 got all my bits in front of me. Okay, so say hello in the chat box, just make sure you know where to pose a question. So if I just introduce myself first of all, just who am I? I'm Ross, a teacher, 25 years in secondary schools in London. I've been blogging online for a number of years, a little bit of a large audience and I would visit schools or at least I was physically until a seven or eight weeks ago at schools around the world and do my own research and recently a lot more webinars. So that's me. I've been given the privilege and honor of sharing all the work from Academy 21. So in my own last three years particularly, visiting alternative provisions, virtual schools, lots of different types of institutions and whether, you know, before COVID-19, the virus is a fascinating place in which to work. So let me just give you some general introductions in terms of the Academy 21 before I get each of the hosts to just briefly introduce ourselves. And then we've got good 15 questions to go through. You should be able to see on your webinar somewhere to raise your hand or pose a question in the chat box. And I've got two or three services to go through, not too many slides, lots of just content. So Academy 21, so the website you need is on the screen there, so maybe copy and paste that or maybe I can ask Mark to just type that in the chat box for everyone's benefit, academy21.co.uk forward slash lockdown learning. So Academy 21 has been supporting vulnerable learners since 2011. They currently work with around 750 students who log in from home or in normal circumstances for other settings such as their school, learning center or full-time AP settings. And they support a range of young people with complex needs, typically pupils or young people, young children at risk of exclusion, some that need respite from their school timetables as they may be being disruptive or finding learning difficult or they may have a range of illnesses. I'll go into a little bit more detail in terms of the benefits and obviously I want the host to share those with you, but my own experience is particularly last three years visiting at least 200 schools across the country. Alternative provisions are a very, very special place. They're often a last chance saloon for our kids. I won't go into the whole social mobility dialogue because I know that you're an educator and you're most likely to share the same views about social justice and those types of things. So I'm going to ask each of the hosts, so they've got their microphones already enabled, if I can just bring you in one at a time. So make sure I've got everyone here. So Mark, if I just get you to introduce yourself first as kind of webinar facilitator, just give you a role and then I'll hand over to Dr Sarah De Freitas, the Executive Director to introduce yourself in your role. So Mark first. Hello everybody, I'm Mark. I'm co-hosting with Ross today. Any questions you want, pop them in the chat box and we'll do our best to answer as many of them as we can at the end of the session. Thanks very much. Okay, thanks Mark and Sarah. Sorry, I'm Sarah De Freitas and I'm Executive Director of Education here at Way Education PLC. My role is to look after the education portfolio and that includes Academy 21 as well as our online school into high and thank you very much for coming. Okay, thank you Sarah. Over to Claire. My name is Claire Broken-Shire. I'm the Head of Faculty at Academy 21 and I'm responsible for the day-to-day management of the education team and I work on timetabling, curriculum and overseeing general developments in our provision. Okay, thank you Claire. I'm going to make sure I've got everyone. Gareth, you there? Yeah, I'm here. My name is Gareth Lucas-Howles. I'm Head of Education Partnerships for Way and more particularly Academy 21. My team are regionally based and we're responsible for developing and maintaining all of our client relationships, whether that is with schools or local authorities, individual services. We manage all the processes through commissioning, through enrolment, customer support and the management of all of the students that come into and out of school. As has been alluded to, we're supporting over 750 young people at the moment and that's across around 300 secondary schools across England and Wales in over 100 different local authority areas and welcome all. Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Over to Stephen, Stephen Phipps. Afternoon everyone. My name is Stephen Phipps. I'm the Associate Dean of Academy 21 and lead on the education front. I've been with Way for three years now and I've got 25 years worth of experience in education, mainly in the state sector and as a senco and I notice a number of sencos here this afternoon so hello to you all. Thank you Stephen and Jacqueline. Yes, good afternoon from the UK everybody. My name is Jacqueline Daniel. I'm the CEO of Way Education that operates the Entity Academy 21. I'm also a co-founder of both Academy 21 and Inter High School, Way Education's other entity. So I've been involved in developing online teaching and learning for the last 16 years quite closely. Way has been operating for most of that time and we have educated tens of thousands of students over that period. So welcome to you all. Okay, thank you Jackie and I'm hoping I haven't missed anybody. So without further ado, I'm going to out go straight to Gareth and Gareth could I just ask you to let viewers know a little bit more about Academy 21 and how online alternative provision actually works in practice. Yeah, of course. So Academy 21 began in 2011 as a specialist alternative provision delivering our services online. We're preferred provided to the Association of School and College Leaders and currently we've been successfully accepted onto over 30 different local authority quality assurance frameworks for alternative provision delivery. We're commissioned typically by local authority services and more recently I'd say over the last kind of five years plus working more directly with schools and each individual project can vary in size and scope. So from a local authority standpoint we might be working with up to 50 students at a time whereas with individual schools we may be working with with one young person for as little as a week, crossing during a period of fixed term exclusion. We're usually commissioned as part of a blended or rotated solution. So flexibility in terms of what we do is really a key component of what we offer. The kind of young people we support has already been touched on but the key factor across all of them is that they are vulnerable learners. They're unable to attend a mainstream setting and that can be for, as I mentioned, periods of a few days up to multiple months and years depending on the nature of their referral tours. In terms of practice our ethos and approach is that ultimately the best place for young people to learn is in a mainstream or bricks and mortar school as we might refer to it today and a service has been designed to offer the best opportunity for learners if they're able to over time to reintegrate back into their mainstream setting as and when perhaps they're physically or mentally able to do so. With that in mind we're very flexible in approach in terms of the service that we provide and as I said it could be on a very short-term basis and many schools when they first start to work with us will use our service for a few weeks really to kind of dip their toe in perhaps to assess whether the provision is suitable for the young person that they might be referring to us and of course they may be new to this as a form of learning and as an approach within alternative provision. Once we've been through the enrollment process in terms of an overview of how the service works we provide a tailored timetable and the timetable offers structure and that's very important for the learners that we support but ultimately it delivers five hours of learning timetabled learning any subject that we offer in live teacher-led classes with a maximum class size of 15 students. So in keeping with that we provide three hours of live lessons each week lessons are short they're kept 45 minutes and 40 minutes from next year and they're supported by two hours of more asynchronous activities as in more content-driven activities homework if you like that we set a mark and all is provided online. In support of that we provide 24-7 access to additional learning content and resources and lesson recordings and we make our recordings made for purpose with no students in and they're designed to support and prevent further gaps in learning ultimately and then in addition to that on a Friday morning we offer a drop-in session where learners can receive additional support if they were perhaps struggling with a topic that week they can drop in and get support from a subject specialist teacher depending on the nature of that the support that's required that may be one-to-one but it's typically in a small group. Just to close into the summary attendance and engagement we record for every lesson every single lesson that we deliver and our engagement is measured across three factors which is the effort understanding interaction that students demonstrate in class formative assessment outcomes are recorded and we provide a weekly report and summary with teacher comments and at the end of every full term a subject by subject written report as you would receive in school and that will include targeted working at grades and areas where we think perhaps each young person might be focusing their efforts in the coming term. All of that data is made available online and it's easily accessible. It's important to stress that what we offer is a synchronous service as in its live teaching and perhaps then differentiates a little from the approach we've seen from schools in response to COVID which has been quite significant in terms of scope but to provide learning content through Google classroom or other search. I was just going to ask before I go on to the COVID issue can I just double check that is it three hours a day or three hours a week in terms of the lessons and 45-minute lessons? Yeah it's three hours a week per subject of live lessons so the way the timetable is structured it's one lesson per day in each subject and that's taught Monday through Thursday and as I alluded to we try and create quite a structure for the young people that arrive with us and so that lesson if it was a year 10 foundation tier maths lesson at nine o'clock on the Monday morning would be at the same time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and importantly with the same teacher and largely with the same peer group. Thank you so in terms of the COVID issue since schools have had to shut their doors what advice and guidance have you been sharing with teachers and school leaders that oversee alternative provision programs? Sure I mean to an extent with the amount of information in the ether and everything that's been thrown out there by publishers and technology providers we've been quite hesitant really to provide over advice and that also references the enormous challenge that you know we're aware that the enormous challenge really that schools and teachers particularly have had to very quickly put a huge amount of content on a scale really never seen before out there for students to learn and people to learn from home and it's been an amazing achievement really in a time of crisis. For vulnerable learners it's clear that alongside that online content schools have been had their doors open for vulnerable learners but only five percent it's estimated of those learners who have taken up those school places and so it's clear that they need more tailored support during lockdown and beyond and our advice has been to ensure continuity and minimise disruption wherever they can and obviously as part of that we would recommend an approach which is more synchronous or live and teaching online in approach and when our thoughts start to turn off focus really towards what happens in the future as we never get away out of this crisis response mode and it seems certain to us that some form of a social distancing will have to be applied nationally and perhaps that's going to translate to school and that's going to disproportionately affect vulnerable learners again. So we're advising schools on the use of live online teaching and learning really to provide the closest experience possible to the norm of attending school to minimise disruption ensure continuity and from a broader perspective it might be considered for wider application across the school population population. If social distancing is to be employed then clearly not everybody every student is going to be in school at the same time and so school capacity needs to be managed in a more effective way whilst ensuring that that quality of teaching, learning and delivery. Sure thank you I'm going to bring in Claire and Claire in terms of the some of the tips that Gareth mentioned and also the issues are these tips transferable to other school settings and who have already had their lives you know equally disrupted. Yes I mean I'd like to pick up on what Gareth just said we do want their experience online to be as similar as possible to the experience that they do have in bricks and mortar settings so I would say to teachers it you know apply the same principles of a good lesson to your online lesson and make sure that the content is engaging and accessible it's very important to have clear objectives in every single lesson that you do maybe even more so in the online setting because students can get distracted and use the online tools in the classroom as interactively as possible so you've got reaction icons that you can use you've got tools which enable you to or the students to draw on white boards that sort of thing so the interactive classroom lends itself to having lots of communication with with the students in the way that you would in a bricks and mortar classroom but you do need to be realistic at what can be achieved so you might you might just have two or three learning outcomes and stick and stick to those and I would also say you need to think about how you're going to manage your communication with the students are you going to be available 24 seven preferably not but if you if you want to just communicate with them between nine and five then you need to make sure that that communication is clear from the outset really okay thank you Claire and I'm going to bring in Sarah shortly but just before I do I'm going to ask everyone a second question on the screen so that's going to pop in now I just want to get a sense of and I won't be able to cover all issues here but what is your workload issue right now it's a very topic passionately close to my heart in terms of my own research and field work but I've got a good idea of what the issues are but I'm curious to see people in the session I know people are working in them you know we're looking we're logging in here from about 25 different countries so it'd be interesting to see what the issues are but I you know there's a couple of skills that I work with online through webinars with Brazil their initial response in week there in week eight or nine I think in lockdown and was a notification workload and then engagement back from students so I'm going to share those results and give you a chance to just put in two or three responses to that survey okay so we're getting a good number of responses so here are the results everyone and then I'm going to bring in Sarah so Sarah thinking specifically about COVID and the impact on you know the bricks and mortar type institutions are there any specific pieces of advice that you can share with teachers we're still looking for the best ways to plan an online lesson to help manage their workload yeah I think the point that came up there in the poll and Claire and Gareth sort of mentioned it already which is around engagement so how do we engage students within both bricks and mortar contexts actually as much as you do in online with online you've got other tool sets to pull in from so it's really about looking and seeing what kind of of tools we have to keep that engagement going through the session so we often talk about having an activity about every five to ten minutes so whether that's a poll whether that's an interactive session whether that's some form of quiz or activity or an animation that's the sort of structure that you want to be bringing into your classes and you know I think it is the same whether it's bricks and mortar or whether it's online and good pedagogic practices are applied the same in both contexts I would argue and the model that you've got up actually at the moment I can talk to a little bit in that respect and this is a piece of work that we've been doing here at Way Education PLC and that's really looking at how we can develop a model which has already been developing over the last 10 or more years around this idea of leading and following and what I've tried to do with the model that we've been developing is to try and sort of flip it over so it's a little bit more student focused so rather than lead and follow sort of looking at it from the student's perspective learn and explore and it's really that exploration dimension of learning where you do want to bring in a lot more activity and interaction and engagement with students and you know that model we're calling it the LEAR model so it's learn explore apply and reflect also looks at how you can actually not just teach and learn but also explore and use that information within the learning process also how can you then apply really like quizzes and how we can actually start to apply that sort of knowledge and then of course we have to reflect again on what we're learning in order to really understand it and to really to cement that understanding so if you want to advance these slides Ross I can just continue on the different teaching modes there are highlighted as well teach guide mentor and screen shots from the website I've got this one and I've got some data here all right so I thought that was going to turn into another model but I can just keep talking to that if you carry on to the end this one no keep going to that one try that uh no it's not that one sorry no so we just go back to that other one yes sorry so the model is basically based on the Colb's experiential learning model so I didn't think it was going to start to animate but almost did not animate into the next stage but that idea of the learning cycle the Colb's learning cycle is really what this model is based on and work that I've done with Tim Newman at the Institute of Education in the UK has been to create an exploratory learning model so that's really what this model is based on those two bits of learning but it's really about trying to extend how we think about teaching in a sort of standard context to thinking about exploration and guiding so really looking at different roles of the teacher not just in terms of teaching but in terms of guiding in terms of mentoring and in terms of coaching so for me that that coaching role and reflection is really about feedback and how we can actually enhance and create feedback opportunities within the class so those are sort of the main building blocks of the interactive sessions that we're developing okay sure and I'll get those slides um sent out to everybody um in terms of um specific feedback tips Sarah is there anything um beyond the model that you've demonstrated or any specific tools that you would recommend to teachers watching yeah we've talked a little bit about polls and quizzes um there's a couple of things out there things like Quizlet and Kahoot where you can get free licenses for that sort of approach uh I quite like Socrative which is a really nice app that you can download freely and you can also buy licenses for that where you can just sort of develop different polls and do them in the classroom as well as doing them online and most learning management systems have those sorts of capabilities built in as well we also really like to focus around uh more authentic assessments so looking at things like e-portfolios which allows a lot of opportunity for presentation of skills and we're developing a 21st century skills matrix at the moment which is quite exciting to try and build some of those skills in to the learning as well so using feedback using assessment to try and reinforce those key skills as well okay thank you um I'll just mention a bit of research I read the other day I believe it's the first of its kind which talks about the size of the teacher's video alongside the slides that um I've called it the size matter on my website and apparently the smaller your video screen is on your slides the better for people's retention um Stephen I'm going to come to you now for those who are providing live online lessons do you have any specific advice on the ideal number of students and the types of activities that can keep students' attention on screen rather than just logged on to you know their phone or a zoom call as we're doing up in the chat um yeah of course I would say 20 is the maximum a teacher would like to to deal with on on a regular basis and while you can have larger numbers as shown by this webinar imagine if everybody asks a question right now um how would we respond to that um you can have larger classes and put a second teacher into it to man that chat box but in our particular setting that's not a model we we run at academy 21 um and certainly the larger the class the the more questions that come in the the more difficult it is for a teacher to manage so you know if you were going for a second teacher why not have a second group instead um I'd say in regards to teaching it it goes back to you know really good teaching practice splitting your um lesson into chunks giving opportunities for students to to contribute and engage verbally via text their responses through polls consider the engagement levels through other interactive means so you know make use of the the digital resources that are available to you I think there is a danger online that teachers can talk too much um and feel the need to to fill every quiet spot with with chatter and at times the you know the students do need to focus and you mentioned the camera um earlier for us we don't always use the camera there'll be times when we want them to focus we'll pause the camera or even turn it off all together so yeah okay good um thank you um Stephen gareth um in terms you know it's going to be difficult um keeping students engaged you know the virus you know whenever we return to schools um in terms of keeping kids engaged and you know working away from school do you have any advice for teachers watching in terms of um practical interventions for for for pupils that may start to opt out yeah I mean I obviously had to start with much closer monitoring and have the structures in place to monitor that engagement um this is something obviously we've worked on over a number of years and I saw from the the poll earlier um their engagement it is clearly a key concern across across everyone that's here today um and it's certainly essential when um in in light of the responses to COVID and this crisis response I alluded to earlier um it is principally static content and you have no really transparent means of tracking attendance engagement because you're not directly interacting with those students every day I think if that monitoring is suggesting interventions are needed um then um and as vulnerable groups are refusing the school place through a lockdown um we would advise that you research uh available support across your local authority um as I touched on earlier we're on a number of local authority frameworks and many of them have um have a range of providers across their area um to support different levels and types of need um they have quality assured um and then often provide that that detail locally on purpose built sites um and there'll be clear explanations of the range and type of support that each provider is able to offer um however it's clear given where we are in the world at the moment that many of those uh that will be local physical provision um and they are unlikely I guess in the short term to be able to support your pupils through um through the easing of lockdown and certainly if they've got to implement um future social distancing guidelines which is what we expect to come into force and we can help of course uh we provide every student or can provide every student with a short kind of four week trial and that's largely as I touched on earlier uh to assess our suitability um are we appropriate I'd like to say we're successful with every student but we're not um so this gives an option for us typically schools to kind of dip their toe in and test out whether um whether appropriate provision whether the student's engaging with with our teaching learning practice um this can be blended alongside existing schoolwork um however it's being delivered so I talked about Google classrooms a little bit earlier which I know a lot of schools are using um and as I said includes engagement measures for for every single lesson lesson so it can be monitored very closely to ensure its effective approach. Ultimately it's about variation um as with everybody if we're doing the same thing over and over again and certainly it's difficult to create and has been difficult to create um really engaging and interactive content in a very short space of time um we'd suggest obviously that that uh that whatever provision is put in place for these young people it is varied and also that the support structures that you put around them are kept in place and we you continue to deliver that continuity course. Gareth I interrupt you've been doing this for a long time before the virus started what would be your top two or three practical tips to hook kids in that are starting to get disaffected and not logging in and how how do you get them back in practically? Yeah I mean there's no um there's no easy answer to that because every every young person is different um for some young people uh it's about the trust that they develop with their teacher um and you'd be surprised I think to learn given you know we work in this kind of virtual space um and and as Stephen touched upon perhaps we don't always use the webcam and we don't see our our students every day and they don't see our teachers but our teachers develop a really kind of strong relationship with those students and um to an extent when they're learning online and in in this format um their filter if you like um can at times not be there so we do get to know them very very well um and so there is no uh no silver bullet there's no magic fix it's about understanding the needs of each individual student and varying approach for some that will be um bringing in um differentiated work within the classroom and using the tools of the classroom to to drive through with some of the kind of interactive content and quizzes uh and different approaches within the classroom itself. Sure thank you um Claire I'm going to bring you in um I wrote an article for The Guardian last week uh about teachers who have moved to a new school and now having to teach pupils online uh for a class they've never met. Do you have any advice? No problem no problem um as Gareth was just saying we do even if we haven't met them face to face we do develop strong relationships with our um with our youngsters and you've got to remember that youngsters themselves are used to building up relations um ships with each other um without without necessarily having met each other face to face in specialist interest groups or various types of social media that they use so I would say that um teachers should use the same techniques that they would use in a face-to-face classroom it is always important I mean our voice um we don't use word and you know having a smile uh positive you know positive interaction with the students is important I would say that the sort of chit chat that you might have with your students about pets or siblings or um or how they're coping with lockdown um goes down well in the classroom and um if they if you come across as a positive friendly supportive teacher who's got their interests at heart then you're going to develop a relationship with them just as well online as you would do um in a face-to-face situation. Can I just ask um you know for you know when when you take on a new pupil um there'll be certain procedures you go through so um if you could adapt those for a teacher who's joined a new school that's a bricks and mortar school that's now having a teacher child online for the first time and they've not met what kind of things would you normally put in place through your academy 21 provision that could be used for teachers in this situation? Well in academy 21 we do have a lot of new new students joining us from day to day and um and you know teachers are used to welcoming new students into the class um you know almost every day we may have a new student and so it might depend on the subject but we'll often we'll say a warm hello and we um we don't ask personal questions because in our context um we we don't want to we don't want to share um any um any any of that sorts of information so that can make it a bit tricky and it's possible that teachers what watching would have those restrictions. Do you get an initial bit of data or a context about the child before? Yes we do we do because we have um contact with the mentors then the mentors will send us through some information about the students so teachers will check that information before they meet the students so they will have some idea it's often in academy 21 because we're dealing with vulnerable learners then um those sorts of issues maybe about their educational history it may be about issues they've had recently but um it does have to be says that sometimes we don't have a lot of information about the youngsters but that doesn't really stop us getting to know them because we take a kind of um you know sort of slowly slowly approach that some students may not want to contribute much in the first couple of lessons and that's fine by us we say you know you can just listen and then gradually start to join in and we do have the facility of going into a breakout room and talking to them individually and at that point we might sort of see we would see how they're getting on you know it as Gareth's been saying all all of the different children are um different in their needs and the way they respond to us so you do have to take that very much on a case-by-case basis I think. Can I just add there Mark if that's all right I mean um Clara mentioned mentors um so uh one of one of the the processes we have in place when a student is enrolled with us it's very structured um we won't enroll students into class without certain information um that includes a nominated um learning mentor as we would term it but it's that person at the referring school or local authority service that ultimately has duty of care for that young person in relation to their wider needs and we'd also you know our systems don't allow us physically don't allow us to um issue blogging credentials to anybody unless we have a safeguarding point of contact that learning mentor is key to help us kind of reinforce engagement um over periods of time um I think I saw a question pop up around whether uh whether Academy 21 is the only contact your students have and it certainly shouldn't be um as we mentioned earlier where we work best and where this is a solution works best it works best as part of the blended solution and so there should be other activities there should be contact from other responsible adults um uh that that work and also the agencies that are in place to support individual students with complex needs as well um and we form part of that at the core part I think from an education standpoint because it's that's where the continuity is there and if you think for vulnerable students who may be dropped all over the country at various times you know we're looking at kids within a virtual school who may be placed in out of borough and this is a kind of solution and could provide the one thing that in their life is probably missing at times which is that continuity and consistency structure sure thank you um so everyone we've been on this webinar for 30 minutes um I uh Stephen uh earlier talked about 45 minutes for Academy 21 as their lesson length now I'm doing a lot of reading and writing about memory at the moment and cognitive load theory and those types of things I'm going to bring Stephen back in about lesson length but on your screen I'm going to bring in our last um quiz uh or poll should I say uh in your setting or if you're in a bricks and mortar um how long are your lesson lengths just give me a best fit um whether you're teaching online um day-to-day anyway before uh COVID-19 or what have you adapted to now give me a best fit and then I'll share those results shortly and then to Stephen um you mentioned 45 minutes um early and you talked about the kind of lesson practicalities um do you think online lessons um have an optimal time uh for the students that you teach uh and kind of school continue with you know the traditional double English on a Tuesday afternoon type of type of scenario so uh so there's the results everybody and over to you Stephen um it's no different to again all the research out there about different lesson length concentration times um I would say that an online lesson doesn't suffer from low level disruption and uh like a physical classroom does and therefore you can tend to progress through topics more quickly but again it comes back to good lesson planning breaking the session down into chunks making it as interactive and engaging as possible considering the tasks that that you're setting and translating the resources that you already have in existence into an online environment to to make sure that they're um working um I'd also say that uh again lesson length one thing you might be thinking of with delivery online is is disruption and perhaps have a fallback plan ready to go so we've seen an expansion in in online teaching we've got lots of internet providers um under strain trying to maintain a reliable service and and things cutting out so you know do the students know what to do in case of technical difficulties where to go to find those resources so again it comes back to a teacher really thinking through and planning out what they're going to do having those range of activities you'd expect in in your lesson to hook their interest to maintain their interest all the way through um so yeah I can think people are going up but you're sitting at a screen for a longer but time can fly very quickly if you're engaged and and you're going through um really engaging materials so can you give me an idea of um what habits are you developing as a teacher with different age pupils for example and and if I can put you in a corner what's your kind of go-to application or a bit of software that you use well to be honest with you we make full use of the um resources that are within our um classroom so with the adobe connect um classroom you do get to use breakout rooms so you can create group work you can do individual work you can set the polls question and answers um again we're all these tools that to help more vulnerable or shy children interact with you with a question answer box in adobe that question comes directly to the teacher no one else sees that so every question um a student can put those forward without fear of you know feeling silly um and you know they're not got to put a hand up to ask a question by using a microphone they can type it through the the chat box as the lesson is going on so it is really um as a online teacher I'd say it's about knowing your system and the facilities that you've got there as a foundation to then take your teaching online and to do it well sure and can I just quickly just pick your ideas thing about um the training that um you develop or share with your colleagues you know working virtually how have you upskilled yourself well why have introduced them a teaching online qualification and that's been successfully launched and backed by chefford university um jackie I don't know if you want to add in some more about that particular course yeah it was uh quite a few years in the making because we did some market research and there was a lot of demand for a qualification to specifically be able to teach effectively online and as garrus and I think um some of the others have said particularly claire it's all about you know the quality of the teaching when you're online um so we developed a course that we had accredited by the ATHE um so it's a higher education award it's a post grad um course and it's a level four I think claire here has completed one of the first cohort to um complete that course it's very intensive um and quite an aggressive type of course so it doesn't um it really focuses on internalizing those teacher skills to teach online that's very very important so it's not portfolio based in the same way that a lot of qualifications are it's about internalizing those skills um claire do you do you want to say a sentence about the course having experienced it firsthand quite recently successfully yes well it was um it was an extremely interesting course to do because we did quite um a lot of theory as well as practical so we were in a group together of teachers and I coming from academy 21 um was um was pleased to be put with a group I've been to high teachers because I didn't know them extremely well so we learned a lot from each other we talked about the different contexts in which we teach um we showed each other lessons you know we took part in each other's lessons and but we also did quite a lot of um interesting theory on assessment and course length how long was the course how often were you doing it it's a technical course um anybody interested should go to the Way Education PLC site it's open to anybody to take in groups or in the park if you can put the the link in the chat box for everyone that'd be great and claire I'm going to ask you about um after-school homework um do you think the school should be given this now how does it work in ap before the virus what you're doing um now um and then I'll come back to you on the kind of knowledge and the retrieval practice those types well historically we haven't called homework homework we've called it activities to try to try and get away from the negative associations with the word homework and um within the COVID um context everyone's at home so calling it a homework um is probably a bit of a misnomer but I think um the idea really is that we want to give them some work to do independently once they've finished um their live online lessons um that's probably the idea that we want to give them something um to help them consolidate the content so obviously that's going to depend on what the content is but I would say make it fun make it engaging use and quizzes that sort of thing the sorts of um resources that sarah was talking about earlier um also if you're talking about higher levels um students so GCSE A levels perhaps give them a research project that will be in line with their their own interests so I think you know that whole concept needs to be um about fostering independent learning how do you uh in terms of your curriculum plans and then your delivery building that knowledge retention or addressing misconceptions is it just you know the the the that for an e-siss you learn as a teacher and you adapt that delivery online or or what resource yeah um to draw out that knowledge in your in your students well because of the context we work in we have got quite um rigorous schemes of work and so we do teach a separate lesson each day and that's because um you may not have the students on thursday that you had on wednesday but within the schemes of work and within those lessons there's plenty of recycling that goes on and then um at the end of each day an activity pops up on the dashboard of the students and that activity is available for them to do um well they've got a week to complete it and then it goes off their dashboards because we don't want them to be overwhelmed with all these activities um they've got to do and so teachers will be marking their own students activities and we can see which work that we need to review and which work they've um they've successfully completed so it's similar to um in bricks and water classrooms you you use the homework activities to see how how well they're coping with the content and that you know even though we've got lessons in place for the following day if you can see that a few of your students just um haven't got a certain concept then obviously you could introduce a few slides into your lesson a few lessons down the line and you know um adapt accordingly really and and how how do you address um you know my experience of working with 25 000 teachers last couple of years marking drives teachers crazy across the world regardless of setting uh what are the issues in an alternative online setting and how do you address that assessment marking burden also well we're quite savvy about that because a lot of our um activities are automatically marked um i'm an english teacher for example so say say for example we're covering um an aspect or um reading skills then we might have two or three texts where they're um they they've just got to do um skimming and scanning skills and so it's one word or two word answers and you could use multiple choice by that for that and then and then they'll be automatically marked um and then um and we're moving we're moving towards using canvas and canvas is a very good resource for um well the the marking you can have rubrics alongside your essay marking for example so um so the idea is to manage teachers workloads and like in english for example we we we tend towards it not rigidly but tend towards maybe having two or three automatically um marked pieces of work in one week and then one written piece so teachers aren't um you know too overloaded with with um lots of essays or um writing tasks thank you um sarah i'm going to bring um you in now in terms of your own um kind of fieldwork your research um what what special skill i've been quite fascinated trying to unpick how i can deliver meaningful teaching quality online virtually um you know that kind of uh the a lot of the non-verbal signals cognitive load the you know engagement through our looking at the camera those types of things what what what what have you discovered in your research and experience and what works effectively online in terms of pupil teacher sort of interactions blended learning environments what what skills does a teacher need to have to work online effectively with with students yeah i think for the facilitation side so i did talk a little bit earlier about you know the teacher guide mentor sort of approach i think you need to and i think the same is true in bricks and mortar to an extent i think it's probably a little bit more extreme in online context because the way that you facilitate is slightly different because as steven was saying earlier you might not be able to see the students for example or you may have quite large numbers so you you don't know exactly what's going on you do build up those relationships but you need to use different sorts of cues um i think that what claire was saying about connecting with the with the students making sure that there is that interaction but i think the the other thing about facilitation for me that i think in moderation which is quite important to me is about how you uh create opportunities for group work and group interactions and i think steven mentioned a little bit earlier about breakout rooms it's it's really quite significant actually the work that you can do in peer assisted learning and and with peer learning and it's there's a lot of research to show how much better the performance is for students when they are working in groups than even with with tutor-led contexts in some cases so to be able to introduce more opportunities for peer interaction i think it's actually really a strong aspect of online but it's also a skill set that you do need to develop over time and it's not something that's necessarily natural when you're used to being in a more chalk and chalk environment so i think those sorts of facilitation skills those sorts of guiding skills and how you work in in group work and how you support group work is really important and that is supported really well by the sort of authentic assessment we've been talking about whether that's e-portfolios whether that's quizzes and polls you know all these sorts of tools that you have in your in your box when you're using online facilities are actually really really powerful and i think for me it's a little bit you want to get used to using the tools in the way that you've been using them today ross in a very sort of natural way not in not in too plunky a way what would be a tip for teachers start and synchronize video lessons for the first time live um what what would you say doesn't the number one thing they need to do i think one of the things that's a bit different is you you don't maybe do so much of the talking i think that sort of dialogic approach that works so well in a sort of in a classroom i think it doesn't work quite so well in online because of the engagement issues and i think that's uh steven talked a little bit early about chunking so i think if you can just sort of modularize content if you can sort of group things up into five ten minute chunks and try to have activities around those that's quite powerful and i think just sort of getting used to to not so much being in that chalk and talk mode but being much more in a facilitation mode that doesn't mean that you're not communicating information it can be quite complicated and quite a lot of information it just means you have to sort of a little bit take more of a backseat i would say than you probably would in in a classroom setting where you know the focus is a little bit more on you but that said there are things like behavior which is much less of an issue in an online context it's actually quite a joy and i was i was at an interview quite recently for academy 21 teachers and one of them said you know oh it's great that i could just teach the class and i didn't have any interruptions with behavior and i thought that was actually quite a good observation because you know it is quite different in an online context you don't have those sorts of same sorts of behavioral issues that you do in a normal classroom so i think that there are real benefits and advantages as a teacher to teaching in these contexts and and get through more curriculum material i guess as well um thank you sir um steven as a profession you know uh my own research from mental health and you know it's the research all around as we grow numbers of young people suffering from anxiety disorder disorders um in the most severe cases um has stopped maybe students attending schools have you seen any concerns rise among our your your own student body in the last six or seven weeks um for us yes we've seen anxiety from the year 11 over exams as everyone has around the country um COVID-19 as well we've benefited from actually having students around the world so um we had a student send in a youtube uh clip um about COVID-19 from Wuhan and i was able to share that within the two settings so you know to see someone actually going through it before it actually came over to us we were able to put these type of things in place um and and yes our teachers are particularly sensitive to to the students and think about the advice that they're giving um but actually in their in a regular way of working it hasn't changed for them you know if they attend an online school then you know they are continuing to attend in an online school they haven't had the disruption of those that have been moved out of the physical setting saying that and we have got a slide if you can move forward to it the data slide what we do um try to survey kids make sure that we check on their well-being um this is a survey that uh that we undertook using edukit software and i'm sure many of you out there already use that type of thing to to survey your students to check on their well-being and and and see where the issues uh uh are coming up so you know again making use of data to to keep a check on the students that uh that you're teaching on a regular basis um before we go on to your 750 pupils sorry has this data been sent to your 750 pupils they put it's been sent to many more than that it's been sent to into high so that's sort of thousands of students okay and could you just give us uh uh for people watching the steven just a summary of kind of issues that you picked up from this data on the screen um exam stress is always the the biggest issue um this isn't a more recent survey so put it up there for demonstration purposes um and it's interesting you're asking a question that i had recently in an academic uh council about you know safeguarding and it has there been an increase in in anxiety and actually we have had very few in comparison to physical scores because as i said as this has been their normal mode of working they continued on in the same form but we are monitoring it and and keeping an eye out for that we do offer drop-in sessions once a week at academy 21 we do think about um how they maintain a healthy lifestyle means they are learning online i don't know i'm going to ask a safeguarding question here i'll assume that the answer will be the pretty statutory response for most education settings but in an ap online setting um what specific training have you had in terms of being uh raising safeguarding concerns or how do you decipher that information virtually we do the same training that is expected of a state school um so i've got the designated safeguarding lead certificate as has claire um we do annual updates and training i have um tailored the training a little bit more for an online world so we've done specific training on mental health online cyberbullying etc so we do have that focus and of course all our lessons are recorded so we've got that that net there to have the recording to refer back to if an issue comes up but for us we are dealing with clients so we're dealing with schools so if we um recognize an issue we're straight onto the host school and the safeguarding links there okay thank you um claire and gareth i'm going to ask you both for a response here thinking about um academy 21 is there a type of student that you feel online alternative provision is best suited for and uh what kind of student needs do you support um just a lot about that question i i i guess you know for the answers that have been given from all of us on the panel today um there's a huge diverse range of need that we're supporting um i've been involved in in online alternative provisions since it first started in the UK in around 2003 2004 often on and what i've noticed over the last particularly the last five years or so uh has been a dramatic increase uh in the number of young people who referred to us with uh complex mental health and and specifically um general and specific anxiety disorders um and that's a large proportion of our school at the moment i would say um it's particularly suitable for those those people groups because they're in control of the learning environment um whilst we encourage them to use the microphone and to talk to us we don't force them to um so they choose how and when they communicate how they engage with our learning obviously you know that learning is teacher led and they're supported as you've you've seen from from Claire's earlier comments with a huge amount of positive reinforcement um but ultimately i suppose that there is no one size fits all um we may be working with young people for a week because they've been temporarily excluded from school through to we may be supporting them as an alternative to exclusion and we might be working with young people with medical health issues from broken legs through to more complex or transplant patients um in the past uh cancer patients and so forth so there's a broad range of students that um that we support uh we don't group them together by the referral reasons um so that their timetable intergroups based on their individual need so if we have a young person referred to us with cfs we'll typically be asked to timetable them into groups in in the later I'll just clarify cfs for people outside of oh sorry chronic chronic fatigue syndrome um and uh and those groups are driven by by two things really one is their ability level and and and ensuring that those lessons are pitched at the right ability for them and so that they're able to to progress uh and also their individual need as a such department and their individual um reason they'd be referred to uh to us thank you garrison time everyone yeah even um you know an online provider what's been the biggest change you've seen since uh the lockdown here in the UK um any specific changes you've had to make virtually or none at all um we've certainly had to expand and inquiries are certainly up um for us we're beginning to look at new packages to try and fill the gaps that you know the lack of schooling for some students has has created you know so study skills packages to help year 11 students bridge the gap to move on to sixth form these type of things that the company is actively looking at and uh what looking to promote moving forward yeah we will we will begin delivering um a short study skills course after uh the may half term um okay um thank you and uh just a question for sarah in terms of perceptions of online alternative provision and is it an easier gig for k kids or you know is it just as rigorous and challenging just um any thoughts on an online provision for for pupils to sarah sorry sorry so um what is it is it different for um just for people watching how um what confidence do you people watching that is equally as rigorous and these children can achieve good outcomes yeah we have obviously the highest expectations for all of our students whether they come into into high or academy 21 obviously the students coming into academy 21 um have had greater difficulties academically often all they have you know some of the the issues that have been highlighted today so while we have high expectations we we want to make sure that we give them every support we possibly can so that's why we have additional support for well-being and health and and pastoral support and that's why we do a lot of one-to-one support with them um we also want to give them extra support in terms of study skills and various other support so I think additional support additional scaffolding is needed for this particular cohort but um you know the same basic high expectations we have for all of our students we want them to achieve the best they can we want them to get good quality GCSE and IGCC qualifications at the end and we want them to go on to two A levels and obviously to university study as well so we do try to give them you know career support and and support across across the piece as well and I'm sure you've got plenty of great case study stories that you can signpost our viewers to maybe we can circulate one or two examples of students that have graduated um just going to ask Jackie again I'm conscious of time everyone so I'm probably going to finish about two or three minutes um Jackie there are some indications that despite the best um intentions most schools and teachers find online learning unsustainable in the long term um either because of training um what if you uh do you have the capacity of people watching uh want to inquire even for students that are not in the alternative provision yes we do um and the only reason that it's might not be sustainable is because obviously um it's been conceived for for teachers here it's been conceived in a lockdown and online isn't about lockdown online is about integration and uh liberation um and it's also about flexibility and personalized learning and we can support teachers and schools with that to make sure that their pupils really um we start looking at their learner preferences which leads to greater engagement which leads to increased progress in learning which ultimately leads to better outcomes and we continue to support both the teacher and the school basically making that transition to online because going forward when all this is is over I do believe that more schools will be looking at a blended type arrangement so that in the event of um something else happening I don't mean sort of a global pandemic but obviously there are always problems with infrastructure there can be problems with recruiting suitably qualified teachers and retaining those for certain subjects so whatever it is um schools need to have you know an option an alternative and obviously a blended approach is going to be the solution for them yeah and then in you know a lot many of us will know it's been around for a good couple of decades and you know that question will we need bricks and mortar in 20 30 50 years um where can people go Jackie or Gareth in terms of the want to find out more about your work obviously we'll send slides and contact details but um people that want to get in touch and get kids signed up uh from tomorrow where where can they go um with it if they want to have children signed up um they really need to be in touch with Gareth or our admissions team um the slide that we've got here is for those teachers that were interested in making contact because they want to talk more about teaching online or even joining us as an online teacher yeah yeah I was gonna say but the best place to go is to the website it's um www.academy21.co.uk um it's been specifically designed to answer many of the questions in relation to individual students and whether um you know our provision is is appropriate and to explain that provision um and whether we might be the right uh alternative provision solution for them um you can complete a contact form uh email us or if you want to call us direct on i1438 535 001 we've got dedicated regional teams um that will really kind of work closely with you consult with you and ensure that um from the outset um that you know any decision making it is is made with it with it uh the young person in mind and ensuring that we're appropriate for them okay um so that's it everyone thank you um for everyone for signing up and joining us this afternoon as i said earlier uh i will get this video recording the slides sent to you and any necessary resources i just want to thank um my co-hosts and mark helping with that been behind the scenes thank you mark cooper and dr sarah de frittis uh claire brokenshire gareth lucas howells jacklyn daniel steven phipps um thank you very much everyone my name's ross um teacher tilka i hope you are safe looking after your mental health as well as those around you um thank you for joining me and if you need anything my email support at teacher talk it dot code atk and on the screen academy 21 a great alternative well before the virus and long after academy 21 dot code atk forward slash lockdown learning um i've been your host thank you very much and have a lovely evening thank you everybody bye thank you very much bye bye bye