You may be wondering what it has been like for those students who have returned to school this week. Miss Tash Rayson asked some of our Year 10 students to share their experiences and thoughts about this innovative model of online learning. Many thanks to Zoe, Elke, Jordan, Sasha, Lily, Quayd and Ruby for these insightful contributions…
“Although the usual classes have stopped for the time being, learning at PLHS has not. SEQTA, Teams, Maths Online, Stile and many other online platforms have made it simple and straightforward to complete the same amount of work. Most teachers have chosen to post work for the week on SEQTA courses. These can be assignments, links to videos, Word documents with questions and even times for video conferences on Teams. This style of learning means that each student can access the same amount of work without moving around to different classes or attending school, something that is now a risk.
The day is broken into three blocks with a 10-minute break in the middle of each to replace the normal lesson changes. Each block has two subjects to work on during that time; e.g. Maths/Science in the morning, Tech/Arts/choice subjects between Recess and Lunch and English/History after lunch. These blocks are rotated each day and a PE lesson is occasionally added. Teachers rotate throughout the day to supervise and provide help for students. This system gives each area of learning adequate time to complete and hand up the work set.
The use of Teams (for those of us who do Stage 1 learning) means that students can help each other in a group chat environment, while Direqt messages over SEQTA can be used to contact teachers for clarification on work, drafts, extensions and questions. Not only has online learning been successful, it has also given students the opportunity to work more independently in calmer and smaller classes where they can spend their day focused on work rather than moving around the school.
Very few areas of learning have been lost in this new, online-orientated school day. Students still come to school to access the resources, learning environment and help from teachers just like before; hopefully, the success of online websites can even be used after we return to normal.
My Stage 1 Maths class utilised the video call feature of Teams to attend an online class hosted by Miss Rayson. During this class, we could collaborate with the teacher and work together through the online maths questions. It was a unique, safe and successful way to communicate with the teacher and our peers to help complete the same learning that we would have in a normal classroom environment. Specifically, we looked at the unit circle, which helped us understand the trigonometry formulae we learnt last term. We also completed questions online about finding the exact measurements of sine, cosine and tangent angles.”
~ Zoe Proude
Some comments from other Year 10 students about this week’s learning:
“We have learnt a lot about the Holocaust in History and English, and how people were treated in concentration camps. This model of learning suits us because we interact with the same group of students each day. We are doing a lot more work because we’re in charge of the pace of our learning. We like being able to choose which subject we will learn during the day based on our mood at the time.”
~ Elke, Jordan & Sasha
“I have been learning about genetics and the structure of DNA in Science. I really like the way we are learning online because you have access to all of the notes all of the time, and we don’t have to walk around the school all day.”
~ Lily
“We learnt about the involvement of Mr Jolley’s family members in different wars. It was really interesting.”
~ Quayd & Ruby