The Fifty-Sixth Republic - Who is up for a game of TAG?

[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've spent last night helping dd write and practice a conversation for her GCSE Welsh assessment.
They will be weiting them in their lessons apparently, and the teacher will take them out of other lessons for 20 mins in pairs over the next fortnight while they spend lesson time rehearsing them.
Except she and her partner are scheduled to do it tomorrow, first thing.
Luckily I teach Welsh to my y6s and can cope with GCSE level Welsh.
Her pronunciation was terrible!

You're all giving me planner palpitations. We have a bespoke planner...

I don't have a planner...

@MrsHamlet

You're all giving me planner palpitations. We have a bespoke planner...

I have a planner somewhere. Does that help?

Do you have to record your planning in a certain format? Do people look at it?

So DS has broken his wrist - luckily not his writing arm (he’s quite sad about that!). First ever trip to A&E for him at the age of 14.5

They asked if he still went to ‘name of primary’ school which shows how often he sees the doctor

We're given a bespoke planner. No one has asked to see mine in years. This year's has been drawn in by my kids 😬

You've turned me to Sunday drinking with this fast and loose attitude to planners.

We do indeed have a set way to record planning - although it's supposed to be the case that schemes of work follow it, so we can just write "nitty gritty" and tick some boxes.
We're meant to write down the objective, a note about content, tick some boxes for assessment and differentiation, and make a note of homework.
I check new staff when I see them teach first time, and it should be checked in appraisal obs (all one of them!). Other than that, no.

You've turned me to Sunday drinking with this fast and loose attitude to planners. Sorry not sorry. I've been playing fast and loose with my planner for 15 years now. Not a single person has ever asked to look at it, I've never looked back at anything later, so I don't see the point of them (I do plan my lessons, but just don't record that planning in a planner). I did once get pulled up on having nothing written in my planner but that was an old arse hod while I was pg. I had joked about having nothing written down for the day, and he thought I was serious, even though I'd literally just told him what I had planned for one class that would have to be changed due to our TA being ill. He thought I was just not bothering to do any planning because I was pregnant

Personally I think it's bollocks.
With my specific job hat on I've told HT it's bollocks which may account for my seat on the naughty bench
With my specific job hat on, it's important that we follow the school protocol
🤣

I plan my sixth form lessons more thoroughly, tbf. But when I write ‘adding fractions’ in my planner for Y7, it’s generally not so I know what to teach but as a record of what I’ve taught. Otherwise I get to the next lesson and can’t remember where I’m up to!

I use my planner as a way of being able to see what I'm doing in the medium term. It's not detailed lesson planning but marking out the sequence of lessons and as noble said remembering where I'm up to.

If it's the first time doing that lesson there may also be a list of what and when eg. tasks and timings and what resources are needed.

At the minute I'm feeling pretty burnt out and trying to make lessons as straightforward as possible and trying to encourage some degree of independent work. This year has felt like I've been carrying my classes through and it has taken a lot of energy. I want to try and ease back a bit.

Sorry meant to say hope mini Carrie is ok!

I genuinely thought schools didn't still have that 'Ofsted could come and look at your planner' thing. My friend sits in briefings scribbling in her planner but I think that is her plans for the day ahead and so she looks too busy to be asked to do anything.

I write stuff on random bits of paper, my hand, a stray post it, junk mail, on my marking, nowhere... sorry Mrs H!

I do plan ... spend hours making resources/ppt. I'll be fucked if I am also going to make a note in a planner.

Hope carriejr is bearing up!

We have to record plans in a specific way and save them centrally. They aren't massively detailed - eg Maths for this week just says 'White Rose Fractions' and the LO for each day. I have no idea whether anyone looks at them but I find it quite useful to print the weekly sheet off so I know what I'm doing!

I only do full lesson plans for formal observations.

Just spotted your update Carrie - I hope DS is ok!

I hope Carrie jr is ok too. He may well feel like a celebrity at school tomorrow. One of my form has a cast on his arm at the minute and loves all the attention he's getting because of it. His isn't painful any more though. I hope your DS manages to get through it without too much inconvenience. He could always claim it's his writing hand to some teachers. I wouldn't have a clue if he was telling me the truth or not (but I'm also supremely unsympathetic and tell kids to just write messily with the wrong hand).

However, due to various things too boring to go into here, I have not yet re-used ANY planning from last year.
Same here @cantkeepawayforever .
We are 1 form entry so the work involved seems endless.
And HT has just introduced spreadsheet to input full lesson plan on for core subjects, to be inspected weekly.
I am curious to know how usual this is. And even if it is usual, I wonder how it has an impact on children's learning.

Carrie hope your ds is OK.

Desperately trying to plan before line of duty.

Ouch Carrie, poor lad. Well done to him for not breaking the writing side though!

I have no planning at all for tomorrow...yet. School (in their ultimate wisdom) decided to redesign curriculum in lockdown 1 and then moved staff around to different year groups. I am therefore teaching a year group I have never taught before at current school and 60% of the topics/texts have no planning from previous years. The term where all the planning was there and the topics hadn't changed was term 3 but we had to redo all that so we could remote teach it. My partner teacher is a rqt who needs extra guidance because his nqt was covided. I often work to or past midnight. I am very tired.

Also assessment policy, maths marking policy and methods of recording all non-core subjects were completed changed in lockdown 1 for the new school year...

I am an experienced teacher, in a multi-form entry school. However, due to various things too boring to go into here, I have not yet re-used ANY planning from last year. Luckily, I don't have to write and resource every lesson for every subject, as it is split across the year group staff

I am an experienced teacher too, but in a one form entry primary. Normally I love the autonomy and put up with late nights planning/adapting/making resources. This year has been a killer though, and I’d now KILL for the government/LA to produce SOW for the whole area/country to follow. They’d be crap, but at least I’d get some evenings free.

I hate following anything that someone else has planned for me. At my school, we don't use any schemes for any subjects other than R.E. We'll use the overarching ideas from White Rose in Maths in terms of overall coverage etc. but then do our own thing from there.

However, it's not as work-intensive as it sounds because we abolished any need for formal written planning structures a few years ago.

Daft question alert what exactly do you mean be SOW @Timeturnerplease ?
I know what it stands for obvs. But what info would it give you?
We follow a published 'topic order list' for maths. I don't find it takes much of the strain - I still have to break topics down to lesson sized chunks, write objectives and success criteria, create visual teaching resource, find (or put together) suitable differentiated tasks and challenges and detail it all on a lesson plan.
Would this 'ordered topic list' count as a SoW?

Our schemes have each lesson planned out plus any resources plus all the tick boxes done. Individual staff then differentiate for their classes.