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

My laptop is dead. It's with IT support.

I'm having the night off. My brain feels like it might explode soon with all the stuff on the to do list 🤯

Regarding the random placements, one of my schools hosted trainees from several providers and they all had different dates. One provider did 3 placements where placement 1 and 3 are in the same school, placement 2 in the middle is at a different school and then they can also have a contrasting week/fortnight placement if they wanted to look at Special Schools, enhanced mainstream, 6th form, and other settings.

I've also mentored Teach First trainees doing their short placements and they would vary during the year depending on what their main school could release.

Why do we teach reading? As in, whole texts that we make children write answers to questions about?

Whoop whoop! I finally have my vaccine appointment for a week’s time! Feels like I have been waiting for ever (especially as it seems to be the mask exempt pupils who seem to be in everybody’s faces and like to shout across rooms, which puts me on edge!)
We currently have 3 positive cases in school, so I know it’s not fully gone away.

Oh the relief!

Well after a day at home sleeping I feeling more human. Haven't felt this bad since the flu.

Rule I find it hard that we never get to finish books in Guided as we have to move on. Half our children don't read at home and haven't got parents who'll read to them so no love of books yet we don't have time to give them that love when we have to keep rushing through texts.

It is the weekend now, isn't it?!

Why do we teach reading?

Er....? That's one of the easier 'when am I ever going to use this in real life?' questions isn't it?

The government is now trialling testing instead of isolation in workplaces too.

Look at the list of things you have to avoid if you're testing not isolating. Small, poorly ventilated indoor spaces....avoiding talking loudly....opening windows

www.gov.uk/guidance/daily-contact-testing-study

Ermmm. and education!!

Oh FFS. What is wrong with them?

It’s like, do go to work, but you should probably avoid it if it’s inside with other people. How do they manage to write that advice without at least a couple of brain cells trying to put 2+2 together.

Meanwhile I have three times now spotted our intervention tutors huddled together with pupils in 1:1s with no masks on either party...

@Piggywaspushed

Meanwhile I have three times now spotted our intervention tutors huddled together with pupils in 1:1s with no masks on either party...

FFS. Anyone working one to one in my school is even more insistent on masks than the rest of us. We're pretty hot on masks in general anyway, but no adult would ever get close to a kid who isn't wearing one. If the kid they are working with is mask exempt (about 10 of them in the whole school) they sit further apart.

Our year 7 were all taken outside for an "assembly" this morning. In reality it was a proper bollocking by the head of year and deputy head due to their behaviour at break and lunchtime. The deputy head pretty much told them they should shape up or move schools!! Apparently this bollocking needed to be face to face as it shows how serious it is. My form came in saying "at least it's nobody from our form" and I had to break it to them that actually several of them were definitely involved in the extremely bad behaviour witnessed. Apparently there have been a few really horrible instances of bullying, and none of the other kids went to get an adult, which is why the whole yeargroup was included in the telling off.

My vaccine letter came today. Appt in a fortnight. Yay.

Our year 7 were all taken outside for an "assembly" this morning. In reality it was a proper bollocking

I think our year 7scould do with this. Honestly some of their behaviour at breaks and lunch is appalling.
If I’m honest a weeks worth of full lunch and break detention (breaks for toilet obviously) for the 20 worst offenders would probably fix it. Or go a long way to fixing it.

Congrats to appointment getters.

My ankle is sore - didn't go to the gym this evening as I think I'm suffering from walking to, from and around school yesterday. I was dosed up on painkillers so thought it was ok. Have gone back to elevating and walking more carefully when I have to.

Busy day at school tomorrow with much zone moving and stairs involved but nothing too onerous to teach and all pretty good groups. Then it's the weekend thank goodness!

@WhenSheWasBad

Our year 7 were all taken outside for an "assembly" this morning. In reality it was a proper bollocking

I think our year 7scould do with this. Honestly some of their behaviour at breaks and lunch is appalling.
If I’m honest a weeks worth of full lunch and break detention (breaks for toilet obviously) for the 20 worst offenders would probably fix it. Or go a long way to fixing it.

Our Year 7s have been particularly challenging recently too. It dawned on me they have barely had a detention between them and ‘behaviour points’ are not having an effect anymore. They’ve also rarely been around the older pupils so still seem to have the same mentality as they would have had being top of their primary schools. That and their sense of entitlement in the ‘classrooms’ that we enter and not the other way round. This is definitely a Covid measure that should not continue.

I’m finding them exhausting at the moment compared to all other year groups.

@DrMadelineMaxwell

My vaccine letter came today. Appt in a fortnight. Yay.

Oh this is marvellous! It has been scandalous that you have had to wait to so long considering other parts of Wales are currently vaccinating 18 year olds. So so pleased to read this.

Have you seen the Staffroom thread about a SLT limiting how many safeguarding reports people can make?

I finally have my “Pay me some of that lovely catch up money to read to the Year7s/ possibly do reading interventions” meeting tomorrow morning. Followed closely by writing up my appraisal as the deadline is the end of the day and my boss has to leave to get jabbed at 11!

I'm glad it's not just me finding year 7 incredibly hard work. I feel like such an idiot struggling with them more than any other year group!

Er....?

Yes! I don't mean reading, as in decoding and some basic comprehension, I mean that stuff where we tear books/stories/characters etc apart. And I probably mean 'at primary school' too. So many kids are bored titless by it. They LOVE stories, they love looking at books, most of them love reading... but they just don't want to write answers to questions about the books. I think my class learn more vocab, more about inference and author choice etc, from just listening to me read and talking about books.

If I went to a book club, I would want to talk about the book, but I wouldn't want to write the answer to things like 'which word tells you that X character was cross in chapter 2?'

Saw something on Twitter this evening where a teacher was doing that show off thing about stuff they do in class. It was getting children to recall information from a specific chapter in a book. WHY? Lots of 'this is amazing' type responses, and I'm just thinking 'I don't get it'.

Meh, it's just a Thursday.

Deleted, Jan? What was that about?

Good luck with your meeting!

First jab for me today. Bizarrely, administered by someone with whom I volunteer locally on a Sunday... even though I drove an hour to the vaccination centre!

Our year 7 were all taken outside for an "assembly" this morning. In reality it was a proper bollocking by the head of year and deputy head due to their behaviour at break and lunchtime. The deputy head pretty much told them they should shape up or move schools!! Apparently this bollocking needed to be face to face as it shows how serious it is. My form came in saying "at least it's nobody from our form" and I had to break it to them that actually several of them were definitely involved in the extremely bad behaviour witnessed. Apparently there have been a few really horrible instances of bullying, and none of the other kids went to get an adult, which is why the whole yeargroup was included in the telling off.

I think our Y7 need a bollocking as well. Some absolutely appalling behaviour reported recently.

weeks worth of full lunch and break detention (breaks for toilet obviously) for the 20 worst offenders would probably fix it. Or go a long way to fixing it. That's happening as well as the whole year group bollocking. Plus 6 little bullies are internally excluded for 3 days. They did some pretty vile things to one of their "friends".

Oh that’s strange noble, and it’s been utterly deleted, I can’t even see the title now! I can only think that the OP decided it was too outing or something, although there were no identifying details unless she suddenly discovered that a member of her SLT was on here too?!

Or a troll?