How We Taught Kids Maths During a Plague
Throughout history, school closures are rare. I remember when I was young, we got a day off because the school boiler had broken and they didn’t have enough heaters for all the classrooms. We also used to get about 2 snow days a year, although in recent years this has not been the case, with the exception of the Beast from the East in 2018 which saw schools closed across the country for upto a week. Generally though, unless we had a limb missing, we were expected in school, full stop.
Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com
In 2020, parents across the world were thrown into chaos as schools were forced to close to all but the most vulnerable children and children of key workers. Therefore almost every child in the UK was homeschooled at some point.
That’s right – parents were expected to work from home AND teach their children. And, because of the way families are, many parents found themselves trying to teach multiple children across different ages. This presented a challenge that teachers simply don’t have in the classroom. In addition to this, schools were given very minimal notice to get their children set up for online learning, and there was absolutely no consistency in the beginning.
Chances are, you’re now familiar with a few of the following:
- Google Classrooms and the pressure of having to upload work by a certain time each day
- Lessons conducted by Zoom where at least one child is being silly, half are trying to pay attention, and the rest have their cameras off and are likely sneakily playing video games with their mic muted
- School360 and trying to get logged into 2-3 kids accounts at the same time across different devices
- Twinkl and it’s wonderful range of resources
- Joe Wicks PE lessons (hands up if you were looking forward to the day they ended!)
This week, I shared two of my favourite quotes from Twitter about teaching maths at home because of COVID-19 and I am sure many of you identify with those. For a lot of the parents I have spoken to, they had forgotten a lot of the concepts, or the method their children were being taught was absolutely like the method they were taught in school.
Yet somehow, we all survived. I’ve been asked so many times “what if I teach my child the wrong thing?” and my advice is, as long as the answer is correct, it doesn’t matter how they get there. And even if your child did not engage, they will not have been the only one. Teachers will be preparing for this and will help your child get caught up. The important thing is that they were safe when the world was not safe.
During the pandemic, my free Facebook community Education Support 4 Parents was a thriving hub of information, and it still is now! If you need any education advice going forward, or are considering home education long term and need some advice on how to homeschool, please feel free to ask in the group – don’t get caught short again!