Home-learning Support

RichardParker

OK this is probably more of a vent - it’s not having a go at teachers AT ALL. They are dealing with this crap too, and are doing the best they can. I have actually been quite impressed with DS’s school. They have very low expectations, though, and I’m not sure that DS is really learning much.

What’s becoming clear is that a lot of teachers - for obvious reasons - don’t have the sort of office administration skills that would assist at the moment in sharing and coordinating information efficiently. Our teacher doesn’t even know how to email an attachment - she’s young too - it’s not her fault, but just frustrating. She sent a link to the docs on Google drive thing but DS didn’t have access….

So today DS and I just sat in on the Google Meet and worked on a few units out of the Excel basic skills workbook. If this lockdown goes for much longer I’m just going to talk to the teacher about just doing that - no log-on issues -just work through the stuff with a pencil. I’ve got to sit next to him and do everything anyway -doing it online just makes it harder. Anyway - I’m just typing into the void…. Feel free to add your own vents - my luck DS’s teacher will be on here venting about annoying parents….

Heyho2

My kids teacher this year has nailed the online part. Last year was TORTURE! The teacher had poor tech skills and poor organisation, so bloody painful. There is a real skill to doing this well and not all teachers have it…

LadySybilVimes

Thankfully, our school (Sydney public school) is really good at all this. It’s been incredibly smooth. Everything gets uploaded onto Seesaw or Google Classroom at 9, we upload work back as we do it and teachers respond through the day. I think they had time to get organised early for this lockdown and it really shows. If I had to wrestle with technology at the same time as everything else, I would lose my mind.

LadySybilVimes

I forgot to write my vent down: the school saying “don’t stress! Just do what you can!” while the teacher keeps sending stuff back “Redo this, you missed the second page of that, please incude a drawing.” And that’s how I ended up doing two geography assignments and some mindful colouring last week. Because the kids were fed up.

PuddingPlease

LadySybilVimes

Compulsory mindful colouring sounds fairly counterproductive to me, somewhat ironically.

Did you get a good mark for the geography assignments?

LadySybilVimes

PuddingPlease

I haven’t heard back about my geography work. Hoping I pass year four okay. The year two teacher was suspiciously enthusiastic about my colouring. I think she may have rumbled me.

RichardParker

The whole thing has made me pay attention to his education. It’s a bit concerning, frankly. Anyone see the weekend Australian Inquirer about education- and how kids today are at least year behind at age 15 than they were 20 years ago? And that our students can be up to three years behind the top countries in Maths? The article was blaming the shift away from direct instruction to inquiry/discovery-based learning. I can definitely see, particularly in the online learning context, the weaknesses of the discovery approach- a lot of it feels pointless and unstructured.

PuddingPlease

RichardParker

I haven’t read the article but I’m always a bit cautious about explicitly conservative or progressive media outlets writing about education policy, there can be a lot of culture war subtext even to really innocuous stuff. On the progressive side, the fuss when the feds were proposing a year 1 phonics check a few years back seemed insanely out of proportion to what was being proposed. And for years, anyone reading The Australian could have been forgiven for assuming that phonics was not being taugh at all in any public school.

Did they address the fact that there are likely more students completing high school now than there were 20 years ago as more and more post school options require students to finish school first? That seems like the most likely candidate for a fall in grades because a lot of student used to move into other areas at the end of year 9 or 10.

In terms of competing with top countries academically, I don’t really see that as a problem. Countries like Japan (for instance) have extremely competitive education systems but the ramifications for a large number of their students are devastating and this is often reflected in their rates of mental health issues and youth suicide.

I don’t know much about the enquiries based approach though I must admit, I thought it was more for teaching humanities and science type subjects. How does it work with things like persuasive writing and maths? Has it resulted in significant changes to the curriculum?

squeekums

One time im glad our net can be patchy, no zoom here lol, as dd school said, we not only ones and a call is fine.

PuddingPlease

LadySybilVimes

Compulsory colouring for a grade 2? Just…why?

My kids get little weekly activities for art but they’re all strictly optional.

LadySybilVimes

DS1 starts weekly zoom catch ups this week and he has to be in his sports uniform. Seems ironic considering he doesn’t get to do any sport right now.

CallMeAl

PuddingPlease I don’t know much about the enquiries based approach though I must admit, I thought it was more for teaching humanities and science type subjects. How does it work with things like persuasive writing and maths?

So I don’t know for a fact that this is inquiry based but it sounds like it. DD was sent home work where she had to choose an object (lego brick, paperclip, whatever) and go round the house estimating and then measuring how many lego bricks or whatever things were. I tried to describe this to her before going off to work, and in typical fashion she forgot all of it. She called up her grandpa (who couldn’t see the page) and tried to describe it and he said just get a tape measure, so she did it all with a tape measure.

Next week’s homework was to similar with a ruler/tape measure. Could we not have fucking skipped to that instead of trying to decipher the many step complexity of choosing a random object and then faffing about trying to line up how many of it it was? Now in a class where they are doing this 9-3 then I can see how it would be an activity that gets everyone moving and provides some interest, but for doing at home while multitasking for work while trying to explain what it even means, and doing really a maximum of half an hours actual work a day - maybe we could just distill it down and teach them how to use a ruler in the first place.

I can see what they are trying to do, it’s probably how people first came to the concept of measurement bla bla bla. But I’m not convinced it changes any sort of end product and it definitely wasted my time.

I like the idea of problem based learning and inquiry and doing practical things rather than working through textbooks - in school. I mean they are there for 6 hours a day, textbooking for 6 hours would kill a kids love of learning.

But in this sort of scenario where I can’t keep her focused for more than 5 minutes and it takes all day to get 6 batches of those 5 minutes - just give me 6 5-minute worksheets for her to do and we’ll be good. At least it would only take me 5 minutes to arrange and I can spend the next half hour nagging, as opposed to currently where I have to decipher which activity they will do from which box, what materials they need, which mind numbing math game I’m supposed to play with her for half an hour, etc etc. It’s just not appropriate to home learning.

RichardParker

Yes, it’s the daily fascist, but it also made the point that there are plenty of kids getting to high school unable to read. My teacher friends say that’s true - IDK much about the different approaches either but - particularly for a kid like DS who just wants to learn - he gets frustrated with the fluffy approach- he wants to learn- he wants to be taught stuff- taught how to do things.

Yes- the enquiry-based approach is used for maths- as far as I can see it’s not that good an approach.

PuddingPlease

RichardParker

The Daily Fascist 🤣

LadySybilVimes

I’ve just walked away in frustration at having to take a photo of DS2, remove the background and insert it into a photo of a beach on Seesaw. Sounds simple but everything requires logging in to different programmes, figuring out how they work, creating images, downloading them, working out how to get them from one app to the other, inserting them, realising it’s wrong and doing it again. I’ve already spent the morning helping him write and record a weather report. Meanwhile, my FYOS DD is asking for help.

Grrrr.

I don’t know how kids whose parents are working or who aren’t computer literate or don’t speak English cope with any of this.

Chookas

LadySybilVimes

I wouldn’t be able to do it, and I’m fairly good with a computer. But I get cranky with it easily. I’d put money on it that there are about 3 other parents doing what you are, and the rest have thrown up their hands in frustration.

RichardParker

LadySybilVimes

I don’t think they do. It’s such a waste of time. Kids don’t need to know how to upload pictures to seesaw. They need to learn the content, which can be done with paper and pencil. They’d honestly be better off sending worksheets by post- or just investing in text books and working through them methodically, rather than this choose your own adventure haphazard rubbish.

I get so infuriated by it- makes me want to train as a teacher and start my own school

Gum-boots

Our school is using email to communicate the work (with multiple attachments), google classroom for extension work, reading on PM reader, maths on mathletics, zoom via the education website oh and reading eggs. It’s a fucking nightmare.

RichardParker

Gum-boots

It’s just so strange- have they not heard of books?

LadySybilVimes

DS2’s teacher rang today to check in and said, “I’ve had a look at his work and…. he’s doing his best.”

I guess that was meant to be encouraging?

AnnHiggins

i posted about this last year i think….but kids don’t carry the one anymore in maths? we were doing four figure subtractions and yeh….very strange method DS used. and he got it wrong. (i got it right the old fashioned way.)

and wasps aren’t bees - who knew?