Lockdown learning by Saachi Patel

LOCKDOWN LEARNING

SAACHI PATEL keeps learning in the COVID world.

Lockdown learning has been a part of our lives for almost three years now.

Lockdown has impacted learning for all students. The idea of lockdown was to keep New Zealand safe, but were students getting the education they needed? Before lockdown, we were assigned resources such as computers and Ipads to take home if students did not have access to devices at home, but smaller issues led to bigger issues. There were only a few students regularly doing the homework that the teacher had assigned to us. Only a fraction of the class would show up to the Zooms and do the work. The only time other students came into the Rooms was on Fantastic Fun Fridays when we played Kahoots and other fun online games.

Maybe there were reasons students tried avoiding their homework. The homework would either be too challenging or not challenging at all, if it was too challenging the student wouldn’t ask the teacher for easier homework, because she would be scared of getting in trouble. On the other hand, if it was too easy, the child would avoid it and only start doing the homework when the teacher called their parents.

Some students would just randomly start posting out-of-schoolwork such as drawings and artwork and spamming the chat we had with all our classmates and teachers.

Our homework daily was a few maths worksheets, writing a paragraph, reading a story, fitness inside the house (which I avoided) then sometimes there would be art, online art. In my opinion lockdown learning was super boring, the homework would never be challenging and when I asked the teacher questions there wouldn’t be any straight answers. For some kids though, the work would be too hard and that puts pressure on them to get it done, so the teacher wouldn’t get mad at them.

It wasn’t just the students that had pressure, it was also the teachers. They would keep getting work piled and piled on them from the ministry and would have to send out new homework every day, then at the end of the day have to mark it.

I interviewed my teacher, Mr Patel to see how the lockdown affected them.

MR PATEL

Q. Did you find it difficult to post new homework for your students, every day?

A. No, because I do that daily at school or online.

Q. Was it easier for you to teach your students online or in real life?

A. In real life because you have instant feedback from your students and they can help find homework for themselves. Q. How many students in your class would regularly do the homework that you gave them?

A. I would say about 20 students. Q. How many students were there in your class?

A. Almost 30.

I also interviewed my two pals, Kori Churchill and Maia Gascoigne about lockdown learning.

KORI CHURCHILL

Q. Did you find online school hard or easy?

ier because I did more schoolwork in real-life school. Online school was really easy because they were just a bunch of super-easy worksheets.

Q. Do you think that you did more learning in lockdown or less?

A. Less because we had a choice of not doing it.

MAIA GASCOIGNE

Q. Did you find online schoolwork hard or easy?

A. Online schoolwork was really easy because I had a lot of year 3’s in my class, so we were given easy worksheets and homework.

Q. Do you think you did more learning in lockdown or less?

A. Real school, because it’s a bit more challenging than online websites and worksheets. Some people in my class would just not do the homework. Online school was fun and all, but we didn’t do a lot of learning or activities. Such as groups including gardening groups, maths groups, and writing groups. Although some could go ahead via Zoom, most of these activities did not go ahead. Sports such as basketball, soccer, rugby, and netball were cancelled. I play for the school’s netball team and I was quite disappointed when it was cancelled, although it was for the greater good to keep us safe. Lockdown was to keep us safe from COVID-19, but in doing that we forgot to maintain our learning. COVID-19 is still around some kids are still not going to school, the majority of them probably not doing any work, mucking about in their homes. Lockdown has shown us school is a fun place to be, rather than being at home all day, every day.