauding his testing set up to allow virtual parents evening to take place with staff in school. Tweet since disappeared but lots of comments about "control" and staff being in the building as unnecessary.

To my great shame, I taught someone who is now a twitterer who loves Gove and the "knowledge curriculum".

I still don't know what a knowledge curriculum is though.

Primary colleagues what are your thoughts with regards to giving feedback to children?

I have just 'marked' some book reviews.

One was excellent. It was from a child who is 'just below' though with poor coordination skills so quite obviously mum had done nearly all the work.

The rest were dire but some were from children where the parents have limited English, others are obviously struggling to type and format and I don't know how much support they are getting at home. When I ask children to make corrections they hardly ever get done. The same piece of work just gets handed in again.

I feel I need to be really positive about whatever gets submitted as I want to keep their morale high so they keep doing some work. However, it is hardly moving them on and helping them progress.

Anyone else having these issues?

Anyone seen how unions have removed their s44 letter for support staff as they are unable to work at home?

Heard some fellow TAs says the unions jumped the gun and put jobs at risk but not sure that's true just that we cant use a letter saying were happy to work with KW/V when we are saying that is unsafe (if we put the letter in now).

On the subject of footballers, soem were definitley socialising but ti does remind me of teenagers : 'but we we were i our bubble miss!', 'but we were outside miss!', to which we will soon be able to add' but we got a negative test, miss!'

I ahve never trusted this 'the outside is OK' message. It's overplayed and came from Jenny Harries banging on about end to end behaviours again re the Champions league and Cheltenham , in order to try to protect those big businesses...

Saying that footballers 'must ahve caught is socialising' is a bit like the whataboutery about teachers and schoolkids!

random, are you enar Lincoln? What's the weather like?

Sorry Mr random!

Did you see the MAT CEO lauding his testing set up to allow virtual parents evening to take place with staff in school

wow. Words fail me.

@MrsHamlet

To my great shame, I taught someone who is now a twitterer who loves Gove and the "knowledge curriculum".

I still don't know what a knowledge curriculum is though.

Does anyone?

@Piggywaspushed

Did you see the MAT CEO lauding his testing set up to allow virtual parents evening to take place with staff in school

wow. Words fail me.

A knowledge curriculum is where you learn about riding bicycles. A skills curriculum is where you sit on a bicycle and try to figure out how to make it go.

It's like trad v prog. People trying to create conflict and 'sides' with most teachers just getting on with the job in the middle.

Squashed, that's an issue that I've potentially seen in my son's primary fb group.

Some parents seem to have laboured over a WR maths day that was v hard and spent up to 4 hours on just that task. Kids seem to have been in tears and parents too!

I think that a) there needs to be guidance given to parents over expectations. Eg If the child can't do it with some help, leave it and move on, consider coming back if they're happy to and you can.

B) some way of asking parents to give indication of how much help; independent, supported, very supported.

C) decide if you don't want mistakes to be corrected eg I'm not changing spellings. Might prompt corrections.

Some Parents may think they need to hand in perfect work.

@noblegiraffe

A knowledge curriculum is where you learn about riding bicycles. A skills curriculum is where you sit on a bicycle and try to figure out how to make it go.

It's like trad v prog. People trying to create conflict and 'sides' with most teachers just getting on with the job in the middle.

And pretty much why it doesn't work in sen. Sen need practical experiences and skills. That's how they gain "knowledge".

@SquashedFlyBiscuits

Primary colleagues what are your thoughts with regards to giving feedback to children?

I have just 'marked' some book reviews.

One was excellent. It was from a child who is 'just below' though with poor coordination skills so quite obviously mum had done nearly all the work.

The rest were dire but some were from children where the parents have limited English, others are obviously struggling to type and format and I don't know how much support they are getting at home. When I ask children to make corrections they hardly ever get done. The same piece of work just gets handed in again.

I feel I need to be really positive about whatever gets submitted as I want to keep their morale high so they keep doing some work. However, it is hardly moving them on and helping them progress.

Anyone else having these issues?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this last night.

I'm getting loads of work in from the children I'd expect to get loads of work from. There is a point to me marking it beyond just making the child feel good because their parents don't speak English, so can't correct things. I don't mind doing it, but it seems a little work heavy when I could spend that time talking the lower children through related calculations or something.

We are doing:
Half hour meeting in the morning to start the day - I do a register, we have a chat, I read them poem of the day, I then go through the lessons for the day and remind them that they don't have to do all of them. I'm partly speaking to their parents at that point. From today I'm also going to use that half hour (high turn out of kids) to teach the reading session - only 10 mins or do.

They have a video for English (made by us), which links to a Talk for Writing booklet that we've printed out and given them. That way they just write in the booklet.

Reading video done by us. Maths WhiteRose video + some 'alternative' maths for certain children who have been directed towards it.

From 12.30 - 2.30 we're doing group feedback/teaching for maths. based on ability.

Then I mark anything that has come in - snip tool the picture into a notebook doc, draw all over it, snip tool it back into an email and reply. Sounds long winded, actually isn't - but I want to do maybe 2 pieces of decent work a week with that for each child, rather than 10 for one child every day. I have also this week made a whole class feedback vid (about 4 minutes), where I addressed the issues that around 10 kids had.

We then do story time at the end of the day, which is half an hour of chatting really (plus small story).

I'm meant to be planning in the morning while they are working, but in reality I'm dealing with my own child.

It's sort of sustainable, but it's FULL ON. I can't work in the evenings like I usually do because my head is so full.

I'm also getting a lot of parents saying the kids are finding it hard. I've had to tell them that in class their children would only work for 20 minutes at the most independently, and for these kids in particular, they wouldn't be finished at all, and their spelling would be awful, and I'd find it hard to read their handwriting! What is coming in is perfection!

I'm going to start a new thread on this - maybe for home school primary chat, because it's quite different to secondary I think.

Hmmmm. So "teaching" then?!

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

I'm going to start a new thread on this - maybe for home school primary chat, because it's quite different to secondary I think.

Yes good idea.

MrsHamlet

Yes precisely what I think every time someone makes me think about the knowledge in the lesson.

Literally 2 years ago it was all about how each child had progressed in their learning (skills) in a lesson. Again, in some, it's revising and revisiting and practising.

Please do @RuleWithAWoodenFoot - lots of good points raised on here already, worth discussing.
excessive research - DS used to get lots of this as hw back in the day - we called it 'FOFO' - fuck off and find out!
Not appropriate for the end of a day at school. Perfectly reasonable when people are stuck at home, no trips. Children do actually have to roll up their sleeves and do some learning independently- they don't gain anything if we just spoon feed them non stop.

I used to be one of those shiny new teachers with ideas. I feel like a dinosaur cos I don't twit.
But I'm too busy planning teaching marking to twit.

Absolutely onehorse

I do think teachers need to look after themselves too and build in some downtime during lessons where kids find things out for themselves/ do stuff/ keep busy. In and out of school.

My problem is I remember teaching in the early 90s! So much less teacher input!

Gav mentioned knowledeg curriculum in parliament. He won't know what it is but it is what he wants us all to do, all of us, in every subject. Because Gove and Gibb told him. Not sure who told them!

@MrsHamlet

I used to be one of those shiny new teachers with ideas. I feel like a dinosaur cos I don't twit. But I'm too busy planning teaching marking to twit.

Me too!