This week’s wins #2

Posted on September 19, 2010 by sallythorne

1. TG Blog
They were a bit slow to contribute to start with, but in the end we actually ran out of time as so many of them wanted to say something. I think it will be really nice for them to be able to look back over it as they get older, and it will be good to share with year 6 pupils who maybe feel a bit nervous about starting secondary school.
And on Friday, I helped to set up 7-2’s blog! We might get the whole set by the end of the year.

2. Boy learning in Y10
We have a big boy/girl discrepancy at GCSE. This week, I really thought about my Y10 Native Americans work. Normally we do a series of worksheets and it takes 5-6 lessons to cover the whole lot and it’s not what you would call inspired. I do try and have a variety: there are some dull gapfill bits, some comprehension Qs, an annotated picture and a creative writing piece, but it’s not very interesting to teach and I haven’t especially noticed good retention.

This week, I jazzed it up a bit. I flipped my room into 4 nests of tables and each one had a different worksheet. Pupils worked in teams and had 2 minutes at each table; when the timer went, they had to move to the next table and work on the next sheet. They rotated, every 2 minutes, until everyone in the team had completed the sheets, to my satisfaction. The prize for the first team to complete this: a bag of Haribo.

Unsurprisingly, the chatty boys who can’t ever seem to focus won, by a fairly large margin. They completed 5 lessons’ worth of notes in an hour. The rest of the class were less enthusiastic but they all, with the exception of 2 girls, said they enjoyed the activity. We concluded it could be improved by keeping to one table and passing the resources around; though then, I would not have been entertained by L doing a tuck and roll across the middle of the classroom to get to the next task.

Retention will be tested with a quiz this week. I hope they have remembered it, because it was way more exciting teaching it this way than the old way.

3. #UKEdChat
I am not usually around on a Thursday night but made an effort this week to be on Twitter, as the focus was boy/girl learning. There was a lot of chat about how gender shouldn’t matter, since it should all be personalised learning now; I found this frustrating. I think everyone knows it should be personalised learning, but a lot of teachers need a way in and this is a good one. I also don’t think talking about the nature of the question is a profitable use of what isn’t a very long period of time to discuss ideas.
However, I was pleased to pick up some ideas and offer some of my own; and I was pleased to see two of my school governors participating after I let them know about it.
It also created a number of questions for me, which I have started writing about; those might show up this week some time.

4. Active Learning with Y9
I have a very mixed ability Y9 class and I am still trying to get to know them. For our second lesson together I was unsure where to pitch my worksheets; thus, I found myself scrawling on a Google map of Europe, trying to explain the long-term causes of the First World War. I was pleasantly surprised to find they were all on the edge of their seats, so I decided we’d skip the Days That Shook The World Assassination of Franz Ferdinand clip and we went out onto the triple jump square to re-enact it. The Black Hand Gang played their parts admirably and when ‘Franz’ shouted, “I hate Serbia now, you killed my baby!” (though technically from beyond the grave) I realised it was a win.
We went back inside to write stories of the day, with reference to the text. The boys excitedly pointed out I had got a couple of key story elements wrong, oops. I said I’d done it on purpose to test them. Then they wrote stories in silence for nearly 15 minutes, while I worked individually with one pupil and the TA worked with another. It was a thing of beauty.

Luckily no fail this week, though I have learned that it is not a good idea to schedule a 90 minute meeting on the same day one teaches 6 hours in a row and has a governors’ meeting until 10pm. That was a day I really felt lasted for about a week.

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This week’s wins #1

Posted on September 12, 2010 by sallythorne

1. Y8 non-writing lesson: school tour
We start year 8 with a chronological unit that examines art over time; a key skill with this is drawing inferences. So, we tour the school site, which has buildings ranging in age from 1 to 166 years, and we use our natural inference skills to compare and contrast them.
This lesson is not the easiest. It involves taking 25ish students on a walkabout in the first weeks of term when I still don’t know their names. This week I thought about delaying it, with one group in particular; but actually it worked quite well, and even though that one group gave me some issues and I had to cut the tour short, they were the most observant and best at inferring.

It is something of a paradox about teaching, that classes that learn the best kinaesthetically are the classes we are least likely to do kinaesthetic learning with. I’ve heard the phrase many times, “They can’t even cope with writing – how are they going to cope with role play/group work/active learning?”
There’s an answer in there, people.

2. #TMBristol
The venue has been booked: the Grange, Wednesday November 10th. The topic has been picked: Starting Out with Technology in the Classroom. The TeachMeet page has been updated by the ever so helpful Clare from Vital. Now all we need are some presenters! And some people to attend might be helpful too.

3. GoogleDocs for AGT
On Tuesday I took the questionnaire I give to parents at my annual AGT event and I made it into an online form, on GoogleDocs. This was my second attempt at form making, and I had a little more time to spend on this one, so I added a theme and played around with some of the different question types. Assuming I can encourage the parents to use the form (and I see no reason why they shouldn’t) this will cut down on my workload tremendously and make it even easier to feed results back to staff.

Next task: the student Effective Lesson questionnaire. I have been using this one since I started in my role as AGT co-ordinator, aiming to poll each year group once a year. Unfortunately, during my September clear out, I came across a bundle of year 8 questionnaires which I had never managed to collate. Assuming I can book a computer room instead of conducting the sessions with them in my classroom, there’s no reason why this questionnaire can’t be done online too.

4. Class blog
This isn’t quite a win yet, because I only just set it up and my tutor group don’t know about it yet. However, I have created a Posterous blog for my new year 7 tutor group to share their experiences on. I will share the link when we’ve got some content.

And one fail….
Never, ever give your network password to a colleague so he can rifle through your SMARTboard files. He may lock you out of your account and you may have to grovel to the IT department and you may feel very shamed when your husband points out you have broken the law.
Of course I speak hypothetically. I would never do this.

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New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on September 5, 2010 by sallythorne

New school year, that is.

1. Less writing.
I was going to make the big leap of saying one lesson per timetable cycle (1 in 3 for KS3; 1 in 5 for KS4/5) was going to be an active, non-traditional lesson. I will keep that in mind, but it won’t be easy. I learn by writing things down and it’s extraordinarily difficult for me to let go of that, especially at KS4. Yet, every year, more and more precious KS4 exercise books remain in my cupboard after the exams are all finished, which should be enough to get me binning off the pens.

2. AGT parent communication online
I am going to sack off my usual parent meeting in October, in favour of a blog post about the year’s events, and an online feedback form. I do the parent questionnaire every year and get roughly 30 responses so I would hope to see more through an online form.
I can then feed this back to the Wilts AGT group at the end of term 1. Parental contact is a big thing for AGT this coming year.

3. Do some TeachMeets
I’m off to a flying start with this one, having met with a helpful lady from Vital and selected a date/venue for TM Bristol. Thanks to this, I think I’ll be speaking at another, and maybe attending TM Cheltenham, if it works out to be convenient.

4. 20% time
I liked this about Google more than anything else. Employees who are up together with their work are allowed 20% of their time to pursue their own projects. I want to do this with my Y10 class this year. Since the syllabus changed we are one coursework assignment down, with the same amount of time; I could teach the exam stuff in more detail but having done this last year and watched the enthusiasm slowly wither and die in the eyes of my Y10 class, I’d rather do something else.
I don’t know what 20% time for Y10 will look like yet. I think first, I need to meet them and see what they are like. However, I have come up with some ideas, among them a visit to the local library for research skills, and some presentations from them on topics of their choice.

5. Share the learning at school
Another non-tech Google thing I liked: Learning on the Loo. I think this would be a great way to share ideas with other staff at work, although I will be prusuing some slightly less outlandish methods, including the staff bulletin. However, I am trying to think about how Learning on the Loo could be extended to pupils. It seems like it might be a good project for AGT students.

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I’ve Moved

Posted on August 30, 2010 by sallythorne

I’ve moved my blog from Blogger to this sparkling new WordPress site. A change is as good as a rest, they say. So, the posts below have been imported from my old blog, though I note that they don’t look quite right and am pondering when I will have time to change them.

In case I don’t, the original posts can be viewed here.

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Jousting

Posted on July 26, 2010 by sallythorne

Continuing with my theme of History Activities Week in the final week of term, my year 8s did jousting on Thursday morning.

Our final year 8 unit is a chronological one, Entertainment Through Time. This usually involves watching portions of A Knight’s Tale for the jousting scenes, and to show the class barriers in medieval society. With only one lesson left after watching said scenes, I decided we would do a bit of re-enacting.

My first idea was to create tableaux and annotate them, this being one of my favourite things to do, but then I remembered I had some pipe lagging and it seemed foolish not to use it…

Each team had four members: a jouster, a horse, a jester and an armourer. They were provided with tinfoil and rubber bands with which to make armour, with the brief that they had to cover their bodies from waist to neck. There was an ulterior motive for this.

They didn’t do a bad job –

The rules of the joust were simple. One hit between waits and neck – 1 point. Hit to the head – 2 points. Unhorse the opponent – 3 points. I had to think of a way to measure the hits, which is when I came up with the poorly-conceived notion of dipping the pipe lagging in nutella so that we could see where the hits occurred.

Now, theoretically this would have been fine, since their clothes were mostly covered and we were going outside. I implemented a 1 point deducation for getting chocolate spread on the horses. But then it started to pour with rain, so we had to move the venue inside.

The first attempt was quite good.

As the jousts continued (inside the History mobile) I realised that (a) the armour was falling off, (b) I had been a bit generous with the chocolate spread and (c) they were not jousting, so much as battering each other with the lagging.

Which is how we ended up with this –

Afterwards, I had to spend considerable time with wet wipes, removing Nutella from the walls, posters, my dress, my hair, the ceiling and the windows, and then ring a parent to apologise.

Sometimes, I think the mark of a good lesson is having to ring a parent to apologise.

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Spanish Armada

Posted on July 20, 2010 by sallythorne
Today was Spanish Armada day, in the pond.


The school pond was cleared out last week by the teacher whose classroom overlooks it, who got a bit tired of looking at traffic cones and broken chairs and roped some kids in to remove the weeds and litter and make it a bit of a beauty spot. So, I decided to get in there and litter it with some boats.

The kids made paper boats in their art lesson and I set fire to some of them to show the whole fire ship concept.
The kids tried to sink some with missiles to show the storms the Spanish had to sail through. I got a bit splashed in the face, but it was OK. I had brought a change of clothes, thankfully.

It was fun. I ended up with water in the waders and I was quite shocked to discover how deep the mud was; in fact I was pleased I had climbed into the pond to put the map down before the kids arrived because I nearly fell over, several times.

It didn’t work as I had imagined, but it was a lot of fun and I doubt they’ll ever forget it. I bought them flags to wave and let them draw little Spanish beards and big English moustaches on with markers, and they enjoyed the fire ships especially. And I got to wear my pirate hat and show off a lot!

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Movie Maker

Posted on July 19, 2010 by sallythorne

This is what passes for innovation at this end of term…

Me: I want to do Tudor websites with my year 7s this afternoon but I am not sure where to host them.
Helpful Teacher Friend: Hmm. Don’t know. But you could get them to do something in Movie Maker, it’s awesome! Yeah…like….Tudor timelines! In Movie Maker!
Me: Um, OK, really? Not websites?
HTF: No! Tudor timeline movies! Amazing!
Me: OK. How hard can Movie Maker be? I watched my year 9s using it a few years ago….

And so, having managed to get an unprecedented four lessons of computer time in a row for the last weeks of term, I set my pliant year 7s a Movie Maker task. This proved a challenge for us all, since none of us are particularly well-versed in it; but we seem to have done alright.

Their task was to create a timeline of the Tudors in Movie Maker. This sounds like an extremely loose and open-ended task, because it was. I gave them some suggestions for how they could interpret the task, as well as the option to work individually or in pairs, and we had done a few lessons of prior learning on Henry VIII and his six wives and why Elizabeth never married.

The results can be seen here. You may get bored with the same two songs over and over again.

Here are my learnings from the project:

Know your resources. The computers have recently been upgraded and I hadn’t realised that there were no CD drives in the new ones, so I had to rip the CDs they brought in and put music on shared resources for them – which is why the same two songs are on most of the videos. I also discovered ICT no longer lend headphones. This was not the best time to discover this for the first time.

Have music available. There must be freely downloadable music out there for things like this. I spent zero time finding any; in fact, it didn’t even cross my mind until now, after the fact. Instead I set them a find-music-and-bring-it-in homework.

Have an example. If I had made an example ahead of time, I would have been more helpful to the students when they got going, as opposed to learning with them.

Have a planning session. I had the whole class work for an hour on researching before they got started on their movies. With hindsight, I would have spent half of this time talking through possible timeline options for them.

Allow time to evaluate. The issues created by the music hoovered up so much time that we rushed to get them uploaded at the end. I would have preferred for them to watch each others’ and give hints and tips on spelling and things like colour schemes, before we put them live on YouTube. Some of the spellings make me wince, but the achievement is not lessened by it, I suppose.

They did enjoy playing, though, and were astonishingly closely focused on the task for the entire length of the project, which is unprecedented. To be fair, though, I attempt a few risky activities with this class and they usually rise to it very well. I am impressed with how they managed to come to the program with no prior experience of it in most cases, and just figure it out. I was also delighted to note that the most academic were not the most skilled.

Unfortunately, due to the length of the project and the fact that I am devoting their last lesson to a pond-based Armada extravaganza, I didn’t get to continue the Wallwisher project I had planned. However, the wall will still be there in September, and I am keeping this class as they move into Y8, so I may pick it up with them first lesson back, to give them a bit of continuity of learning and a chance to get some extended writing done early in the term.

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Technology and Literacy

Posted on July 7, 2010 by sallythorne
We have a literacy focus in the Humanties faculty. It’s been our focus for a while, and for the next year we’re all focusing particularly on improving the quality of our pupils’ writing.

Our deputy head is on a “which” campaign. She has noticed that students tend to write in short sentences without connectives, and is concerned that the word which will disappear entirely from our language; I assume an element of hyperbole here, but she does have a point. She looked at a range of textbooks and found that they were writtne in a short sentence/bullet point style, which led her to conclude that we are not giving our pupils good examples of writing to follow.

This week, we all had to return to our faculty meeting with an activity aimed at improving the quality of pupils’ writing. I have had several, though unfortunately no time yet to try any out.

Idea 1. Wallwisher

I set up a Wallwisher this week for my year 7 class who are studying the Tudors. Wallwisher (my current favourite thing) naturally lends itself to short sentences, which can then be linked together to form longer paragraphs. My intention is to use the results of the Y7 homework in class on Friday to write a long paragraph about the Tudors. I will give them a series of connectives on small cards and challenge them to write the longest sentence they can, using the facts on the board.

Further ideas to follow when I have some more time to devote to this post!

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Wallwisher

Posted on June 28, 2010 by sallythorne
I spent a useful hour chatting to Mark Anderson, a local ICT HoD and innovator I met on Twitter as I excitedly trawled through the tweets about Google Teacher Academy, online on Friday night about different tech strategies we use in school. It made me realise that a lot of what I do is focused on social networks and my Smartboard, and that there is a lot of good stuff out there which I have never tried.

So, today I set my year 10s a homework to add a fact to Wallwisher. I have seen it before but never used it. Here is the one I have set them. I am hoping it will be as easy to use as it looks, and that they all take the challenge in the spirit it was intended and add some good facts.

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New blog

Posted on June 28, 2010 by sallythorne

I have long resisted the urge to begin a blog about my exploits at work. I’ve been blogging for more than a decade and questioned the wisdom of putting something new together: time is short.

However, this is a time for new initiatives, people! Following an Ofsted report which directd my school to focus more sharply on teaching and learning, as a staff we have formed learning communities to try and further our abilities and make our classrooms more effective places to learn. I joined the group on creativity. Some commented that I am creative already, but I still regard myself as fledgling to what I see when I go looking for new initiatives in the classroom.

As well as this, I was overjoyed to discover on Friday that I have won a coveted spot at the Google Teacher Academy London, which is being held in July. I carefully read the press release, which informed me that this incarnation of the GTA is focused on educational leaders. I’m really honoured to have been picked and feel there is something here which I need to live up to.

Hence, new blog. New ideas. What’s the worst that can happen?

The title, by the way, comes from something our new assistant head has mentioned. I saw it written on the head’s flipchart during a line management meeting and it really clicked with me. I used it as the title for my video entry to Google Teacher Academy, so it seemed like a good choice of blog name.

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