# data[].attributes.body
WWW
- GC is a good centralised and consistent way of contacting and setting work, sharing links and resources etc.
- online platforms like chrome composing apps have allowed us to set some distance composing work and results have been promising from KS3.
- we've started to try using Google forms for some listening work tasks at KS3
- pupils seem quite positive about the tasks and ideas we have been promoting when theh engage with us and give feedback.
- Year 10 have been uploading perfomances weekly on GC meaninf we can give very specific and meaningful feedback, this has been our most successful distance learning by a mile
- LG centralised dissemination of the fortnightly work schedules  to parents is very positive. Gives families an idea of what to expect work wise.
- The Instrumental teachers are managing to teach virtually for some pupils via the county music service platform
- IT support from Richard Brown has been excellent.

EBI
- Longer term, I feel like we need an approach we can take to 'no work; no communication'; mainly with Yr10 and 12. Several are not engaging with work and I feel that well placed yet concrete deadlines may be needed now.
- In music we need more specific training on GC. How to use forms, how to share resources centrally and release to some/all classes etc.
- pupils also need more training in GC, lots send work in without pressing submit and so we can't formally 'return' their feedback.
- I am not sure about how best to start new and important topics by distance learning. Can't decide how to do this best.

# data[].attributes.body
JW:
1. having a GC as a platform has made the process as smooth as it could be. Imagine if this had happened two years ago?
2. Plenty of pupils engaging with work set and sending things in
3. Something to consider; as distance learning is going to be here in some shape or form, how do we move towards making sure it’s meaningful and not just activities that keep pupils busy or only recap previous learning.
4. How do we reach those hard to reach pupils? Gaps on return to school will be larger than ever.
5. Closing gaps once pupils return to school needs to be big focus.

# data[].attributes.body
As already mentioned, Google classroom has been very useful with regards the setting of work and with the monitoring of progress but also as a means of communicating with pupils.

As the work is set for  two week period, it has resulted in time to give more detailed and bespoke advice and feedback when work comes in.

it has allowed me to explore Google Classrooms and its functions to support learners that will be of benefit in the future.

concerns (not necessarily negatives)

I really miss them! There is nothing that can replace the interaction and learning that takes place in the classroom that goes beyond the lesson objective and this cannot be replicated in work set no matter how much I try.

The summary for parents is an excellent idea but it has not solved the problems of getting work from pupils. Are all pupils looking at

# data[].attributes.body
Positives:
- We are becoming increasingly confident in all things google!
- It is very straightforward to assign work for all classes on google classroom and to attach documents, video links etc.
- It has made us think even more carefully about what we want our pupils to learn
- Instant feedback can be given for work submitted and returned for the pupils to act about the feedback provided
- Fortnightly task setting with overviews going to parents is a great idea
- Organising the KS3 work into mini-booklet format with relevant videos and websites to assist in task completion is an easier way to set work. Pupils seem to be engaging well with this
-Year 12 responded very positively to powerpoint  with audio / voice recorder pro to guide them through the 'lesson'. This helped to maintain some 'direct instruction' and the pupils said it felt more like a lesson
- Having thank you messages back from the pupils makes our day!
Negatives:
- Lack of engagment from some pupils, particulalrly concerning are our year 10 and 12 students who have still not completed any of the tasks. I have sent 3 encouraging emails to the pupils and have also emailed parents, as well as phoning home for one.
- Are pupils focusing upon core subjects in comparison to others, e.g., in KS3 the highest submitted tasks for one class was 22/30, the worse 6/32 and the average half. It will be interesting to compare numbers with other subjects
- Is there a way of receiving email notifications when pupils have submitted work in google classroom, as you do when the work is submitted late? I seem to spend a lot of my time opening up assignments to check for new work.
- It is difficult to ensure that progress is being made and how to monitor this
- Pupils are not necessarily acting on feedback and despite asking them to re-submit their work they don't do so
- We have so far avoided setting essay questions for year 12 on the A2 content and this is similarly the case with the year 10 15 mark question. These need clear explanation and guidance, which is difficult to provide even with a voice recorder app.
- There are only 2 specialists in the department and the workload is shared between us. Our daily focus is on preparing reources and providing feedback. In comparison to other departments we have less of an opportunity to review and develop schemes of learning for when we eventually return to school

# data[].attributes.headline
DJ BP Home/distance learning Specific task setting with resources and links is an efficient way to set work and allows for independent/supported learning to take place.The decision to centralise work set with the Year Group Home Summaries was a good one for teachers and parents. Feedback on CG has been direct and focussed which has been useful for bigger project work as progress is then incremental and learners know what to act on.As a file transfer system for an educational context GC has been brilliant for the purpose of assessment and a practical record of who has done what or not.  It has been very gratifying to be in touch with students. Pupils who need to ask a question, or who just want to touch base, has been made easier by the universal technology we have in CHS. Google classroom has allowed for further research to be promoted good for KS5 and for those with genuine interests in related areas which will take them far beyond the confines of the current situation.There has been more use of enrichment materials e.g. WJEC digital resources and BBC resources.There have been lots of authentic opportunities for learners to engage with as different organisations have supported home learning e.g. digital storytelling -BBC Reporter, IntoFilm Cymru Engagement: with certain students there has been a very high level of engagement with tasks set.  When lessons are set via classroom a personalised mode of address works well as pupils have responded to this approach and the work received has been fantastic.           Negatives-GC has accentuated the importance of the teacher in the classroom as there is no substitute for the expert being in the room with the children particularly when explaining. There is not that over the shoulder support, the personal interaction, the creation of energy which we aspire to.Peer interaction and the communal nature of the classroom is something that is missed at the moment and the instant sharing of great pieces of work which motivate and inspire learners to achieve their best.                              Some lack of engagement. Unfortunately, there is a section of students who are not engaging with tasks set. This is not a response to the nature of the tasks set, which are lively, at the correct level of challenge, and entirely accessible. 

# data[].attributes.subject
DJ BP Home/distance learning Specific task setting with resources and links is an efficient way to set work and allows for independent/supported learning to take place.The decision to centralise work set with the Year Group Home Summaries was a good one for teachers and parents. Feedback on CG has been direct and focussed which has been useful for bigger project work as progress is then incremental and learners know what to act on.As a file transfer system for an educational context GC has been brilliant for the purpose of assessment and a practical record of who has done what or not.  It has been very gratifying to be in touch with students. Pupils who need to ask a question, or who just want to touch base, has been made easier by the universal technology we have in CHS. Google classroom has allowed for further research to be promoted good for KS5 and for those with genuine interests in related areas which will take them far beyond the confines of the current situation.There has been more use of enrichment materials e.g. WJEC digital resources and BBC resources.There have been lots of authentic opportunities for learners to engage with as different organisations have supported home learning e.g. digital storytelling -BBC Reporter, IntoFilm Cymru Engagement: with certain students there has been a very high level of engagement with tasks set.  When lessons are set via classroom a personalised mode of address works well as pupils have responded to this approach and the work received has been fantastic.           Negatives-GC has accentuated the importance of the teacher in the classroom as there is no substitute for the expert being in the room with the children particularly when explaining. There is not that over the shoulder support, the personal interaction, the creation of energy which we aspire to.Peer interaction and the communal nature of the classroom is something that is missed at the moment and the instant sharing of great pieces of work which motivate and inspire learners to achieve their best.                              Some lack of engagement. Unfortunately, there is a section of students who are not engaging with tasks set. This is not a response to the nature of the tasks set, which are lively, at the correct level of challenge, and entirely accessible. 

# data[].attributes.body
Positives - GC provides a great forum in which to interact with students and it is very easy to set work for entire classes, in the knowledge that they will all have instant access to what you have set. Some students are highly engaged and are interacting with staff through GC and email. Some superb examples of work have been submitted from pupils and it is easy to provide them with general feedback e.g. worked solutions. Some students are definitely gaining valuable experience of independent learning.

Negatives: As others have mentioned, some students are not engaging with staff through GC. They may be completing the work set but it is difficult to keep a track on their progress. It is difficult to gauge students level of understanding of some aspects of the material as we are not able to gain the high level of feedback that we would usually gather through dialogue, Q&A etc in a classroom setting. This makes it difficult to provide tailored next step feedback to students.

# data[].attributes.body
1. We echo that GC is an excellent platform for teachers and for posting different kinds of resource
2. In higher sets in KS3, pupils are engaging well with work and submitting good quality work.
3. Feedback from pupils has been very positive and that they are finding the voice notes and teacher videos we are inserting on slides to guide them through the learning (new learning included) very useful and effective.
4. Teaching pronunciation works well with our voice overs and videos and small steps approach. Pupils are able to engage in listening work and submit some oral work - albeit in a much more limited way than when we are in class, naturally.
5. Some pupils have said they are enjoying working through things at their own pace.
6. The sense of community among staff is great - quiz and group chat. And having the time to get to know people better.
7. We are very grateful to SLT for informing us so clearly and giving such regular updates. We feel very supported.

Negatives:
1. Some pupils are finding navigating Google Classroom, downloading audio/video from Google Slides and uploading their work a bit tricky - lots of questions about this.
2. Probably about a third of pupils in each Year group have not submitted any work so we are not sure how they are doing.
3. Concerned that a few Year 10 students have not submitted any work so far.
4. No doubt it's the same for all subjects in terms of slower coverage. We know this is inevitable and we are prioritising making sure pupils are learning rather than coverage; but this does make us worried in terms of exams.

# data[].attributes.body
Positives:
- GC working well, more well versed it's functions and more confident in how to use it
- Yr 10 resources with voice over will be a really good resource for the future: revision material , student absence etc.
- Students are being creative with their work - handing in pieces that use ICT
- Made us think about how we give instructions and really "distilling the key information"
- Loved the sense of community with the teaching staff: quiz, group chats etc
- Loved the interaction with students when feedback is given
- Had the time to look at "what is out there" - i.e. podcasts and supplementing learning and actually feel this has been very enriching
Concerns:
- Worried about students ( especially in Yr 10 & Yr 12 ) who have not completed one task.  How will we support them when we return?
- Concern that we have had to start new material and students have not had any face to face support/ interaction

# data[].attributes.body
As everyone has already mentioned, Google classroom has been superb with the setting of work and with the monitoring of progress but also as a means of communicating with pupils i.e. if one of them has a question buy answering it in a forum it can save the same Q being asked numerous tasks. Being able to provided feedback for pupils quickly and simply is also proving great although pupils are less inclined to act on the feedback given than in the classroom of course.
The majority of pupils have been completing an enjoying more project based work and are increasingly learning from their own research and reading more providing tasks are well structured and explained.

More motivated students across all Key stages are getting a lot out of work being set. The quality of work produced by some has been outstanding.  As teachers I think we are looking more at what we set as we have arguably more time which is meaning we are setting more meaningful, interesting targeted tasks.

However there is the problem of engagement, some perhaps are unable to access materials or have a lot going on but there are many who are choosing not to do work. This is hard because despite how many pestering emails you send, they can be largely ignored.

Teaching completely new topics is also a potential concern particularly at KS4, with uncertainty at what GCSEs will look like next year we feel we need to plough on with new content but for that to work needs all students engaging, and this hasn't necessarily been the case!

# data[].attributes.body
Going well ...
Evidence that pupils are completing workouts with the odd email, tweet etc.
Time to plan for next year and update resources and tools used.

Problems:
Chasing up pupils for not completing work. Staff have made phone calls but there is little impact, what is the next step?
KS3 now becoming less involved in daily challenges, less engagement from them.

# data[].attributes.body
Good to be able to have a platform where a range of activities and material can be posted easily.

Impressed with the quality of work that some pupils are producing, they appear to be enjoying a range of tasks.

Lots of online sharing of practice and ideas across schools within my subject.

Negatives

Disappointed at the lack of engagement from some pupils year 9 upwards.

Providing quality feedback requires dialogue and it’s difficult to know how much of a dialogue to have given the situation. It’s difficult to gage whether poor quality work is due to lack of resources, time, understanding or effort.

KS4 and 5 relies heavily on tutorials and individual target setting and this is difficult through distance learning.

# data[].attributes.body
Positives - given us time to update resources that we never manage to do during normal gained time
-google classrooms allows us to give feedback - although we have tended to be very positive with feedback as it's difficult for students to act upon mistakes without teacher
- distance learning has allowed us to give more research tasks e.g watching S4C shows just for fun
- realisation that we actually enjoy the banter/relationship with students and staff
Negatives
- most tasks cannot involve oral work which is 60% at KS3 and 50% at KS4/5 - so most important element not being covered
- no real progress being made - tasks are mostly revision tasks - not moving forward
- top sets are engaging but others no as much - perhaps unable to?
- are we now just setting tasks for the sake of it?
- realising that some of these students are finding it difficult to use I.T - many students writing their answers and sending us a picture

# data[].attributes.body
Positives: Staff are gaining valuable skills in terms of how to use GC, etc. GC is fantastic for collating resources and recording/storing work in one place - unlike HWB! Pupils who have engaged seem to be enjoying the tasks and have produced some brilliant things. We as a dept have been able to tap into some excellent resources and competitions that encourage more engagement again.
For me as CL / teacher, the flexibility has been tremendous. I know I’m not alone when I say juggling homeschooling/childcare has not been easy but has been made so much more manageable because of the flexibility and support from the school. Also my dept have been really understanding about my commitments; they’re a great bunch.
The staff quiz has been a great way of keeping in touch. It really has been fun and is so lovely to ‘see’ and speak to people who are outside of the department.
Negatives: pupil engagement overall isn’t great at the lower end. These pupils who were already at a disadvantage are at risk even more; this could be due to socio-economics but I think as well perhaps not every parent is able to support everyday as we would like, i.e. they may have all the resources but their parents may have to work!  This also applies to all the children. They may be struggling to motivate themselves in general if they aren’t supervised constantly.
Staff in general are well but as human beings they have moments of feeling low or isolated. Trying to ensure they feel connected and valued is something we strive for but hard to monitor particularly for those who are single and living alone.
Pupils aren’t looking after themselves: some emails are sent in the wee hours and even though we have given them guidance and resources on how to keep to good habits they just aren’t in a minority of cases. It’s understandable as many people I speak to are finding it hard to keep to regular routines.
Thanks :)

# data[].attributes.body
Positives:

• As a department, we are really in the swing of things now and have got a very good system up and running where every single member of the team is contributing. This makes the whole team feel useful and allows us to play to specific team members’ strengths.

• We have established a really straight-forward, but really useful, way to differentiated literacy and numeracy tasks. We base each week on a new ‘theme’ and work as a team of specialists to create reading, spelling, writing and numeracy tasks.

• The bespoke weekly work plans we are creating for specific pupils – these are proving to be a God-send for certain pupils and their parents.

• Google Classroom – although please also see ‘negatives’ as this can be a ‘catch 22’.

• The allowances given to ALN pupils to only access our depts. work, if needs be (which covers the whole spectrum of subjects – we are very grateful to teachers and SLT for this, as are the parents).

• The system we have set up to check-in with pupils, on a weekly basis.

• Ability to create hard copies of work for pupils who, with best will in the world, struggle to access the laptop. Living close to an excellent post office is a real positive with this!

• Zoom/Google Meets – both proving helpful for transition meetings.

Negatives:

• The ‘big’ one for me is not being able to hear my pupils read. I know George, Eddie and Beth feel the same. It is impossible to teach pupils how to read without this, even with wonderful tasks being made. This is a real concern for me.

• The hearing impaired children – deaf people are so disadvantaged by this pandemic. They need to see our lips to be able to communicate with us. The Czech pupils with HI must be floundering, even though we are posting differentiated hard copies of work to them every fortnight. This is also a big concern.

• The bespoke weekly work plans are proving to be brilliant, but they take a very long time to make, e.g. 1 hour per plan, approx. The more children we start making these for, the bigger the task. I think that, as a dept, with all LSAs on board, we could ask them to produce several a day, but even then this will not reach all of our ALN pupils.

• Not being able to teach skills such as body language, develop empathy, facial expressions…all these things are huge for many ALN pupils. We do our best, via worksheets, but there is no comparison to being there in person.

• The ‘theory-based’ heaviness of work – this is really hard to get around via distance learning, unless there is some form of face-face communication.

• Instant praise and constant reassurance – many ALN pupils need and thrive off this. Again, this is near impossible via email etc.

# data[].attributes.body
DK:Positives: GC has allowed for a fairly smooth transition to distance learning. The fact that students were so familiar with this system has made it straightforward to maintain open lines of communication and set weekly home learning tasks.  Some really high quality work has been submit by y12 students and I have found that they are very willing to email with questions/queries if unsure about anything. We have had a good response rate from y12 to tasks set.
Another positive is the opportunity to engage with y11 learners before they start their AS Level course. As a new subject at AS Level, students have often selected to study the subject based on very little information. The opportunity to interact with y11 students and suggest some preparatory reading/viewing may prove very useful when easing the transition into a brand new subject.
Negatives: As others have suggested there are some students that we have had no contact with and received no work from since school closed. This is of increasing concern as we have now moved on to start covering new A2 Level content. It’s hard to know how far we can push the students for work when we do not know what their individual family circumstances during this time may be.
Timing is another worry; we are avoiding starting some more challenging A2 topics with students which we feel require face-to-face delivery to gauge understanding. This will put even more pressure on our ability to compete the course in good time next academic year.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sorry! I had limited access... you should now be able to post your thoughts! 

# data[].attributes.subject
Sorry! I had limited access... you should now be able to post your thoughts! 

# data[].attributes.headline
SI: Positives- Google Classrooms has been a great platform. It has allowed us to centralise resources (spreading the workload between the department and thus resulting in highly quality material being produced). It allows for the distribution of work across the Key Stages and issue work in chunks, allowing for manageable marking and feedback from staff. The work being supplied is collated by TLR holders and is the same for every class, ensuring consistency of quality. Individual teachers have been able to work with TAs to differentiate. It allows pupils for a variety of media to be used. There has been some useful dialogue between staff and pupils. KS3 are engaging really well with the materials. Have been able to use resources such as Explain Everything/voiceovers on powerpoint to allow for more in depth explanations on new material. Negatives- we have no choice but to move on with new material, which is obviously not ideal. There is a lack of engagement in KS4, particularly at the lower ability end. Pupils missing out on practical lab experience (prac exam next Jan). Some parents have complained there is too much work!

# data[].attributes.subject
SI: Positives- Google Classrooms has been a great platform. It has allowed us to centralise resources (spreading the workload between the department and thus resulting in highly quality material being produced). It allows for the distribution of work across the Key Stages and issue work in chunks, allowing for manageable marking and feedback from staff. The work being supplied is collated by TLR holders and is the same for every class, ensuring consistency of quality. Individual teachers have been able to work with TAs to differentiate. It allows pupils for a variety of media to be used. There has been some useful dialogue between staff and pupils. KS3 are engaging really well with the materials. Have been able to use resources such as Explain Everything/voiceovers on powerpoint to allow for more in depth explanations on new material. Negatives- we have no choice but to move on with new material, which is obviously not ideal. There is a lack of engagement in KS4, particularly at the lower ability end. Pupils missing out on practical lab experience (prac exam next Jan). Some parents have complained there is too much work!

# data[].attributes.headline
Post your thoughts on distance learning here.  Positive & negative!  

# data[].attributes.subject
Post your thoughts on distance learning here.  Positive & negative!  