The UK Government recently announced that schools would close across the UK, but they would, however, remain open for children of key workers. Therefore, this means that the ability to teach at home during the Coronavirus outbreak has become a necessity for teachers to plan for, as well as offering eLearning solutions for children to keep on learning.
School closures have also occurred around the world, along with cafe’s, restaurants, and other recreational events and gatherings have been postponed indefinitely.
Because of the current situation, we decided to take a look at what’s out there, and what we can do to help teachers and education get through this, together.
Offering eLearning from home
In order to help teachers to prepare for primary school pupils to conduct work at home, we’ve decided to allow the Seymour & Lerhn eLearning platform to be accessed for free until the 15th of May.
Our hope is that this makes a small contribution to help support teachers, as well as the on-going education of the nation’s primary school children through Coronavirus related issues.
Just go to https://www.seymourlerhn.com/education to access our platform, and simply create an account to access the platform.
Please share this to let other teachers know, and we can be better prepared as a nation.
*To allow for increased demand, some features may be initially restricted.
How teachers can prepare to teach at home during the Coronavirus
Firstly, if you don’t yet have anything set up… don’t worry!
There are plenty of educational services that are offering their services to teachers for free that require less ‘setting up’, and certainly help teachers carry on teaching whilst their pupils are at home.
This is one of the simplest, free options that are guaranteed to help teachers teach through this Coronavirus outbreak.
Seesaw is a digital learning platform which allows parents to record students speaking and send images as proof when a child has completed an activity.
This is useful to receive confirmation that children are doing the work that the teacher has set them to do.
Khan Academy Kids (KS1)
Khan Academy Kids offers fun, free, educational content designed for KS1 learners.
All of the content is curriculum-based or original, with an aim to make learning as fun and engaging as possible.
Mathletics is an online maths learning tool with curriculum-aligned lessons and activities.
Students will have access to relevant content to aid learning, and their courses are supported with activities, eBooks, and other resources to provide a new learning experience for students.
Seymour & Lerhn
We offer a library interactive virtual tours, lesson plans and resource sheets for primary schools, to make learning immersive, educational and fun.
Simply log into our cloud-based eLearning platform and choose from over 150 curriculum-aligned virtual tours, on the devices and hardware you already have. Designed for teachers, we have also developed a huge range of teaching resources to complement and expand on VR experiences.
Our platform will be available for free until the 15th of May, as well as many other eLearning platforms, to try and help to teach at home during the Coronavirus outbreak.
EdPuzzle allows teachers to upload a video and edit it to turn the video into a lesson.
One of the great things about this platform is that you can check if your pupils are watching your videos and see how many times they’ve watched each section. This is a useful to have in times like these.
Here’s an example of another company offering their service and resources for free, to help support teachers to teach at home during the Coronavirus.
Twinkl is a platform for teacher-created resources, planning and assessment materials, and will be useful to help teachers set home learning tasks and activities.
They have created their own guide of how to use their platform to use at home, which you can check out here.
How to teach young pupils about the Coronavirus
We understand that this will be a difficult conversation to have with your young children/pupils, and you don’t want to scare them or worry them.
It is, however, a good opportunity to remind them of the importance of personal hygiene and washing your hands.
As much as this is time be mindful of hygiene more than ever, most of these measures are important to do despite the Coronavirus outbreak.
Listen to their concerns
Make sure you listen to your pupil’s worries and answer their questions in an age-appropriate manner, there’s no need to overwhelm them with too much information.
Encourage them to discuss the feelings they may be experiencing, and explain that these are normal reactions to have during abnormal situations.
Discuss the importance of good hygiene
Reinforce the fact that your pupils can do a lot to keep themselves and others safe.
Introduce the idea of social distancing, such as standing a little further away from their friends, avoiding large crowds and not touching people if they don’t need to.
It’s also beneficial to focus on good health behaviours, such as covering coughs and sneezes with the elbow.
Educate disease prevention and control
Help your pupils to understand the basic concept of disease prevention and control.
It could be a good idea to use exercises that show how germs are spread in a visual and interactive way.
The 20-second rule
It’s important to get across how important it is for your students to wash their hands (with soap) for 20 seconds.
For example, put some glitter in a pupil’s hand and get them to wash their hands with just water for a minimal amount of time, and notice how much glitter remains.
To follow this, have the pupil wash their hands for 20 seconds, with soap and water, and see the difference between washing your hands with just water, and then soap and water.
It’s essential to make the learning fun and interactive so the important information is retained for longer and in greater detail.
Analyse situations and what could be done differently
Have students analyse situations to identify high-risk behaviours and suggest ways to change them.
For example, a pupil comes to school with a cold. They sneeze and cover it with their hand. They then touch other students during playtime. Then the pupils wipe their hand with a tissue and go to a lesson.
What did the pupil do that was un-hygienic? What should they have done instead?
The future is currently uncertain, as it’s far too soon to tell when we’ll return to society as we know it.
All we do know is that we need to get through this together, and we all do to all we can to help teachers teach at home during the Coronavirus outbreak.
If we all aim to do the right thing and help those in society who need it the most, then we will get through this.