Chicago Public Schools are supposed to open for some special needs and pre-K students Monday

The Chicago Teachers Union is now threatening to refuse to return to work in person.

Grade Awarding 2021 - a thread.
1. For pupils and parents; it sounds daft but there isn’t much you can control right now. Teacher will play the main role in awarding grades, and there may well be some time or formal exam for subjects. But we don’t know exactly what yet.

2. What we do know is that all work pupils have done, their resilience over such a difficult time, their drive to keep going will make a difference to them. It’s never been more important for pupils to keep going, and keep engaging with the provision a school provides.

3. To our pupils? Have faith that the work you are doing will pay off. Please don’t lose heart right now. We love you lots and we all want you to excel. We are always here for you.

4. For school leaders - we need to build a year story. Right now they need a narrative that stresses the need to keep engaging in lessons. A letter every two weeks won’t get that job done. It’s never been more that pupils and parents feel connected to a school and we have clear

5. Communications cycles. Media - twitter/YouTube etc are vital tools for keeping our pupils and parents connected to school. This news cycle is vital for building a cultural expectation of what will happen when pupils set foot again in our school buildings.

Hi teachers and parents 👋 I have complied a short list of useful online maths tools and virtual manipulatives to assist you with distance learning. I have included the curriculum area and suggested what class group they would be most suitable for. See below! #mathschat #edchatie

This website allows you to create a graph. Useful for 5th/6th class. Children can create pie charts, bar charts, etc. adding in their own data and designing and labelling the X and Y axis themselves. Charts are easily

Online protractor. Useful for 5th/6th class. The teacher can use screen sharing to how to use a protractor. Children who do not have a protractor at home can use this to measure angles.

Exploring area and perimeter. Useful for 4th - 6th class. Tasks can be set to create shapes of a specific area/perimeter. There is also a game that can be used for formative

Interactive geo-board. Useful for 1st - 6th class for exploring perimeter and area and the characteristics of shapes. Images can be saved easily to be shared with the teacher via email, screen share etc.

with all good intentions, the result is not very useful: "Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and .. 1/

... are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 2/

one of mistakes I think the consensus model made is that it has too much circular bootstrapping. Something is predatory because what we do not find predatory is not. E.g. the point about transparency. Just check how "transparent" some major publishers are in @RetractionWatch. 3/

the "best editorial and publication practices" turns out to focus on same basic agreements, mostly among publishers, and not really about doing quality science. It's an administrative rule. 4/

"Aggressive, indiscriminate solicitation" is also a rule really hard to apply. Elsevier repeatedly breaks this rule, and other more traditional publishers do too, tho at a lower frequency. Do the authors want to claim Elsevier is a predatory publisher? 5/

What does it take to sustain screwiness in the way the world works? Mostly, it's just good people, trying their best to get us to a better place... within constraints which pretty much preclude us actually getting anywhere! A case in point with

These authors come across as hugely committed to something we might all agree upon: improving young people's experiences of physical education through better school-based-interventions. Sounds great? Agreed, & pretty much everything about their study models best practice 🥳

Sadly, established "best practice" involves further embedding the medicalisation of PE as if it should be about the potential contribution of physical activity to everything from quality of life, self-perception & cognition to the likelyhood of becoming healthy & active adults 🤯

We're reminded of the Chief Medical Officer's "recommended guidelines of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day for healthy growth and development" 👇 This is a focus on what we can easily measure (generic) rather than on what we might value (individual).

We get recognition that PE "is not merely an opportunity for children to engage in PA" but that's linked to its role in "the development of knowledge & skills to foster their PA engagement throughout life" - so further focus on health outcomes. A long way from @meaningfulPE 🙄