@Mr. Vine Eye That is interesting.. makes sense to have them two days a row, to keep down the spread of germs. My district has suggested half days for each of our two groups, which worried me with the idea of students sitting where the other group sat half an hour prior.
Keep me posted on how it goes, and the steps taken to protect children. I can share those suggestions with my fellow staff and principal, and implement some in my own classroom.
@Mr. Vine Eye That is interesting.. makes sense to have them two days a row, to keep down the spread of germs. My district has suggested half days for each of our two groups, which worried me with the idea of students sitting where the other group sat half an hour prior.
Keep me posted on how it goes, and the steps taken to protect children. I can share those suggestions with my fellow staff and principal, and implement some in my own classroom.
When/if we go to full time then they’ll all be in 4 days a week, closed on Wednesday.
My son is year 9. We are key workers so he has had a place at school since 18th March. His year group finished two days early as their were not enough teachers because they were self isolating. We had a discussion with him at the start and told him that if he does the work set online then he can stay home. If he messes about then he is back to school. We have no intention of sending him and we dont like to make threats like that but on the whole work has been done and we have only had to remind him a few times about what we said at the beginning.
During this we have had regular communication from his school. We got a letter emailed yesterday telling us about the years who are returning and that they are not expecting years 7,8 and 9 back now before September. I was surprised at my sons reaction. I thought he would be happy. In fact he isn't happy about it. He is missing his friends, they play on ps4 together but have not physically seen each other, he misses his lessons as online there is a lot of recapping what they have learnt previously and they are not learning new stuff quick enough. This is not the reaction I expected from a 14 year old 🙄
Scottish science teacher here. We're going back August 15th. Classrooms are being rearranged so kids are as far apart as possible, with 10 kids per class. Teachers are being advised to wear masks. They're not sure how to handle break time and lunchtimes for either kids or teachers yet, but they have until the middle of August. We can't eat in our classrooms in science, and our staff room is quite small, so we're not sure what's happening. Kids will be advised to not touch banisters or door handles when they move from class to class, and apparently we're being given disinfectant to clean desks between classes. If you're primary this might not be too useful for you, but it might give you an idea. Holyrood is more organised than Westminster, at least.
Not a lot of humour to be found in any of this, but I did smile today when interviews with a few year 6 kids were shown on the BBC. The only complaint one girl had (it had to be a girl) was that she was sat too far away to be able to whisper to her friend in class.
@Skylarks. Thanks for the article, I didn't see that one yet! I love the detailed description of how the different subjects/activities and transitions look. I forwarded it on to my principal.
@pyra88 Is your school hiring lots of new teachers? Or did you normally have class sizes of 10? In the US, and in my school district, class sizes at the elementary average between 26-30.. and some high school classes like band or art are 40-60 students at a time.
@Blue Onion 60??!! WTF! How do you even begin teaching that?! In Scotland practical subjects (science, PE, techie, etc) are legally limited to 20, non-practical subjects (maths, english, history etc) to 30, but in my school are often far less. So we're not hiring more, as it's not a dramatic cut to class numbers in most cases.
The current plan is kids either alternate days or weeks e.g. week in school, week at home. Currently we're not video teaching, not all our kids have the capacity to do that, and not all staff do either. We're assigning work and the kids are uploading it to Class Notebook, which we then mark. We're having occasional video meetings with S5/6 (17 to 18 year olds) to answer questions, but that's it. Kids are pretty much teaching themselves with material we've made up. Under the proposed model kids would continue this on their home days. There's already an issue with workload for this, as marking on Class Notebook takes ages, and prep time for 20 kids takes the same as prep time for 10 kids, so unions are still hashing it out.
On a side note, I don't know about you, but I have never been so bored at my job!
Posts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-52906290
My son is year 9. We are key workers so he has had a place at school since 18th March. His year group finished two days early as their were not enough teachers because they were self isolating. We had a discussion with him at the start and told him that if he does the work set online then he can stay home. If he messes about then he is back to school. We have no intention of sending him and we dont like to make threats like that but on the whole work has been done and we have only had to remind him a few times about what we said at the beginning.
During this we have had regular communication from his school. We got a letter emailed yesterday telling us about the years who are returning and that they are not expecting years 7,8 and 9 back now before September. I was surprised at my sons reaction. I thought he would be happy. In fact he isn't happy about it. He is missing his friends, they play on ps4 together but have not physically seen each other, he misses his lessons as online there is a lot of recapping what they have learnt previously and they are not learning new stuff quick enough. This is not the reaction I expected from a 14 year old 🙄
If you're primary this might not be too useful for you, but it might give you an idea. Holyrood is more organised than Westminster, at least.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
The current plan is kids either alternate days or weeks e.g. week in school, week at home. Currently we're not video teaching, not all our kids have the capacity to do that, and not all staff do either. We're assigning work and the kids are uploading it to Class Notebook, which we then mark. We're having occasional video meetings with S5/6 (17 to 18 year olds) to answer questions, but that's it. Kids are pretty much teaching themselves with material we've made up. Under the proposed model kids would continue this on their home days. There's already an issue with workload for this, as marking on Class Notebook takes ages, and prep time for 20 kids takes the same as prep time for 10 kids, so unions are still hashing it out.
On a side note, I don't know about you, but I have never been so bored at my job!