Lockdown (And Beyond) Hatchlings

[viggy]

We're getting six tasks a day via seesaw (2 literacy, 2 maths, 2 other) which I think will suit BM better than a weekly grid. Being able to get comments and feedback from the teacher will make a big difference too, or at least it did when completing homework on Seesaw.

No video or live lessons here, they wouldn't even allow a phonecall instead of a parents' evening.

[Smunder Woman]

Oh my god, Dutchie. I feel absolute fury for you. OF COURSE he’s not a full time parent. Wanker.

If I let her, Pete would just live in pyjamas forever. Who cares?

I wouldn't even call him a "single" dad. I reserve that for parents on their own that do that majority of the child rearing, and I include in that child and life admin and emotional lifting, not just showing up

Agreed.

[Dutchie]

Thank you all for your reactions to my colleague's nasty comment! I have dreamt up 100 different reactions to it myself, ranging from calm and explanatory to downright furious but I think the best reaction is no reaction. The worst thing is, he's always been one of my favourite colleagues and he confides in me about his disastrous relationships. I'm now getting a vague idea about why they're disastrous...

What wildly different expectations all the Hatchlings' schools have! Uploading 4 assignment a day would break me!! A friend of mine teaches at a school up north (in the UK) with a lot of immigrant families where the parents are illiterate and they don't own any internet devices. She's really struggling to teach them and has pretty much zero expectations of many of them.

[sally maclennane]

I get quite irritated by the focus on devices as the panacea to home schooling. Our council have done a great job in getting ipads/laptops to kids and it certainly helps massively but there's so much more needed - parents have to have the time to help which as we can all see is nigh on impossible if you work. Then there are families where parents don't have the confidence or motivation to help, where there are other children to look after, other family members to care for, where kids don't have a room of their own, or a desk to work at, or a printer to use. I get that schools can't be entirely hands off but piling on pressure about what's expected will just stress kids and parents out, and will cause some to disengage entirely.

[Ruby]

I get quite irritated by the focus on devices as the panacea to home schooling.

Yes! And live lessons. There's no evidence about how effective they might be. And you don't have to be 'disadvantaged' to struggle with the technology to have (e.g.) three children streaming 5 live lessons each all day, every day.

Our families are really struggling to organise their kids lunches within the prescribed half-hour. Live timetables make it really inflexible, in a situation where we should be encouraging flexibility.

[Smunder Woman]

I'm also not sure live lessons are that productive. I mean, we can't get uni students to engage, and I can't see younger ones being much different

[Cerise]

This is currently doing the rounds:

[Kleio]

At the secondary school here they say children should not be in their bedrooms but a communal area of the house.

That’s fine for one child but anymore than that? How’s that meant to work with live lessons and desk space!

[Ruby]

I'd feel free to ignore that. It's not practical. I think it's just a way of saying, "make sure your kids are actually doing it". Probably sent out by some ambitious assistant head who hasn't got their own children.

[Ismee]

I have Han upstairs in her room all day. She has live registration in the morning and in the afternoon and they all keep their cameras switched off but use the chat function. I get her to come downstairs for breaks.

Z and TBL get 4-6 tasks a day to complete which then have to be uploaded. Z gets on with it mostly but TBL needs my input. They have one recorded lesson to watch which is basically just 10 mins of the teacher explaining the task. As of next week they will have two live zoom classes a week each.

I found it really hard to help them, mark year 6 work being handed in on google classrooms, phone children who hadn't registered from my school and attend a couple of live lessons the other day.

When I have to go into work, Mr Is does home school from 8-10am and then gets on with his job.

TBL didn't get round to his maths or handwriting task yesterday so I will try and do it with him today.

It's a nightmare. I am very lucky that my SLT are great and very supportive. Also my colleagues are mostly lovely and they are very helpful to those of us who are trying to home school at the same time.

[Suzi.Q]

Yes, my sister’s family cannot be described as disadvantaged by any stretch but they’re struggling a bit with the home learning as my BIL is working full time, my sister is a teacher and expected to deliver live lessons and the three kids all need devices to do their home learning tasks. Funnily enough they don’t have 5 laptops / iPads.

[Ismee]

A friend lent me a laptop and H's school have lent her one which means Z and TBL can share my one. We would be struggling otherwise!

[smalex]

The only reason I would appreciate Live lessons is that his attention might be deflected to what is happening on the screen for a period of time, rather than on me, and in part because it might feel like more of a shared activity than ploughing through everything alone. It's just so so difficult to concentrate on even fairly basic work tasks like responding to emails when I'm the main focus. W occasionally does some maths via zoom with my parents (and I realise I'm very lucky to have engaged parents who are able to do this with him) and even though it'll be going on in the same room as me, I'm about 200% more productive. I get more done in that 45mins than the entire rest of the day. It's not as if W has any specific learning difficulties but between understanding the questions, trying to access googleclassrooms, asking me constantly things like 'how do you spell', or what's 3 x 7 (even though he knows), telling me he's hungry, asking me what's for tea, pointing out the pigeon in the garden, I just end up distracted every minute or two . I get it, he's gone from a busy classroom and friends around him to a living room with one adult with her head in a laptop, it must be boring.

I agree technology is absolutely not the only bar to learning, but its a practical issue for loads of people and could be fairly easily (in the grand scheme of things we're having to do to cope with the pandemic) have been fixed. One family at our school have 4 kids in 4 yrs and last time had one mobile phone to use. I think they've now got a laptop also (but also now the eldest is at secondary so he's using it for the live lessons a lot of the time). Our school have also said they can't now print out work packs for people who need them because of the pressure of teaching the number of kids they have in plus trying to attend to the online stuff.

Anecdotally the families i think are most vulnerable don't seem to actually end up at school that much either. One of the mums of one of them (who is loving, but home life is very chaotic, money is difficult, she's not really academically confident herself, her son has enormous anxiety issues, and (shes told me) he's doing work from yr 3 even though they're in yr 5) just piped up on FB yesterday to ask 'what this google classroom thing is' . None of the kids I know (its a small school, you get to know things) of as being pretty vulnerable are in school.

[Edith Bacon]

A and E are doing things more or less how Is’ H is doing it. They’ve been told they need to be dressed and have a neutral background in case video is required but are expected to have video off as the norm.

The communal area thing probably comes from a good intention but isn’t at all practical. E was in an online lesson with someone sitting next to a sibling in their dining room and she said it was really hard to concentrate because of the cross talk coming from them.

[Ruby]

I had to teach live lessons from home when it snowed last week and I had to answer the door twice. I had to tell the meter-reader to do one.

[sally maclennane]

A and E are doing things more or less how Is’ H is doing it. They’ve been told they need to be dressed and have a neutral background in case video is required but are expected to have video off as the norm.

The communal area thing probably comes from a good intention but isn’t at all practical. E was in an online lesson with someone sitting next to a sibling in their dining room and she said it was really hard to concentrate because of the cross talk coming from them.

Yeah, I think the suggestion of a communal area is possibly linked to safeguarding.

[Ismee]

We have to have two adults in every live lesson.

The vunerable families at my school are definitely not forgotten about. In fact we're opening an extra year 6 bubble next week because there were two students in particular who staff were worried about who they've managed to get in.

[smalex]

I don't necessarily think they're forgotten about, but one way or another, they're not there. I think in one case (the mum who'd seemingly only clocked onto google classrooms existing on friday afternoon) it may well be anxiety about the risk of sending him (particularly now numbers attending are much higher, shes very anxious about it), but I don't actually know if it's that or a lack of space or what. The bars to him getting any meaningful education in the next few months seem massive. Middle class parents are, as ever, much more likely to weigh up the risk and decide to go for it and to ask and expect access and/or more help.

[olive]

This is currently doing the rounds:

I honestly don’t know how M’s teacher has coped doing a full day live with her class. (Y4). They all shout over one another at the same time constantly. I’ve had to bollock M for walking around the house with his iPad during a live class like into my bedroom or bathroom when I’m not even fully dressed.

Our principal sent out a list of asks to the kids directly asking them to be dressed in uniform, in a quiet space and on time for classes which I think helped more reluctant children who’d be likely to ignore their parents.

Last week T was one of 3 children in his class in person, everyone else was virtual. The mix has been really interesting.

[Luce]

Our one live lesson per day has been a really useful anchor point, something to focus on/aim for. It is making a huge difference. I’ve no idea what it does academically but it feels like a big change.

F does his all in his bedroom because that’s where his desk is. And either both T and I are in our office whilst Theo plays down stairs or either one of us are downstairs with him. Our office shares a wall with his bedroom so we can basically can do not much more than putting our head round the door every 15 minutes or so. From next week, Felix has to agree to have his camera on. I think it’s actually really rude that he hasn’t been doing that. He’s not thrilled about it ‘because no one else does’.