The Sixty-First Republic - Covid the gift that keeps giving even in the last half term!

[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.

Oh dear piggy?

@MsAwesomeDragon

We have our own schemes of work, written by us as a department. We have 3 tests a year, and the schemes of work pretty much just tell us what topics to teach before each test. How we teach it is completely up to us. We mostly stick vaguely together with the parallel sets, or talk to the higher/lower sets if there's likely to be movement soon.

Almost exactly what I had when I started teaching in 1991 (late entrant even then), except we had half-termly tests. Marks were given to HOD who input them On The Computer, which was kept in his cupboard. My first few years of teaching were blighted by the newly introduced National Curriculum and the dept’s habit of giving any new teacher almost all bottom sets until they had proved their worth.

Local secondary to me has been told by PHE to close entire school after 17 positive cases!

Parents United Page says 2 secondaries in Durham went wholly online today.

Oh mine was a more specifically rule related FFS jan. I have given up cataloguing the nonsense at my place.

Checking in before my last day in school as a student teacher. Last day tomorrow and I'm feeling quite wobbly. I've loved being with my mentor and class. Need to write thank you cards tonight but cannot even begin to write without welling up!

Not in Durham or anywhere close. An otherwise low area.

Oh dear. It's going to be November December over again.

Don't say that Rule. I don't think think can cope.

Ok so my one prediction for September is that all schools will be told to use daily testing instead of isolating. This will not go well. Although I did see something about 16-17 yr olds being vaccinated by then.

@MsAwesomeDragon

We have our own schemes of work, written by us as a department. We have 3 tests a year, and the schemes of work pretty much just tell us what topics to teach before each test. How we teach it is completely up to us. We mostly stick vaguely together with the parallel sets, or talk to the higher/lower sets if there's likely to be movement soon.

Same, although we put in a half termly test in the longer autumn term. We each take responsibility for the assessments for a yeargroup.

This year we've been working exclusively on OneNote with Y7 although I'm doing pie charts at the moment and getting them to work on paper, then upload a photo to OneNote. It's been quite a lot of extra work, but on the whole has worked quite well in terms of keeping their notes and work organised (and having less to carry in their bags). We use a combination of exercise books and OneNote for the other year groups.

So do all your kids have devices at all times then? Ours work exclusively in exercise books or on worksheets. I can't really imagine working electronically with them in the classroom, it's so far from my experience.

I've done 3 cover lessons today. 2 were maths (one was A Level further maths, who were an absolute dream!!!). The third was art, and that was so removed from my experiences as a maths teacher I couldn't really believe it. When I set cover, I have to think of 3 different things they can do independently, and leave instructions of "do this worksheet for 20 minutes, then MOVE ON, they won't be finished". The instructions for the art cover was "they're an independent bunch, they know what they're doing with this artists study, please ask them to sanitise any equipment the decide to use". I had no idea what any of them were doing, but it all looked beautiful. And they did indeed just get on with things themselves.

This will “cheer everyone up” (also if anyone finds any half finished bottles of booze from yesterday afternoon, or did Site take it all?):

mobile.twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1407385635762081809

I know. Isn't it just so naff??

What WAS that?
Why do children need to sing nationalist songs?

That's not cheering me up. I shall inform my children that I do not want to hear that at all, ever.

MrsAd Your experience sounds just like mine. I can't get my head round people on twitter who have kids working entirely on one note. It sounds wonderful but we just don't have the ICT infrastructure. How does it work with devices Brie?

Thank you, mathematicians. Much appreciated.

What the fuck did I just listen to?

And why? We're not gearing up for a Festival of Brexit are we?

@Namechercanged

MrsAd Your experience sounds just like mine. I can't get my head round people on twitter who have kids working entirely on one note. It sounds wonderful but we just don't have the ICT infrastructure. How does it work with devices Brie?

It's a private school so they are all supposed to bring a device to school, preferably an iPad (it's on the equipment list for starting school).

Class notebooks are set up on Microsoft Teams, then I put all lesson content into the content library (and answers into the teacher space). I tend to do worked examples in full so I know the kids have got a properly written example, and I link a youtube tutorial for each lesson too. Then I snip the worksheets into the page, leaving a space for kids to put the answer.

I'm traditional and much prefer exercise books - watching the kids zoom in and out on their devices looks like far too much hard work to me! But not having to carry armloads of A4 exercise books has been a revelation. It's also been much easier to look at their work when I'm writing reports.

Assessments are done on paper, then I scan the paper copies when they've been marked and self-reviewed and put them into individual OneNotes.

Of course, it all goes tits up when the school wifi fails....

So do all your kids have devices at all times then? Ours work exclusively in exercise books or on worksheets. I can't really imagine working electronically with them in the classroom, it's so far from my experience.

Ours don’t have devices and mostly work in exercise books or workbooks. Too much trouble re: the device issue with our lot!

@namechangedyetagain

Checking in before my last day in school as a student teacher. Last day tomorrow and I'm feeling quite wobbly. I've loved being with my mentor and class. Need to write thank you cards tonight but cannot even begin to write without welling up!

Is it that time already!? You have done well, name! Always hard to say goodbye though!

@namechangedyetagain enjoy your last day :)

You've made it namechanged. Congratulations and enjoy your final day.

It's a private school so they are all supposed to bring a device to school, preferably an iPad (it's on the equipment list for starting school). So far removed from my school!!! We've managed to get them all bringing their own pens, pencils, rulers and whiteboards, and calculators are on their equipment list but we have to use pp money to provide calculators for some pupils (I have 3 kids where I have to keep their school provided calculators in my classroom because they would lose/destroy them if they went home). Asking them to bring an iPad would be miles beyond their financial reach.