The Forty Second Republic - Lockdown 3 online learning struggles continue

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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

Once again the news about the DfE scrapping lf tests instead of isolation is in the Guardian only and no other news sources- trying not to get my hopes up!

The journalist did seem to have a very detailed knowledge of what was to be announced, how it would be justified etc though?

@VladimirCutiePutiPie

This is now much parents value teachers:

One class closes due to positive case. Already two staff members have passed away.
Parent of a child who has tested positive and who also works from home: Can the older sibling come to school still?

Omg

Some of it is brilliant and I appreciate that it was all put together quickly I’m just not sure I completely buy the our curriculum has been designed by experts and was quality checked line.

I don’t mind the format of the stuff I’ve seen. It makes a lot of sense for a prerecorded video lesson even if it isn’t what pupils are used to in class.

Next week's white rose lessons for year 3 have no resources with the premier membership.. we don't have time to make maths vids as well as everything else. Going to have to use Oak I think. Eek.

My child has had some oak stuff set for her, but she prefers me talking through the white rose power points - she gets to use my xp pen, so that's a win.

To be fair - for science - oak Academy is quite good for lower sets. It goes reaaallly sllloooowwwwlyyyy and repeats a lot. And to be honest the odd picky pedantic "error" is not a Biggie for lower sets.
But for top sets, where I really want mental models correct if they go on to study science at a higher level - well the odd lesson only is fine. Prefer Seneca.

KS3 science seems ok so far. It's just KS4 I'm picky with. And KS2 actually (that Im using for my nurture yr7 sets) is ok.... But I feel I have to correct a few things.

I've been playing with teacher made tonight to turn pdfs into things that the kids can edit as we are getting a lot of call for things they can just do without printing.

It looks useful but there will be so many kids who just won't have handwritten anything since late December.

Even using white rose stuff and asking them to write their answers down like they would in class has had parents emailing asking if the work can't just be done on screen cos they are busy working.

rule is that because white rose haven't made them yet? Fingers crossed they appear!

We're getting a lot of requests for work done on screen too. Not great for anyone really.

NEU graph has been updated

Good. Those graphs have made me feel happy... iyswim.

Like I said, I might be being picky, but a lot of the MATs involved in this stuff set themselves up as valuing knowledge & cultural capital.

I wouldn’t expect it to be perfect. For obvious reasons it was put together very quickly. There are bound to be some mistakes in it.

@EnemyOfEducationNo1

NEU graph has been updated

Looks the same. Still don’t get it 😭

What don't you get? It's possible to quote per 100,000 rates per day or per week, as long as you're clear about which. This is presumably per day, but they should have said.

Look at the way all our, but not the general pop's, rate's dip around half term!

If I wanMt supposed to be going to bed I'd look it up on the NEU website,,presuming it's there?

Because it doesn’t match the per day data given by the DfE, Jan.

For example on 2nd Nov the percentage of teachers off with confirmed covid was 0.8% or 800/100,000 but they’ve got it as 400/100,000.

The data only shows teachers off with confirmed covid, so the next day 0.8% are off with covid again. Some of those will be new cases, some will be the same teachers as the previous day, still off isolating. Some who previously had covid will have gone back to work so the rate of teachers off remains roughly the same.

But you can’t claim teachers who caught covid and featured in yesterday’s covid figures in today’s figures. So how are they working out which of the teachers off were a brand new case that day?

Ok, yes I hadn't looked st the actual spreadsheets, apologies.

I have noticed that a) it's the "spikiness" of the lines which show it's not a rolling average for 7 days and that b) the scales are different on y axes - teachers goes up to 700 per 100,000, the TAs and other staff goes twice as high. It is all a bit cobbled.
Hmm

@DrMadelineMaxwell

I've been playing with teacher made tonight to turn pdfs into things that the kids can edit as we are getting a lot of call for things they can just do without printing.

It looks useful but there will be so many kids who just won't have handwritten anything since late December.

Even using white rose stuff and asking them to write their answers down like they would in class has had parents emailing asking if the work can't just be done on screen cos they are busy working.

@DrMadelineMaxwell, we have this problem as well, with PDFs being sent. Not sure how old your pupils are, but I've found a long-winded and tortuous way of being able to type onto a PDF.

I use the snipping tool to snip the PDF on screen, then I paste it onto a Powerpoint which has been oriented to A4 portrait/landscape size. Then I get ds to insert text boxes wherever he needs to type an answer. I've taught him how to save the Powerpoint as a pdf before he returns it to his teacher. His handwriting is pretty poor, and even worse when written onto a PDF using a graphics tablet! He still handwrites any maths work, but all humanities, English comprehension etc. is typed onto the Powerpoint.

Only snag is that the snipped image of the PDF sometimes moves around on the Powerpoint as you're inserting text boxes, but we just make sure it's all lined up before it's sent off.

His teacher has asked him to write in pencil for Maths and present his work neatly, but I really don't have time to be printing then photographing/scanning and uploading, so he's going to continue inking onto a blank squared paper pdf to show his working. I wouldn't want to mark it though!

Too bloody late for me to figure out 😂

The graphs are claiming to show coronavirus rates, I took that to mean new infections, esp as it's against the rate in the general pop.

Attendance figures just show... attendance?? We cannot know rates of the general pop not attending their workplace.

Oh dear. You're right, this doesn't make sense at all....

But as long as they're comparing like for like, in this case no. of teachers with Covid at the time with no. of general population at one time there is no problem. So long as the general population data points are for current cases too then it's fine.

That data was being kept and I've seen it being discussed eg number of active cases rather than new cases.

I should be sleeping but feeling stressed weirdly. Maybe because I haven't turned laptop on since leaving work and worrying what I'm going to find tomorrow

That'll be it honey, you need to get yr mind off the treadmill.... good luck.

But the DfE doesn't have rates of infected teachers, just, for any one day, how many are off due to:

Suspected case
Confirmed case
Close contact of a school case
Close contact of a non school case
Other reasons

I thought it was confirmed cases but 🤷‍♀️

If you want to write on pdfs open in Microsoft edge and there's a draw function at the top.

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/19/ministers-set-to-halt-plans-for-daily-covid-tests-in-english-schools

I've been saying that sen has the highest rates.

Roughly 4 tas to every teacher too so v high rates of ta infections.

Also the hidden vector of transport, taxis, where drivers take other jobs during the day.