I have been working with some teachers recently looking at supporting them in their planning for forthcoming topics. I have decided to extend this work to develop a slightly more cross curricular set of links to resources and web links although as ever the main thrust will be Literacy and ICT but I have sought [...]
I was speaking at a CPD session and chatted with a teacher about her forthcoming topic which she was calling “Space – the final frontier” which she was going to work on with her mixed Year Five and Six class. I put a few ideas together whilst we were chatting and made a request on [...]
On Friday, just hours before the Olympic ceremony demonstrated the qualities and strengths of Great Britain, the DfE announced that they had changed the rules for the appointment of teachers so that academy schools can hire unqualified teachers. The immediate kneejerk reaction to what is often kiteflying by Michael Gove, Nick Gibbs or the mandarins [...]
I was working with a teacher today preparing a sequence of work on data handling. We were keen to develop a sequence which got the pupils (who are working between 3A and 5C) talking about and interpreting the data. We were not looking to avoid data collection and graph drawing entirely but the emphasis is [...]
As so many schools are covering the Olympics and Greeks this term I have been playing with an old idea to support literacy work. I was a great fan, many years ago, of the Fighting Fantasy books and have enjoyed working with pupils on developing choice driven stories. I have developed a story in PowerPoint so [...]
As someone who has worked for years trying to make the teaching of writing as engaging as possible, I have been fascinated looking at work taking place around the globe looking to bring gamification to the classroom. Reading the engaming blog has a this from Deterding, Dixon, Khaled and Nacke who define gamification as “the use of [...]
Yesterday I attended #tmplay at Beaumanor Hall in Leicestershire which was organised by Mike McSharry and Emma Dawson. I am a great fan of teachmeets and, as usual, it was a treat to meet old friends and make new ones. You can see all of the presentati0ns here which were filmed by Sarah McSharry. As ever the [...]
This morning I woke to the news that the new Head of OFSTED, Michael Wilshaw, had made another new pronouncement on the quality of teaching and leadership. One section from the Sunday Telegraph article included Sir Michael Wilshaw said he wanted “less tolerance of poor leadership,” adding “everything flows from poor leadership, that just has [...]
This morning I awoke to the news on Radio Four that Michael Gove had a significant announcement to make at the BETT show in London around the teaching of ICT. I always find it interesting when Gove talks about ICT because the first eighteen months of his tenure as Secretary of State have [...]
I took part in a discussion on Twitter in response to posts by Kevin McLaughlin who was describing his approach to teaching in 2012 where 2012 will be the year that my planning is based on what every child in my class wants to learn, open classroom learning and no timetable. Kevin is an inspirational teacher [...]
