27 January 2021
In this second period of remote teaching and learning, Woldingham staff – like so many other people in the UK and around the world – are again working from home. Here we find out about some of the novel ways staff have set up remote teaching spaces at home and how pets are helping out.
Teacher of design and technology, Mrs Wilkinson, was quick off the mark placing an emergency IKEA order to build a home teaching space as soon as we heard remote teaching was returning. Trust a DT teacher to take this approach. She even made a PowerPoint to share her learning in setting up a bespoke designed teaching area with her students.
Meanwhile Mrs Haythorne went for improvisation, using her ironing board as a laptop stand (sturdy and adjustable to three heights). With four schools operating from the Haythorne household, Mrs Haythorne chose – or should this be was relegated to - the utility room as her space.
Mme Emery, like Mrs Haythorne a teacher of modern foreign languages, has found a unique low-tech/high-tech combination worked well, creating a portable whiteboard using rolls of white film on the wall behind her desk. Luckily, so far, she’s managed not to deface her living room with tables of verbs.
Other members of staff had no choice but to involve their pets in lessons, which is always welcomed by students of all ages. In the photo gallery, Miss O’Neill’s cat, Barney, can be spotted in supervision mode (watch out exams.net!) and Herr Ceska’s cat, Cuthbert, sorts out the filing while Herr Ceska gets on with the lesson. Miss Banton is pet-free but there’s a rumour she recently awarded a merit to a student’s gerbil for “speaking really well in Spanish”.
