The back-to-school nerves always set in the night before you return, but this one was so much more significant.

Having spent numerous weeks over the summer preparing for the safe return of our onsite face-to-face learners and the smooth return of our distance learners, everyone just wanted it to work and go well.

Like any plan that meets reality, though, not everything worked perfectly. That’s expected: the key is being adaptable and innovating where required.

These are some key things we learned after our first week back that led to useful changes to keeping everything working smoothly.

1. Check everything is working at the start of the day

As teachers, planning and preparation is fundamental, but this week has shown now more than ever how important it is, especially when you are synchronising live online lessons with lessons being taught in the classroom.

Ensuring you have everything fully prepared for you and the children in the classroom and at home is key, but, even so, there are things we learned this week we had not already thought of.

For example, one thing we started doing this week was to spend time in the morning checking everyone’s resources, apps and wifi was working. The IT team have been superheroes!

Taking this time first thing has been much more effective than solving problems in the middle of a live session.

2. Changes to marking and in-class teaching

Having to teach at a social distance means work is much more independent.

Children must remain at their desks and therefore it can become a very static day. So, creativity is now key. Teachers have adapted their lessons to incorporate movement breaks within live lessons. This has allowed for higher levels of concentration and the participation of online learners has increased a sense of community between those in school and those learning remotely.

Teachers have also used different programs, such as Go Noodle, for movement breaks that don’t require children to move from behind their desk.

Owing to social distancing rules, though, we still found some children were further away from the board and found it hard to follow everything

To overcome this, students in class began to follow the lesson via the online platform with the class teachers, who then developed further questions to ensure students were following correctly.

As well as this, class teachers have begun to plan in regular and specific time slots to complete marking on Seesaw.

This way, they aren’t faced with over 100 unapproved posts to mark at the end of each day. It makes it less daunting for themselves, while keeping it effective for the children.

3. Spares of everything

We all know children drop things, break things, lose things, and need support with things.

One thing we quickly found was that having a lot of spare…well everything…was vital - all around the school.

For example, having spare masks on hand can save you an awful lot of fluster time, especially in cases like our school where it is mandatory for the children to wear them at all times.

The same with sanitisation kit so that you can clean your area and the children’s areas regularly.

We also discovered that although the children are required to provide their own water now due to the removal of water fountains they often don’t, or run out, so extra water bottles were quickly brought in.

We’d thought of all these things before of course, but reality showed we would need to bring them in an even greater amount.

4. Providing dedicated time to talk

Being back in class has been great for those onsite. However, it became clear by day two that even though it was novel, it was also daunting for the children to follow the new guidelines. It also emerged that those at home wanted to feel more involved.

So, we decided to create a metaphorical open space and have timetabled in a “Snack and Chat” with the online learners to create that community feel that they all know and love.

As the children can’t be as sociable as they are used to being in school, it is essential that we continue to develop their social and emotional skills and their wellbeing.

By having this time now in their day, they can express any feelings or concerns they may have with their teachers or with their friends who are in school or distance learning at home.

5. Changing collection locations

Staggered start and finish times have been great for a smooth entry and collection time this week.

Classes have had designated times and areas to be dropped off and collected from. We are also very fortunate that we have such a large amount of land at the school so we have been able to distance all classes that are being collected in the same designated time frame.

Parents have also cooperated well with this, ensuring that they stick to their child’s time for collection and drop off. However, we felt it important for parents to know that their children’s teachers were still available to speak to. To facilitate this and with the hot weather around us in Dubai, we thought it best to relocate some class areas to be under shaded areas. This allows for parents to have some socially distanced time with their child’s teacher while ensuring there are the designated amount of people in this area at any one time.

This proved to work much better once it was altered to a shaded location. And as the weather cools, we can move back to using more areas that are less shaded.

Laura Pearson is an Inclusion Support Teacher at Deira International School, Dubai, UAE. She has been teaching internationally for 5 years.