The Fifty-second Republic - Beware of Education’s ides of March

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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.

Do not give the staffroom password to non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

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. Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask.

I'm pottering in the kitchen trying to refill the freezer. I need to eat proper food.

I ahve ants in my kitchen! In March! Wee bastards.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

Partner and child are at the park. I'm stressing about maths. It's windy and shitty, I've been outside loads this week, I don't want to go out today.

I can't do this with mixed age group classes. Too many different gaps, none of the children will get a good go at catch up/keep up, and all the teachers will be spinning plates all over the place. Badly.

We have 4 x mixed year 3/4 classes. So if it weren't for covid, we'd be swapping for maths - 2 x year 3 classes, 2 x year 4 classes. That's what we've done in the past.

I either need to be able to have another adult in my class, or to be able to have bigger 'bubbles' so we can swap some classes around. Probably neither are an option.

I feel for you. We are in a very similar situation and lack of available TAs. You can only do what you can until the situation improves. It makes me cross that there has been all this talk of catch up, but nothing given to help us deliver it. Our classes have got larger due to adult shortages. Could you sort some holding tasks whilst you work with groups?

Rule - have you got extra laptops that have come back into school so you can put some on Numbots/Rockstars while you teach another group and have a group doing something independently??

At the moment, behaviour says no!

I've just completed the NCETM evaluation docs for year 3 and year 4. There are clear gaps - stuff that they've been not taught at home twice. I think I'm going to teach them all the same stuff for a bit. Go back to year 3 beginnings and work through their exemplification powerpoints. I know it's not supposed to be a scheme of work, and I wouldn't treat it as such, but for the next 2 and a half weeks, I can get through the key fractions stuff. I can easily challenge my 3 kids who can actually do it, with other things.

Gosh it must be a lot warmer in your part of the world piggy (which I know isn't far from mine!)** than mine if there are ants evident today?!

Work out where they're coming in and sellotape it up!

@cornercupboard

Gaslighty twat is obsessed with laminating, yes. I've seen plenty of blood too, this week for first aid, they are all running about like crazies and have forgotten that school shoes on slippery playgrounds are Not Good. All my little special soldiers are all over me like a rash too, Beachhuts, wanting cuddles etc. I do love them to bits but I know that if last term is anything to go by when one was in tears because her mum had organised a sleepover for 5 of them and told the "don't tell the teachers", there is similar outside of school stuff going on. Gah. And meh.

Our class could be the same 😂 I totally get where they're coming from. I have been lonely in lockdown too. It's hard not seeing people outside your family.

For you, Piggy - Father Ted

Rule - the reason why everybody I know is saying it’s a waste of time to do maths assessments now is because there will be so much they’ve forgotten at home but won’t take much time in school for them to start to remember it. So in your situation I’d be tempted to do 2 or 3 or more very short fluency activities throughout the day eg counting stick, one of the newer Numberblocks episodes, Flashback 4, a couple of questions from a diagnostic questions quiz, Rolling numbers etc with the sole aim of recapping year 1/2/3 work. Doing that between now and Easter would make a real difference in reminding them of the things they used to know but can’t remember at the moment.

My face looks horrendous today.
Spots on my chin and really dry skin on my cheekbones. Not sure if it is stress related or mask wearing related. My hands are also chapped as a result of all the hand washing and hand gel I’ve been using this week.
I have had no motivation today to do anything apart from watch tv and play Lego with ds.

why everybody I know is saying it’s a waste of time to do maths assessments now is because there will be so much they’ve forgotten at home but won’t take much time in school for them to start to remember it

Yep! End of unit assessments would have been much more useful - shorter, less scary, and well... just more actually 'in-formative'. But there you go.

I've been doing Fluent in 5 this week, which is pretty good for this stuff.

Had another look - am going to do a mix of the fractions shiz from WR, and the NCETM stuff between now and Easter. Keep going with a combo of Fluent in 5 and a few randomly chosen questions from previous units as small bits during the day.

Also going to use some of the assessment questions from the ready to progress DfE docs. Not as an 'assessment', obv.

Christ.. that's taken me hours to sort out in my head - without even doing any actual planning. Haaaaaargh.

Got a meeting a week on Monday to look at how I'm going to adapt the curriculum in terms 5 and 6 to account for any learning time lost in lockdown. Erm.... I'm going to do a load more art, I've spent £300 on art supplies!! Oh, and DT.

Not sure that's the answer anyone will want. Haha.

Ha born: that does look like me!

I have no idea where they have come from other than I brought in a cushion from outside . It has now been exiled outside again.

In other news :

www.tes.com/news/teachers-asked-covid-contact-trace-over-easter-break?fbclid=IwAR14B0nF_mbij4UfvDnoXZVEOFVoBsYByH7StnwDDwtTk1c2T3vkdhB3E8A

TAGs are stressing me out so much!

My Y13s not so much -got decent, solid evidence for them. Will get a decent set of results there.

Y11 on the other hand......not so much. Set 4/5, could probably do quite well but they are extremely lazy and even now, are not pushing themselves in class. Lack of revision for the last mock. Explained their classwork can form part of their grade, yet many just sit there doing nothing/refusing to try

Honestly, I despair! Also trying to put a whole faculty plan together and feel like I'm wading through treacle. It feels like the exam boards are being quite vague about exactly what evidence is required.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot in the same place as you with the maths. We paused where we were up to in wr when lockdown 3.0 started and I jumped about doing objectives that I felt parents might be able to help with and 'less important' bits. We're now doing arithmetic and loads of times tables. I'm aiming to get their pv, formal methods for four operations and tables knowledge in the best place I can. I hope this will give y5 something to build on. The gaps and the spread in the class are huge and that is with just one year group.

Wonder what would happen if Heads simply refused to do the contact tracing?

So here's another Schools Week article, John Deeks' analysis of what's happening with LFT results (last week's):

www.tes.com/news/schools-reopening-strange-lack-positives-school-covid-tests

All ours have done one LFT and we have heard nothing about them doing another. For one year group they last took one on 5th March....

I hope they have one a week in school until Easter. I think the uptake will be better with students in the building. Once kits go home the rate of testing will be lower. We haven't had any delivered to hand out to students yet.
DH workplace told him to order some from my school. Not sure where that directive has come from.

We had our delivery of home testing kits for the students (3 tests per box) two days ago.

@SquashedFlyBiscuits and @RuleWithAWoodenFoot sorry your maths is so hard! Most of my class (y5) are freakishly good at maths but it does mean the gap between the lows and highs is huge!

We have been finding that the stuff we taught remotely doesn't seem to be there for all of them but when we do quick small group interventions it comes back quickly. It's almost like they don't connect things they learnt at home with things they are learning in school.

We're not assessing formally until the end of next week/start of the week after so I guess we'll see then how much really has gone in.

Just out of curiosity, what's the rationale behind having 4 mixed age classes when you could have 2 y3 and 2 y4? I thought mixed classes were only really used if you had 15/45 children in a year group.

The school had it last year with 3 classes in year 3/4. By Xmas we had such a child number change, that we could do two year 3 classes and one year 4 class for maths. First time mixed year group for years, so took a lot of work to get parent 'acceptance' in September. This year the ks1 numbers and year 5 and 6 numbers meant mixed age group, so decision made to go with mixed age group for the whole school. I don't mind it at all - apart from maths.

doing objectives that I felt parents might be able to help with

We should have done money and time, and got them to work on times tables. Hindsight is great!

My dc is yr4. They carried on with wr during online learning. My friend decided not to do anything but the zooms with her dc so no wr or oak or other stuff. The zooms were more like mental maths... If she did in fact do this her dc will be 8w behind having missed, multiplication, division, fractions etc. She would have been better to do the wr than the zooms.

I’ve got my LFTs and haven’t yet remembered to do one.... or remember but can’t find a slot where I’ve not eaten or drink for 30 mins..... can you drink water in that 30 mins? I mean I know they’re shit anyway...

I have a few who admit to doing none of the wr. Only a very small number did it all.

We pre recorded chapters of the class book for the term. I asked them many, many times to listen to them as we would do writing based on it when they were back at school. Only 3 or 4 had listened to all the chapters.

Hey ho!