Classroom precautions during COVID-19

 

Tips for teachers to protect themselves and their students.

As schools reopen, it’s important that precautions are taken both inside and outside the classroom to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This article aims to support teachers with information and tips on:

• Physical distancing at school
• Practicing health and hand hygiene 
• Cleaning and disinfecting tips for the classroom 
• Actions to take if a student appears sick

Understanding COVID-19, how it spreads and how we can protect ourselves and others is an important first step in establishing classroom procedures and protocols. Students need to understand what it is in order for them to follow the rules. Listen to their concerns and ideas and answer their questions in an age-appropriate manner. Discuss the different reactions they may experience and explain that these are normal reactions to an abnormal situation.

Make sure to use information about COVID-19 from reliable sources such as UNICEF and WHO, as well as the health authorities in your country. By staying informed about the situation and following the recommendations of public health experts, we can protect our own wellbeing and those around us.

Physical distancing at schools

When it comes to physical distancing, it is important that you establish some classroom ground rules in accordance with the procedures established by your school’s administration, as well as the protocols established by your respective country’s Ministry of Health and/or local health bodies and authorities. Recommended measures include:

• Maintain a distance of at least 1 metre between everyone present at school
• Increase desk spacing (at least 1 metre between desks), stagger recesses/breaks and lunch breaks (if difficult, one alternative is to have lunch at desks)
• Limit the mixing of classes for school and after-school activities. For example, students in a class will stay in one classroom throughout the day, while teachers move between classrooms; or classes could use different entrances, if available, or establish an order for each class to enter and leave the building/classroom
• Stagger the school day to vary the start and end times and avoid having all the students and teachers together at once 
• Consider increasing the number of teachers, if possible, to allow for fewer students per classroom (if space is available)
• Advise against crowding during school pick-up or day care, and if possible avoid pick up by older family or community members (i.e. grandparents). Arrange school pick up/drop off times differently (according to age group) to decrease any large gatherings of children at a given time
• Use signs, ground markings, tape, barriers and other means to maintain 1 metre distance in queues around entrances

Handwashing is one of easiest, more cost efficient and effective way of combating the spread of germs and keeping students and staff healthy.

Teach the five steps for handwashing

1. Wet hands with safe, running water
2. Apply enough soap to cover wet hands
3. Scrub all surfaces of the hands – including backs of hands, between fingers and under nails – for at least 20 seconds. You can encourage students to sing a quick song at this point to make it a fun habit
4. Rinse thoroughly with running water
5. Dry hands with a clean cloth or single-use towel
   

Encourage students to get into the practice of regularly washing their hands and/or applying hand sanitizers at key moments, such as entering and leaving the classroom; touching surfaces, learning materials, books, and after using a tissue to blow their nose.

Students should always cough and/or sneeze into their elbow. However, if by accident they do so in/on their hands, instruct them to immediately wash their hands or apply hand sanitizer. If students sneeze or cough into a tissue, ensure that it is disposed of immediately and that they wash their hands. It is extremely important to normalize the idea of frequent and routine handwashing.

Even with clean hands, encourage students to avoid touching their eyes, nose and mouth. Germs can transfer from those areas on to their clean hands and spread around the classroom this way.

Mask wearing in schools

If wearing fabric masks is recommended in your school, then make sure your students are familiar with when they should wear masks and any related school policies, such as how to dispose of used masks safely to avoid the risk of contaminated masks in classrooms and playgrounds. 

Explore with your students how to handle and store masks properly. 

All efforts should be made to ensure the use of a mask does not interfere with learning. No children should be denied access to education because of mask wearing or the lack of a mask because of low resources or unavailability.

If you have students with disabilities, such as hearing loss or auditory problems in your class, then consider how these children may miss learning opportunities because of the degraded speech signal stemming from mask wearing, the elimination of lipreading and speaker expressions and physical distancing. Adapted masks to allow lipreading (e.g. clear masks) or use of face shields may be explored as an alternative to fabric masks.