Develop home schooling to be more participatory and mix with outdoor learning

For young primary children returning to school is going to be a challenge, pupils, parents and teaching staff need to feel safe. Asking very young children to social distance will be hard. I'd like to see schools wait to open till there is much greater knowledge of the potential impact of COVID19 on children and how this would be managed. Can we safely say all children will not be put at risk by opening schools?

Homeschooling could be developed to be more participatory, offering short bursts of lessons in small groups via video. Lots of extracurricular classes are already doing this and offer small groups of consistent participation for students. If this could be mixed with some physical / and outdoor learning for young primary groups that would give an option for a return that is staged and also focuses on some group outdoor time - reducing contact but allowing for social interaction at a manage distanced that doesn't feel too restrictive (ie expecting children to sit apart in class and play part at playtime)

I would also want to see the rate of cases be much lower before schools are opened, and a clear indication of what has and hasn't worked in other countries who are ahead of Scotland in terms of the timescale they have been dealing with COVID19.

Schools need time to review what is and isn't working in terms of their current contact with students and make a longer term plan.

Why the contribution is important

Keeping children safe physically and emotionally should be our first priority. Young children are not in a position to question the decisions made and advocate for themselves on this issue, so we need to be extra careful in deciding what is appropriate and look above and beyond ideas around 'getting back to normal' and acknowledge that if possible we may need to change how education works in response to current circumstances. If we are asking adults to continue working from home then we need to consider why we would act differently for children.

by HtotheP on May 11, 2020 at 03:40PM

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Average rating: 4.4
Based on: 7 votes

Comments

  • Posted by Sludge78 May 11, 2020 at 16:18

    A more uniform approach needs to be adopted as vast differences between delivery in neighbouring councils.
    The Hebrides have managed video learning for pupils via link with high school on mainland, shouldn’t be a hard thing to do.
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