Virtual school for elementary age-screen time?

DS is in 5th grade. He has 3-4 30 minute meetings every day and 3 assignments to be done on the computer on his own each day. The assignments take about 15 minutes of DSs time each...in addition to about 3 hours of me telling him to finish his work or he'll lose his devices...and him moaning about how unfair his life is and how long those assignments will take.

My 5th grader is on Zoom calls for most of the day (9:00-2:30/3:00), either with her teacher or with classmates in breakout rooms. They have several 10-15 minute offline breaks throughout the day, plus a half hour for reading offline and another hour away from screens for lunch/recess.

In all honesty I don’t worry about the screen time too much right now. It seems like a lot, but the second my kid is done with school, she wants to “hang out” with her friends on FaceTime or online video games anyway. So if she can spend hours upon hours happily doing that on weekends or after school, I feel like she can handle being online that long for school. If one or the other absolutely needed to go it would be the purely social time, but I truly feel she needs that too so I’m not fighting it since she can’t spend time with other kids in person right now. 

ETA: I have to say that for my kid it’s working out very well. She is having her best year yet not having to deal with or worry about the mean girls that were bullying and pestering her and her friends in previous years. She’s been able to make a few really good new friends this year in spite of all this and I’m thankful for that. I do think it would be harder for the kids in the younger grades where they tend to need more redirection even if they were in person.

100% virtual 1st grade here. Zoom starts at 8:30 and ends at 11:15 with a 15 minute break and she has the kids divided into 2 reading groups so one works offline for 15 minutes and one is live and then it switches. Then arts block PE/Music/Art etc one per day(takes maybe 15 minutes) in the afternoon it's not on Zoom but there is a short video to watch with the instructions.

Homework is a combo of apps on the i-pad and workbooks which is another 15 minutes. I'm happy with the amount of screen time. It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

The 6th grader on the other hand (middle school) is on Zoom from 10-3:30 (except lunch) and it's a little too much! He has 8 classes...

I'm more shocked that your freshman only has 1 hour and 30 minutes. My senior has 4 hours mandatory zoom synchronous a day plus spends an average of another 4-6 hours a day on classwork/homework. It's horrible.

Mine are on screen pretty much all day — 8:30 to 2:40. They get two 15 minute breaks and a half hour lunch.

I teach Kindergarten live from 9 - 11:30 and 1:30-3:30. It's insane. Plus they have work outside of that. This is forced by my district.

Needless to say, lots of breaks and movement.

Last spring, my then 6th grade son's private school did actual classes online within a week of things shutting down. He had 2-3 Zoom classes a day that were 45 minutes at the most. He usually spent from 9am to 4pm(ish) on his computer for the Zoom classes and homework. He's a slow worker otherwise he wouldn't have had to spend that much time on classwork. Thankfully he's in-person this year, even though they use their Chromebooks in school, it's still better for him to be there than at home.

My sophomore son has been 100% virtual this year so far (1st term was against his wishes, 2nd term is because of his classes). First term he barely had to get on his computer for his band class and then was on 30-60 each for his History and Intro to Wood construction classes. This term he's on his computer at least 45 minutes, up to 90 minutes for each of his three classes (German, English and Math). The most is for his math class because it's a radically accelerated class where they do Algebra 2, Geometry and Pre-Calc in two years. Last year was Geometry and a tiny bit of Algebra 2 (would have been more but his district couldn't do any new material after mid-March) so this year they are trying to do Algebra 2 in a 9 week session and Pre-Calc in a second 9 week session...so yah, they are using the entire 90 minute block they are allowed. He's a smarty and a fast worker so he doesn't have to do a lot outside of class time. Hopefully the district will be hybrid for most of the 3rd term starting in January--he has the same schedule, but a hybrid scenario would get him into school for band and wood construction and only online for History. Unless things improve dramatically he'll be online during 4th term with the same German, English, Math schedule again (his History, English, German, and Math are all at a central school the district has that brings in kids from 18+ schools a day so they agreed to be online regardless of what the rest of the district is doing this year as long as necessary).

But for both boys it's all been teacher-led classes, not "here's a link, watch this video" so I can't really complain about screen time.

We chose our school district's 100% virtual option. It's going fairly well for us.

My 2nd grader has less than an hour of synchronous video call time per day, and a half hour to an hour of additional work, but not necessarily screen time. She does like to check email frequently which I allow because it's all emails with my in-laws doing a LEGO build guessing game.

My 6th grader has about the same amount of synchronous time but probably double the additional work which, in her case is all online. She also has some video call socializing time.

This is my 3rd grader’s distance learning schedule:

8:15-8:30 live morning meeting
8:30-8:45 read to self
8:45 live LA lesson
9:45 live read aloud
10-10:30 WIN and small group time
10:30 live math lesson
11:30-12:30 lunch and recess
12:30-1:00 asynchronous science or social studies lesson
1:00-2:40 asynchronous specialists

They have some other apps that they can do on their own time if desired but it isn’t required. They also have assignments in each class. Some are done during the class time. Some are homework.

I have a son in grade 1 that just did 2 days online because he had stayed home with a sore throat. He dialed in on Zoom for each subject (like 6-7 times) The teacher teaches, then they either do an activity over zoom together or get off zoom and complete the activity. 2-3 of the activities could have been done on the iPad but I print them and make him use a pencil. He also had some PE on the iPad but the was exercising with a 10 minute video. So total iPad time that wasn’t interacting with the teachers/live was about 20 minutes a day.

Most of it is done online together with his class and teachers.

This doesn’t sound anything like what my kid is doing. Her teacher is actively teaching all day with the exception of her lunch/prep time. If she has the kids working in small groups, she is popping in from one breakout room to the next checking on what they are doing or she is using that time to do 1:1 check ins with each kid in class which she does every week.

My kid’s schedule looks like this:
9:00-9:30, morning meeting
9:30-9:40, short break for snack or bathroom or they can chat with classmates
9:40-10:45, reading or writing (this flips on different days)
10:45-11:00, breakout room with their reading/writing partner
11:00-11:30, independent reading time on or offline depending on if they have a book at home they are reading
11:30-12:30, lunch/recess
12:30-12:45, zoom call where they watch a math video by a different teacher that they watch synchronously with their homeroom teacher
12:45-1:45, zoom call with the teacher at first where they get their assignment and have the option of working alone or with one or two other kids, the teacher is available to answer questions and she checks in with the different groups
1:45-2:30-45, asynchronous science/social studies or art/music/media/PE lesson on video with a district teacher, they have this time after the video to work on the assignment
2:45-3:15, flex time for independent work time for whatever they still need to work on, the teacher is available if they need individual help and she also uses this time to do 1:1 meetings with kids.

For 5th grade the kids also have either band, choir or orchestra and those teachers pull the kids out once a week for a 30 minute small group lesson at different scheduled times. My kid is also in the Math League which is a separate pull out group during math time twice a week where they work on much harder problems than the general class.

IMO it’s very comprehensive. Our district is doing a great job with 100% online, I don’t know how it’s working out for those whose kids were in hybrid but are now in DL. We didn’t go that route because I wanted more consistency and I’m so happy we made that choice. The district is doing the specialists (media, art, regular music, PE) in blocks this year instead of on their usual rotation so when the kids were in hybrid they were with the same specialist teacher for I think 4-5 weeks running and then they would switch, and the online kids are in with that rotation. That way the specialist teachers wouldn’t have physical contact with all the students in a week the way they normally would.

Last year, our kids had about 6 hours/day of school related things they had to complete each day. My then 5th grader was online pretty much the whole time. Sometimes longer depending on what they were doing. My then 1st header was on for about 3 hours a day. My then 3rd grader was on 4-6 hours/day.

We actually had a well check for 2 of them during the shutdown. The pediatrician got to that screen time question (1-2 hrs/day I think?) and I said “Nope!” And he just paused and looked at me and I started seriously laughing and told him it was unavoidable because of virtual school. Then I offered to lie to him if it would make him feel better. 🤣.