Classroom sizes...this seems too large

[Wow168]

I’m a school direct trainee. I’ve been observing and the school U.K. at do lessons as a year group...my confusion is how is a teacher able to appropriately differentiate for sen learners amongst 120 students. What if some have anxiety and can’t speak up etc.

Surely doing classes of that size is chaotic for the students. I just don’t understand how they could learn effectively? I know I’m only a trainee and shouldn’t be sat here acting like I’ve done thjs for years, I’m really not.

I just don’t quite understand how this number of students would be beneficial for anyone, there’s going to be a ton that fall behind because they’re not getting that focused help. Amongst 120 learners, the barrier of online learning is tough enough this is just, I’m not even sure how to word how confused I feel here. Also no they’re not divided into smaller sets later in the week. This is it

What age are we talking about? Really it depends on how many staff are needed for key worker provision. We are teaching classes in normal class sizes of up to 30-32 online with breakouts for TAs and SEN learners but we have very small numbers in school and are staffing that with SLT and non-teaching pastoral and support staff. If we needed teachers in school for key worker children then online lessons would have to be delivered to amalgamated classes. I can see why primary schools might be doing online lessons to whole year groups. It’s not ideal so I’d assume schools wouldn’t be doing it that way if they were able to staff smaller groups. Have you asked the school why they have arranged it this way? They may not have much choice.

Have I got this right?

For remote learning, there are 120 children in the 'lesson'?

Is the work set the same? We have 105 children in our year group, and the same lesson is delivered to all (in smaller groups admittedly, although that's sort of irrelevant - any more than 4 or 5 in primary school and it's chaotic anyway). We then direct children to the appropriate work for them. We also do intervention groups/1-1 support if needed. Some of it is emailed, some of it is scaffolded from the majority learning.

I don't think there is an agreed correct way to do this right now, it's emergency education. SEND children are going to be losing out, especially if they don't have the support at home, as are children who are working at a more advanced level.

Also, there are 4 teachers in my year group - we're all doing the online thing a bit differently according to our own classes and our own working environments. So it's not even consistent in a year group or in a school.