The Challenges of Blended Learning
Sarah Fitzgerald, Teacher Advisor from ICT Services has been supporting schools with this challenging issue and has shared below some real-life scenarios. She has also made suggestions regarding managing Parents Evenings in our current context.
One form entry and everyone is isolating: The teacher is also working at home delivering the same lessons through MS Teams /Gsuite using a mixture of powerpoint, maths/literacy subscriptions such as White Rose maths, websites, DfE resources plus live webinars to the children at home and then setting them assignments or homework which they mark online. Added advantage is online evidence to demonstrate to OFSTED . Feedback from staff and parents on this approach has been really positive.
Two form entry: If you have a split year group, in two classes then you will still have one teacher at school teaching their class. While the other class isolates at home the teacher would be doing the above.
Two form entry with a poorly member of staff who is unable to work:
Solution: A
The teacher from that year group who is well, delivers a live teaching sessions to both classes regardless if they are at home or in school. The teacher records it just in case a pupil can’t get to a computer. For those at home the children can still talk to their teacher as they would do in school via chat.
Marking work:
Children's could be uploaded and set as an assignment for those working at home and homework online for everyone. If TA support available, they could be tasked with uploading the materials to the online class team. Marking would be done half online and obviously some in books.
Solution: B
One school uses the phase leaders to set all of the online work for the school and the teachers just teach in the classroom whilst online to both pupils in school and at home.
A FAQ from one school:
If a school sends say Y7 home to isolate, the Y7 teachers deliver online lessons etc. If only sending half of the bubble home, they are then having to deliver F2F and online at the same time
Answer: Deliver the lesson live to everyone at the same time and record it: those is school receive face to face teaching and those at home can also see it at the same time but it will be online. If they can’t get to the lesson the recording is available for them to watch when they can access a computer.
Welford on Avon Primary School has kindly shared with us an example of their communication to parents:
'This message is for those people who are working at home today. Everything that you need for today is in the files section of the Teams page.
If you child would like to log in at 9am to follow the lessons then that is perfectly fine and I shall be on screen and they can listen to the teaching input for every lesson. If they would prefer to hear the input for each lesson and work at their own pace then I shall be free at 9:30am to talk them through the day.'
Parents Evenings
Schools in contact with Sarah have indicated they are intending to do their parent evening online.
A guest can be invited to a MS Teams meeting via their outlook calendar and a meeting created just for that parents without them using a child’s log in details. That obviously requires parents to share their email addresses with school. This approach ensures a private meeting. Sarah recommends schools do not create one Team meeting and invite parents in and out of that one meeting, due to potential issues re chat conversation threads and crossover of parents.
There clearly can't be a 'one size fits all' approach to the challenges of Blended Learning but we are happy to share examples of good practice from schools as above so please do share with Sarah or any member of the School Improvement Team.