St Pius X Catholic Primary School

'Restore all things in Christ'

01229 828406

admin@st-piusx.cumbria.sch.uk

Schneider Road, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria LA14 4AA

Staff Remote Learning Support

This page will remain under construction. As staff have queries about using IT to provide effective learning opportunities both in school and for remote learning, content will be added.

Zoom

Essential Skill - Getting Started

All staff should set up a free Zoom account by following this link and using their school email address: https://zoom.us/ 

For remote learning, Zoom is needed for all teaching staff. This will be your platform for live interaction with pupils and other staff. It is incredibly helpful for 1:1 and small group teaching if you can schedule and share a meeting with individuals or small groups while the main lesson is ongoing. See below for further details on 1:1 and small group remote learning.

Follow the link for a step by step guide about how to get set up: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-a-zoom-account?r=US&IR=T

Once you have an account you can download the Zoom app for desktop here: https://zoom.us/support/download

You also have the zoom app on your work iPad and you can download it to your phone from the app store if you wish. You can use your login details in all versions of Zoom

 

Essential Skill - Scheduling a Meeting

It is usually preferable to schedule a meeting in advance. Follow the links to find out how to do this in:

Web Portal (logging in on a browser): https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362413-Scheduling-meetings

iPad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eanzm9JN5sg

The same scheduling process can be completed from the desktop app if you have downloaded it.

Note: It is advisable to disable the waiting room function as it can be time-consuming and distracting allowing every child from a class to enter the meeting individually.

 

Essential Skill - Sharing your Meeting with your Audience

Once you have scheduled a meeting, you will want to share it to Showbie, or for a staff meeting, you may want to email. Here is how.

Essential Skill - Working 1:1 or in Small Groups

If you are working 1:1 or with a small group, you can choose specific children within a lesson in Showbie and post your link (as described in the video above) to be seen only by them. Just choose their name on the right-hand side in Showbie and paste the link as described in the video. Once the class teacher has finished the main teaching your 1:1/small group leave the main meeting and choose your Zoom meeting link.

This gives you the flexibility to leave the main teaching early if you feel that is helpful to the child. If you or the child want to reenter the main meeting you click on that link to rejoin.

Class teachers can also use the links in individual children's areas to join the 1:1 or small groups to check in on how things are going.

Essential Skill - Being the Host on Zoom

Watch the video below to find out about some of the functions when you are a host in Zoom.

Desirable Skill - Using Charanga and Salut in Zoom

Use the 'Being the Host on Zoom' video above to learn how to screen share. Once you can do that, you are set to lead music and French lessons using Charanga and Salut. 

Simply start sharing your screen in the meeting and work through your content.

Although it isn't ideal, it is important to keep the whole class muted. Delay times mean that finding the beat in music is disrupted by the slightly different timings. I thought this might be a problem, but my class loved their first music lesson and really loved singing Mamma Mia at the end, even though they couldn't hear each other.

Advanced Skill - Children Sharing their Screen in Zoom

This skill is actually quite easy, but is not absolutely necessary for our remote learning. It is useful if you would like to see a child's work or if you need to troubleshoot something on their device.

Showbie

Showbie Support

Showbie has a very strong support system in place. If you have anything you need to know about follow this link to search their support articles: https://support.showbie.com/en/

You can also use their chat team that you can access by clicking the question mark at the bottom right of the screen and then contact Showbie (they are in America so don't always get back immediately in the morning).

Essential Skill - Classes: Creating and Organising

Naming Classes: Year X Subject 2021

If you name the classes as above it will make them easy to find if you need to unarchive them in the future. If you want to reuse a class the following year, you can easily rename the class with a new date.

The classes you will need to create are: Basic Skills, Registration and Assemblies; Computing; English; French; Homework; Maths; PE; RE; Reading; Science; Spelling; Music; and Topic.

Watch the video below to find out how to create and organise classes.

Essential Skill - Adding Content to Showbie (Desktop)

Desirable Skill - Archiving Classes, Folders and Assignments

iPad and PC Skills

Desirable Skill - Using the Notes app as a whiteboard

The iPad app called notes can be used as a whiteboard. It is much more versatile and useful than using a real whiteboard.

Watch the video to see how it can be used in the classroom. 

Desirable Skill - Recording your screen on iPad

Use this skill to prerecord a reading session for remote learning, create an iPad tutorial, etc.

Desirable Skill - Recording your screen on PC

This video explains how to use a tool called Loom to record your screen (and your own face) on your PC. This can be useful for prerecording a lesson where it can not be presented live or if children are not able to view it live. I have used this to prerecord a guided reading session using the Kindle Cloud Reader app. 

Desirable Skill - Using Voice Dictation to aid Writing

Using this simple method, children who can form sentences but struggle to write them can verbalise their ideas and have them converted to text.

This doesn't work perfectly and does need some supervision (especially when the child is just learning to use it), but it does give the child an extra level of independence when appropriate.