The Sixtieth Republic - One half term to go - just need to survive Sports Day and Activities Week!

[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 for school staff to let off steam.

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. Finally, upload your covid test results twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Colourful semantics for children who can't get sentences sorted out.

I don't know how you primary teachers do it. Hats off to you.

I'm eyeballing my marking. Brought it home on Thursday but haven't don't it yet. Everyone is out the house apart from me and it seems a waste of an opportunity to work when I can just enjoy the peace instead 🤣

Yes. Partner has been 'doing the allotment' all weekend, by sitting on his arse watching telly or playing on his phone, but now I am working, I need to look after the child because he must go to the allotment right now. Apparently.

That's very annoying rule. I need to do some marking now. I've literally done nothing school related all week, which is lovely. But I can't put this marking off any longer

I planned the week's maths yesterday, today I'm on writing. Only got to plan 4 lessons, but sorting out the scaffold etc takes me ages.

I didn't do any work until yesterday - I needed the week off.

I like timeturner's suggestion, name.

It depends on how much time you have.

Can you use a DT/Art lesson, where you model and then they follow instructions, to make something?

You take pictures of each stage.

Then you make a sheet, where they have a picture and a blank space for every stage - and they write the instruction in the blank space?

Scaffolding can be the starter for each instruction, on the sheet, or gaps (you probably want them to fill in 'first', 'second', 'next' and so on,), so a sort of close/heavily scaffolded, set of instructions.

The real strugglers can simply sort the instructions that you have already done and cut into strips, into order. That, alone, is a challenge for many.

The fact that they've done the activity the instructions are for first, plus pictures, will support a lot of the class.

Cloze- not close.

And, of course, model the hell out of the finished activity.

Do the first sentence together. Get them to verbalise the next instructions. Send that group off. Model the next sheet, with gaps. Send them off. Model and then work with the re-orderers.

And you could do a grammar lesson on adverbs like first, next, etc. to hammer it all home.

(But that might be a bit beyond year 2, and might not work in your school).

Colourful Semantics is a fantastic approach.

I have to take Primary 1 tomorrow and I am dreading it, I much prefer older children!

I was photocopying a crapton of worksheets when the teacher very nicely told me they’ve never done one as they’re play based. My goal is to make it to 3pm 🙈😭

Christ, that would be my nightmare.

The one time I covered reception properly, the whole school ended up covered in green paint and the toilets in KS2 got flooded by runaways. I was deputy head at that school

Ahh, I love Reception! You'll have a great time, @DollyMixtureLulus! They'll be all eager to show you things and talk to you and hang out with you! 🥰 I do miss teaching Reception. I had, I think, my happiest teaching years in that year group.

I love Reception too-lots of scope for learning through play and less of an emphasis on bollocks like ‘fronted adverbials of time’ and ‘expanded noun phrases’!

I don't know how primary teachers do it - the thought of reception brings me out in a cold sweat. You are superheroes.

rule, that is a good story!

Luckily, two year 6 boys from my class had volunteered to come and help. They literally saved the day.. and possibly some lives.

I'm going to try to start and finish all my reports in one day tomorrow. I've got 9 hours. There are 2 I'm going to leave until just before the deadline - child was away since September and only reappeared 4 weeks ago, and I've got a new starter from 3 weeks ago - which only leaves 20 to write. I know, lucky!

Going to do 2 an hour on the hour. Any 'spare time' will be spent roaming the school to get my steps up. I always start taking 40 minutes, end up at around 20 mins. I feel like I know this crowd pretty well, should be OK.

There’s no way I could cope with reception.

No amount of “cute” could possibly make up for the chaos a group of 5 year olds can create.

I struggle with Year 7.

@MrsHamlet

I don't know how primary teachers do it - the thought of reception brings me out in a cold sweat. You are superheroes.

Agreed.

Have taught whole class recorders to year 6,5 and 3.

Could just about cope with year 6 and 5. Year 3? The longest 30 minutes of my week!

People always presume I'm a primary teacher, I just couldn't do it.

I struggle with Year 7.

Same, they're so needy. I can't cope with one 4yo so always astounded by primary teachers. Your patience levels must be high.

Properly laughing at I was deputy head and whole class recorders

I am partly looking forward to it, it will be definitely different!

Year 9 and above are my favourite years.

I like years 7 and 8 (except my current year 7 who are feral). They're generally still quite keen and/or biddable. I do like sixth form though, which I didn't have for years while I had a young child and a hod who didn't like me. Now I have a year 12 and a year 13 class every year, one doing pure maths the other doing applied. I love it. Don't like all the marking though.

I don't think I could cope with primary teaching. I have done Rainbows and Brownies for years but am hour and a half a week is more than enough of children that age. And you don't tend to get the badly behaved ones choosing to come to Brownies (we have had a couple, but never more than one at a time). My mum used to teach nursery and omg they were cute but chaos. She had the added complication that most of the class had English as their second language so she was constantly teaching vocabulary that most native English speakers would already know.

Year 10 and upwards for me please. I'll teach all the naughty boys together as long as I don't have to teach littluns.

I used to think I was definitely primary, but now I have my lovely secondary job, I’m not so sure! But I sure would love an opportunity to go back to the primary I used to work in, and straighten a few of them out.....

I'm primary but you wouldn't think it to meet me. I reckon id fit in much better at secondary. I never venture lower than Yr 4 and also look at reception teachers with awe.
They're so bloody cheerful!!!

noble, don’t get yourself banned because of current dialogue on your thread, will you?