School at home snapshot of learning in lockdown

Teachers, pupils and parents discuss their experiences of dining table classrooms

School’s out after a term like no other.

Pupils, teachers and parents have spent the entire summer session teaching and learning from home, since lockdown began more than 14 weeks ago.

Dining table classrooms are being packed away as Fife and Perth and Kinross summer holidays begin this week and after Dundee and Angus schools broke off last Friday.

With teachers and parents, especially, likely to be heaving a huge sigh of relief, we take a look back to discover what home learning has been like for those involved.

We have spoken to teachers who have transformed how they work to teach classes from a laptop at home, often late into the night.

We have heard how the experience has been for parents, many juggling full-time jobs with helping children with schoolwork, and pupils preparing for exams from their bedrooms.

Deborah Strickland, of Abernyte, Perthshire, has been teaching sons Euan, 10, and Rory, 7, and caring for daughter Esther, 4.

Euan, in P5, and Rory, P3, have been issued daily and weekly assignments from Abernyte Primary School through the Seesaw platform, which has been widely used by primary schools.

As well as daily literacy and numeracy tasks, they have completed exercises in health and wellbeing and used resources such as BBC Bitesize and PE with Joe sessions by The Body Coach, Joe Wicks.

Deborah said: “We use Joe Wicks to start the day so it gives us a structure.

“We aren’t stuck to a 9am to 3pm timetable, though. At the beginning I sat all three down at the table but, as it has evolved, I will let one do their own thing for a while while I focus on the other.

“We live in the countryside so we have been growing vegetables and doing a lot of outside learning too.”

Working mum Janis McCulloch, from Dunfermline, said daughter Jess, 7, has struggled with the lack of face-to-face contact or video support from her school.

“Jess’s motivation has been quite low during this period because there are a lot of things she needs extra support with.

“The activities she is set from school require someone to read it out to her

– but with me working from home fulltime, it’s been difficult to juggle.

“It’s a very difficult time for everyone but it has been very demotivating for her as she really wants to learn.”

Cari Stormont, 14, is moving into fourth year at Carnoustie High School, working towards sitting her National 5 exams.

She said she was happy with how her school had delivered remote teaching and found she has been able to use her time more efficiently learning at home.

“I’m getting more work done in the same time as I would in class and I feel I’m learning more,” she said.

“You can also get more done because there’s no one causing trouble or interrupting.”

Time was not lost, she said, by moving from classroom to classroom between subjects.

She added: “The teachers have set us a lot of assignments.

“As they have set out the timetable the teachers are there at that time and you can email them if you are stuck.”

Teacher Karen Woodhouse’s workload went “crazy” at the start of lockdown, she said, with her often still at her computer beyond midnight.

Even when she developed a more efficient approach she continued to work until 8pm and at weekends.

Pupils in her P7 class at Townhill Primary School,

Dunfermline, submitted assignments for marking throughout the day.

She said: “Some kids were early birds, I had work coming in at the back of 8am. Most would come in around 10, 11am, midday, then more at 3 and 4pm but you had some kids whose parents work and weren’t able to download the work until evening.

“Then my weekends were spent planning the next week’s assignments.

“I had to get cleverer in what I was assigning.”

She said it was an emotional moment waving off her class in March after they performed their leavers’ songs from the cancelled end of year show.

At the start of lockdown, it was a race for computing teacher Mark Christie and colleagues at Lochgelly High School to ensure pupils were able to learn remotely.

He said: “We had to organise as many kids as possible to use Microsoft Teams so we could deliver learning resources.

“We also had to download all the material we used.

“At that point we had no idea what the situation was going to be with exams and the expectation was we might be back in after the Easter holidays.

“We are still giving the pupils the learning experience they would have in the classroom but without the teacher being there physically.”

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I’m getting more work done in the same time as I would in class and I feel I’m learning more. CARI STORMONT, 14, CARNOUSTIE

Picture: Dougie Nicolson.