Traditional schools, 30 pupils in a class with a range of learning activities depending on subject and teacher and pupil age, breaktime, playtime, lunchtime, clubs...all this ceased to be in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers quickly shifted to posting lesson activities on various learning platforms or printing packs and posting home. The … Continue reading What Is School?
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Here in Wales, we are into Lockdown 3…I don’t think that as the pupils left buildings back in March 2020, we foresaw that 9 months later we would still be working from our dining rooms and debating the pros and cons of synchronous v. asynchronous lessons. We have been in school for one full term … Continue reading Some Thoughts On Wellbeing During Digital Home-Teaching/Learning
It felt like as good a time as any to write again, it has been a while and to be honest the chaos of a Covid education is still looming over all teachers, parents and students. The changes come fast at the moment, the decisions that need to be made at school level and at … Continue reading Lockdown 3 (or is it still 2?) Week 1
Today the independent review of exams in 2020 and recommendations for 2021 was published in Wales along with a report from Qualifications Wales. It is half term, teachers weren't expecting it, but we have now been informed by the Minister that a final decision will be announced on 10th November (as we had expected) - … Continue reading The Future of Exams
I've not written in a few weeks, I've mostly not had 5 mins to collect my thoughts coherently enough to be able to put something down on the page! I've been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack with my girls a lot over the past week, they are somewhat obsessed with it, but I came to … Continue reading Education 2020 – according to Hamilton!
I am a supporter of comprehensive education, I believe that all children have the right to a broad and balanced curriculum regardless of where they come from or what their home situation is. In Wales the vast majority of schools are local authority controlled comprehensives, no multi academy trusts or free schools here. This should … Continue reading Comprehensive Inequality
Over the past 15+ weeks there has been a recognition that teachers need support to move to online, remote learning and that there is an important role for Government to help support that, as well as to supporting students and their families with the now very visible digital divide. As time has passed there has … Continue reading 2 Thoughts Going Forward
I am writing this today as I have been thinking more and more about our blended learning offer come September. Now, we all want nothing more than for September to herald a return to full classes and full timetables in schools across the land, but we also recognise the challenges that we have to overcome … Continue reading What about the low-tech kids?
I have been inspired this week by all the tweets and retweets and comments that followed a blogpost by the ever-awesome Barri Moc (@barrimoc) where he considered the issues of online learning supplied by some schools and some staff from a pupils point of view. None of the comments were hostile, (nor had they need … Continue reading Learning, Teaching and Schooling
Today I led our virtual 15MF via Teams. This form of informal professional learning has been growing in our school for over 2 years, a real grassroots movement at lunchtimes. We have discussed all sorts of teaching and learning strategies, research, ideas, themes and so on in that time and today was no different, looking … Continue reading What is our “Gold Standard”
