Thread for primary teachers about remote learning - figuring out what works!

[RuleWithAWoodenFoot]

Hi,

Just what the title says really. This is ideally for primary teachers to chat about remote learning - what works, what isn't working and so on. I'm thinking about trying to teach 7 year olds who spend 20 minutes trying to find the hands up icon, or those who just like to moo down the mic.

What are you providing? How does it work? What is feedback from parents like? Is it sustainable?

It’s really interesting to see how schools are so different! I do a morning meeting on TEAMs, quick chat and explaining home learning. Our afternoon meeting is longer and lets every child share what they did that day or any other news. Then throughout the week we have 20+ 30mins interventions of 2-5 children that aren’t teaching the home learning but trying to fill in gaps from last year. Thankfully we get Thursdays off to plan. Out of my 29 children I have 15 signed up to TEAMs which was optional but heavily recommended and about 7 in school working through home learning pack with the TA. As it always is, the children who could most benefit from targeted interventions aren’t the ones who have signed up. I’ve spent this week really focusing on how to use TEAMs and really impressed with my Y2! Most can now mute/unmute! Next week I’ll show how to upload assignments. Might just ask for the English as Maths is purposefully very straight forward.

Im an NQT so it’s been mad with my main placement cancelled and now 1/3 of this year is online! But I’m still enjoying it which says something haha

Things I am worrying about this week:

• engagement of most children

-safety of some children -my differentiation and sen support, plus GD stuff, none of that is as good as I would like yet -how I can improve things for my eal children who are having to cope without a lot of adult support

• my own child

I could go on...

Starting to feel really quite overwhelmed with balancing my own workload with supervising my children. And I hate the pressure we’re putting on parents as I fully understand how hard it is to balance it all.

We set 3 main pieces of work per day (eng, maths plus 1 other)
Plus lots of extras - reading comp, reading log, SPaG, times tables etc)
We mark 1 main piece of work per day, but I review the others to see how they got on and go over in live sessions.
Lots of children doing absolutely nothing, no language/ tech issues, just parents CBA.
Lots like squashedfly had a go but totally overwhelmed and are pulling away. I'm calling parents and saying prioritise reading and maths.
I get 1 or 2 decent pieces of work per task. Other than that it's crap (half a sentence when we asked for 2 short paragraphs/ submitting a pic of classmate's work as their own).
I'd much rather focus on children's learning needs and do small groups, they might actually get something out of it then.

Lots of children doing absolutely nothing, no language/ tech issues, just parents CBA.
Lots likesquashedflyhad a go but totally overwhelmed and are pulling away. I'm calling parents and saying prioritise reading and maths.

I can see there being huge issues in the future. Thr DfE will come down on schools because it's our responsibility to ensure all children engage and then it will end up coming down on parents because they are the ones who have the legal responsibility to ensure their child is educated.

Essentially, a child not accessing either the work or live sessions that day is akin to an unauthorised absence and I could see that being pushed in the future.

Of course the children doing nothing are the ones who can least afford to fall further behind.
It's very tricky to know where that balance of responsibility lies. I suspect that some of the parents of a lot of the children who are on Zooms and submit work occasionally think that they are working full time. So I'm doing a phone around to all of these to say that contribution is patchy, do they need some 'help'. That could be - referral to SLT for a device or place at school, or me suggesting that if parents are struggling they prioritise (reading, maths). But I don't want to be in the position of having to email parents regularly to tell them what their child has/hasn't done. Surely it's their job to work that out!
I have one reasonably high ability child who is submitting incomplete or empty work (as well as other issues), I am now providing her parents a regular update of her activity, but I can't keep that going for ever.
Honestly, it would be so much more beneficial for the children if I could send home packs and do small groups. They need support with
times tables, grammar, handwriting, telling the time....
And after this the behaviour will be even worse than it was last term (and that was dire!).

@OnehorseopenBobsleigh
Honestly, it would be so much more beneficial for the children if I could send home packs and do small groups.

I've been keeping small groups on Zoom after the input. The rest of the class will go off to complete the independent task and that group will look at something specific (not always related to that lesson) with me. Would it be possible to do something like that?

@Iamnotthe1 That is a great idea. If any of those children actually turn up next week I'll give it a go!

I finally got a child who had only watched the maths video all week to try the worksheet. She's not bad at maths, I think it was a case of no close adult supervision. Today there seemed to be a general improvement in what she sent in, so I wonder if an adult actually looked a her Seesaw and was like "errr why has your teacher told you three times to do the worksheet and you're still not doing the worksheet???"

Generally though, they seem to be flagging a bit. I still have high engagement generally but it's amazing how fast the art comes in and how slowly the maths/literacy.

So, I've had work from 5 children - the same ones who were handing stuff in before we limited it to 2. So almost a pointless thing, except we have a reduced marking workload.

Today was hardcore in terms of online stuff and my own child. The kids in my class were all posting sad face emojis and 'I'm lonely' type comments in Teams chat, so we just did a load of talking about TV for an hour instead of talking about work. Seemed more important.

Any ideas- I teach year 5 but have a child working at about year 2 level in maths. Child in school, but I'm not always. We use white rose, I think we're slightly behind their schedule but not much.

What's working well is to send the child year 2 videos and make sure the equivalent worksheets are printed. Theres a TA nearby to check, but child has whizzed through them this week (plus loads of extra worksheets that show good understanding) so I'm going with two videos and worksheets per lesson next week. That will mean we'll get through all the year 2 division stuff about the same time as the year 5 division stuff is done.

Now, when we finish division, year 5 moves on to fractions. Years 2 and 3 do not. What do I give said child then? I'd rather have the maths lessons be the same topic, especially if this child is in the classroom with others doing year 5 maths..

Maybe I'm overthinking it and I just go with whatever year 2 (or 3) are doing.. with headphones on and at separate tables are they really going to notice that the others are doing?

I have a child like that, but more end of Y1/beginning of Y2.

What works for us (and I asked White Rose people their recommendations during a webinar and they came up with same suggestion) is doing exactly as you say. Doesn't matter if topics don't match as Y5s may have more/less than the younger ones. He just follows Y2.

Anyone else finding children at home are cherry-picking and/taking their own sweet time and/or simply not doing what you have asked.

Example: set a lesson on Google Classroom. Video attached, suggestions of things at home they could use to help, clear instructions on activity. 3 children "handed it in" but nothing attached so no idea how they did or if even did it. 4 didn't show up at all. 2 handed in vague efforts that I would have made them go back to improve if we were in school (no amount of prompts or suggestions get them to do that at home.) 1 handed in a good try. 2 sent messages along the lines of "we read today and did PE with Joe." 1 handed in work from last Tues that they had done today on a totally different topic than the work they did yesterday.

None are even pretending to do foundation subjects.

Meanwhile, we are getting increasing numbers of children returning to school, inc some where it is debatable if they should be allowed, but "we have space" says the head.

And the ones who are in - some only do mornings, and then they tell us how they go round each others houses to play.

Gaargh!!!

@Lancrelady80

I have a child like that, but more end of Y1/beginning of Y2.

What works for us (and I asked White Rose people their recommendations during a webinar and they came up with same suggestion) is doing exactly as you say. Doesn't matter if topics don't match as Y5s may have more/less than the younger ones. He just follows Y2.

Ok, thanks.

They don't seem particularly bothered doing different things so we'll see how division goes (not sure said child currently has any concept of division, unless it is very concrete) then I'll just plough on with some other year 2 white rose.

Mine are quite good at handing things in. I think it helps that Seesaw is very child friendly and they (or possibly their parents) are a bit obsessed with clearing their to do list. If it's not good enough there's a send back feature which I used a lot last week! They learnt quickly to include capital letters if they didn't want their work to reappear!

Hmm I might take my quite good at handing things in comment in.

I have 18 children at home.

So far today 12 have handed everything in, and today was quite straightforward so I've had more than usual. for example, our afternoon lesson (which lots of them like to do first) was an oak academy music lesson so all they had to send back was a comment on which part they enjoyed.

@AFallingStar
That's a high return rate by my standards.
Some of my class have received their laptops now. They've contacted the school to say 'what do we do with it?'. I think I'm tasked with getting them up and running.
I'm not sure if anyone checked whether or not they have broadband.
Another fun week ahead!

@onehorseopenbobsleigh I am having this issue too. I've done so much tech support over the phone. Often, the children are the best English speakers in the house. Managed to get a 14 year old sibling on the phone yesterday which helped. However, 14 year old is now facing the responsibility of support their little sibling whilst trying to manage their own online learning. Myself and my year group teaching partner spent ages on zoom yesterday trying to work out how we can make things as accessible and engaging as possible but this is really hard when we have only had a 2 hour remote training session on the platform we are using.