Sway Grantham

Wow, what a night!

So school finished for the weekend on Friday and instead of a calm end to the day, sinking into the sofa and putting a film on, I eagerly began sorting the final preparations for Teachmeet MK. After what seemed like months of planning, although it wasn’t that much, and many generous donations by different companies to cover our costs and offer raffle prizes we were ready to go. The day was finally here!

A big thank you to those who provided us with raffle prizes

Thanks to the fantastic team who were organising the event with me preparations were already underway when I got there. As I arrived Drew Buddy (aka. @digitalmaverick) was arriving ready to be our host for the evening. And as quick as that re were ready to go. People were beginning to arrive from all over the country – the furthest travelers who I heard of were Manchester and Wales!

Everyone watching and listening carefully at Teachmeet MK

After introductions we began hearing about the fabulous work on Medical Detection Dogs and how they are able to help those suffering from a range of illnesses such as severe diabetes and sensing cancer within people for medical tests can. One story that was shared was that of a girl with severe diabetes who could have up to 28 Hypos in 12 hours and prior to the dog was hospitalised as these could not be controlled. Upon getting the dog, the dog could lick her hand 3 times as her blood sugar was dropping and allow her to medicate herself before it was too late. This then meant that she could live an almost normal life out of hospital. As well as this amazing work, we hear about how one school have integrated the charity’s work into their curriculum and have adopted a dog. We are very pleased to be sponsoring this charity with Teachmeet MK and all raffle ticket sales will be going there.

To see the full presentation from the Medical Detection Dogs watch it on YouTube and their website here.

Overall we raised £127 for the Medical Detection Dogs! Thanks everyone.

The evening continued with deluge of fabulous presentations and ideas ranging from Code breaking with Bletchley Park, to getting children active before learning, suggestions of fabulous resources and how to get children into coding. You can check out the full list of videos on YouTube here.

Every getting ready to do P.E. in the classroom

After the half-way break we were treated to some out-of-your-seat fun from Peter Ford from NoTosh who got us all thinking about how we can make learning epic! This meant that even those who were not presenting got a chance to share their fabulous ideas with everyone and it was a frantic few minutes!

Getting into groups to suggest how to make learning epic!

There were some brilliant ideas shared, you can see them here:

After this we were back to some more fantastic presentations and sharing.

Overall it was a fabulous night. We have a live stream which was being watching by viewers on the internet as well as having it recorded so that those ideas can be revisted whenever. Present on the night we had over 50 people who gave up their Friday evening to learn and share together!

We also had this brilliant visual wall to remember the event by:

A visual reminder of all that was shared – drawn by Jon Ralphs (@jon_ralphs)

AND we were trending on Twitter in the UK!

Teachmeet MK was trending on Twitter!

At last, exhausted we all made our ways home. I huge thank you to everyone who got involved, presented and attended. I hope you all learned as much as I did as well as making some new connections. I hope that there will be another Teachmeet MK in the future and look forward to seeing you all again.

Ian Harcombe (@MrHarcombe) created a Storify of all the tweets from the evening, this includes links to the brilliant ideas shared so do check it out!

This February half term has been my 1 year anniversary on Twitter (actively using, not since I first signed up) and I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on the impact that this has had on me, my teaching, my class and our learning.

This time last year it was my NQT year and I was intrigued by the concept of blogging – in an attempt to understand the ins and outs and pros and cons of blogging I turned to Twitter and started seeking the advice of educators from around the world. I had no idea the difference using a social networking site, which I had previously scoffed at as being ‘for people who cared what celebrities ate for breakfast’ would have on my personal and professional life.

Over the course of the year I have tweeted around 5000 times, followed around 1500 people (the vast majority of them education professionals) and have around 1400 people following me. I have learned loads of new things, I’ve found out about new developments and changes to things in record time and I have had more professional conversations than I think I would in 10 years in school, in person. I have connected with educators all over the world and I have learned about so many different ways of doing things that would take a lifetime of moving schools and collecting ideas to achieve previously.

Twitter has allowed me to meet some fantastic teachers, and to give me many sources of inspirations and people to aspire to. It has offered me a range of opportunities such as ukedchat, globalclassroomchat and many other chats to discuss educational practice and ‘meet’ people from all of the world. I often find that during staff meetings at my own school I mention conversations I have had on Twitter or give examples based on peoples’ experiences on Twitter – it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a better/worse sense just in an alternative sense.

Overall there are a lots of materials explaining the benefits for teachers using Twitter, even my class can tell you the benefits as they get excited by the new ideas/resources I have from other teachers on Twitter. If you haven’t got a Twitter account, get one!

See my related post on using Twitter in the classroom: here

One evening I was aimlessly looking through tweets on Twitter and I came across a very cool idea. Showing the power of Twitter visually, by mapping all the places people retweet it in a close amount of time.

Below you can see the journey of my one little tweet in roughly 3 hours – I think you will agree it’s quite impressive!

I have shown this to the children in my class and explained how the internet is such a wide resource that can now be used to such great extents. Being able to reach such a wide range of people with one small thing, on a Sunday evening really emphasises the power and opportunities that are now available to us!

The possibilities are really endless, the benefits for increasing global awareness in the children – their understanding of countries and continents and their experiences of people from different cultural backgrounds could be huge!

Back in November I attended the first in three courses in a pilot for the LEA surrounding ‘Creative Maths’. Ever eager to attend CPD opportunities I approached the course with an open mind and had a great time.

The session started with 3 activities around a room, one being an outdoor checkers board which had in the instance been divided into quarters with coordinates marked on it. We all gathered around it to find sweets scattered at points throughout, if we named the coordinate, we got the sweet, guess where the best sweets were? The 3rd quadrant! This was an exciting beginning to the day – now what else can we do with the checkerboard?

Photo Credit: dr_loplop via Compfight cc

We were encouraged to list as many ideas of possible, starting with the obvious – symmetry, reflections, to more complex things like perimeter and area, enlarging shapes etc. Now on to the next step – what about with a class? 5 children on the mat what are the others doing? How about teams? The person on the mat can only move if told to by a teammate. What about having it as an activity for one group whilst the others use smaller boards on tables and the rotate around?

Of course the checkerboard is not the only way of achieving such activities. If you have a tile carpet you’re half way there! Why not go outside and sketch one on the play ground?

After this we moved on to an up and about activity, numbers and words stuck around the room. What can we do with this? True/false statement, always, sometimes, never statements, find evens or in pairs find equivalent fractions or decimals, percentages and fractions. Lots of ideas for getting the children up, about and learning!

Photo Credit: ChickenDipa via Compfight cc

Next we moved on to an interesting activity to decide which pack of strawberry laces we would want (A, B, C), 1 packet was on the table for us to see (A), one was in a cupboard but we had a bar chart telling us exact lengths of all the laces in the packets (B) and finally we had a pictogram which showed how many sweets but in ranges e.g. 4 laces between 12cm and 15cm (C). This was an intriguing way to begin data handling and even as adults we started searching our minds for the best approach. I can only imagine the excitement an activity like this could elicit from children – can’t wait to try it out.

Photo Credit: epSos.de via Compfight cc

Now we had a table of random food items in front of us – plan some maths; what are you going to do? Start with the more obvious cost, money etc, what about weight – estimate and then measure? For more able children what about looking at the sugars percentages, comparing with daily allowance? Planning a meal or a snack with no more than 20% of your daily allowance for each item. The list is endless…

One of the most frequent reasons for not having lessons like these is that they take a lot of time to resource and prepare – did these? Teachers frequently create more work for themselves than they need to. The need to control a lesson and the learning outcomes for the activities means offering clue cards and giving instructions when the children can think for themselves. There will of course need to be scaffolding through differentiation but this should be within the activity letting the children still think independently but giving them less options so they’re not overwhelmed.

At the beginning of the following session we were greeted with this:

In two teams we had to complete a probability maze. First we had to decide were we going heads, or tails? Then, throwing a giant coin, if we were successful we could move on to the next level. Next, it was the other team’s turn, they they were right they could move on too, if not, they had to try again next turn. Obviously with the coin throw there is an equal chance whereas later on throughout the game there were options where you would be more likely to move forward if you chose it.

The game was a brilliant way to get us thinking and explaining why we were choosing what we chose. We discussed differentiation and using the same format in different ways e.g. giving higher attaining children the opportunity to create their own levels. Even as adults it was fun using the game and racing the other team to the end (although maybe that is my competitive nature?) and I think this will definitely tick the ‘engagement’ box for a lesson.

This idea was based on a ‘board game’ probability worksheet which in itself seems relatively fun and engaging however by jumping into the worksheet there is a whole new range of learning and a much more kinesthetic approach.

I have been considering organising a Teachmeet now for some time mainly due to how hard I have found it making teacher connections across Milton Keynes. There are pockets of connections here and there but nothing that I’ve truly been able to get into, even with over 6 months of making as many connections, web-based and elsewhere. Tn the neighbouring county of Northants they have a successful BLT (Better Learning using Technologies) Network which aims to inspire and facilitate a ‘grassroots’ culture among educators and learners which is fantastic. Although we’re not far away from Northants, Milton Keynes also has a great number of teachers with fantastic ideas, why can’t we all get together and share?

And so the idea for Teachmeet MK was formed. Fortunately for me, who had the idea but no clue where to start, Helen Caldwell (@HelenCaldwel) offered to help out as she had previously organised a Teachmeet in MK in 2010. We have also got Emma Dawson (@squiggle7), Teresa Connolly (@tconnolly1) and Kirsten Muirhead (@kirstenmuirhead) kindly offering to help as well. Now we have assembled a team we are ready to!

We started with a planning meeting, trying to decide what we wanted. The last Teachmeet MK was held at the OU and they were kind enough to let us use their premises again, which also gave us a date, as it was when they could offer the room! Now it was all getting very real and we knew that we’d be hosting our very own Teachmeet on Friday 1st March 2013. Next we needed to delegate roles, Emma was happy to set up the wiki and presentation sign up, Helen was going to talk to her contacts around MK and see if she could raise sponsorship and I was going to hunt around for sponsorship and raffle prizes. Then we were off!

From there it was just a case of us getting set up and starting to advertise it. It was about now that the panic set in for me with, ‘what if nobody comes?’ I’m sure most people think this when organising anything, a party or a lunch, and it usually turns out alright but ‘what if it doesn’t?’ We got the wiki set up and Emma made a leaflet for us to use, and now it was time to start promoting. Here you face the catch 22, if no one other than the organisers are presenting, no one will come, but if no one is coming, what’s the point in anyone else presenting! After a while we managed to get passed this and now it is looking quite good.

I am sure there will be a few blogposts about the Teachmeet before it is all over and done with but until now. Please have a look at our leaflet:

Leaflet

And visit the wiki and sign up – let’s make Teachmeet MK a great place for teachers to learning new things and have fun!

Firstly, as is always the case, these are my own opinions and experiences based on a teacher in a classroom. I am not senior management so those aspects of the implementation and organisation are beyond my knowledge.

In September my school started in International Primary Curriculum (IPC), something that we’d been preparing to do for a while. This curriculum focuses of cross-curricular teaching through topics covering the National Curriculum skills and learning objectives over a two year rolling cycle. As we are just a junior school we are only focusing on the milepost 2 and 3 units.

The structure on the curriculum begins with an ‘entry point’ this is a hook to get the children interested and excited about the new topic. Suitable tasks and suggestions are made for each unit but it may be that you have your own ideas as well. So far entry points for us have ranged from a trading game, to interviews, to discussions about an object. Following this you have a ‘knowledge harvest’ which is based on the idea of ‘what do we already know?’ however it can sometimes be in less clear ways e.g. for a unit about how artists see the world the knowledge harvest was to draw an artist and their tools. This allowed us to see if they saw an artist as anything more than a painter.

The curriculum then progresses through a series of ‘tasks’, or lessons, moving through the subjects in groups. It is important here to note there is a specific focus on ‘international’ and ‘society’ so these subjects also have their slot. There is not an equal amount of time per subject per unit but there are tools to ensure over the two years the necessary amount of time is spent in each area.

The IPC states that each week there is 8 hours of curriculum content to be covered which can be tricky when juggling other curriculum areas. We currently spend 3 afternoons a week teaching the IPC with the other 2 spent with PPA cover (Games and PSHE/RE) and another afternoon used as necessary decided amongst the year groups. Actual teaching time in our afternoon is roughly 1.5 hours so we are trying to squeeze the curriculum into 6 hours instead of 8.

The tasks follow a pretty consistent structure usually opening with a research task and progressing to a recording activity. This in itself proved to be a new teaching approach for us and something we had to anticipate as we simply did not have the resources to allow for several classes to be researching on the internet and as the topics had not been taught before we did not have the appropriate books to facilitate this. There have been times when we have had to find alternatives; printing articles, displaying images to the whole class on the whiteboard, instead of direct research but this at least offers a breadth of experience and access.

Another thing that we have found whilst using this curriculum is that it has been designed primarily with international schools in mind. It frequently talks about ‘host’ countries and ‘home’ countries and a comparison between the two. There seems to be an assumption of smaller class sizes, or an higher adult:child ratio. As well as this some of the activities require specialist equipment and resources which we simply do not have the funds to provide. This being said with a little ingenuity, compromises can be made and the curriculum does allow for flexibility.

One of the biggest criticisms staff have in school is resourcing the IPC. There are units such as ‘What Price is Progress? Invention and Development’ where the children learnt about different inventions, this however, was such a wide scope that the teachers had to spend a lot of time finding out the information, and appropriate inventions, to share with the children. Another example is in ‘Going Global’ where the children have to research our country’s imports and exports. There is a suggested website to do this but it is not child friendly, which was the same with many other websites and books. Therefore teachers had to spend time finding the information and creating child-friendly ways for the children to access it. This of course will be lessened if the same units continued to be used over several years as the resources will already have been found/created.

Overall I have the found this new curriculum to be an exciting change for our foundation subjects. Prior to this our school still relied heavily on the QCA schemes of work or teacher’s trying to be innovative on their own merit. This new curriculum has brought us a modern and varied approach to our foundation subjects as well as ensuring they are assessed and monitored thoroughly. The IPC comes with a simple and easy method of assessment for both teachers and children’s self-assessment and with all foundation subjects being taught together it makes subject monitoring much simpler.

That being said there are worried from a lot of subject coordinators about the loss of discreet teaching for their subject. When ensuring the school are meeting the National Curriculum targets it is apparent that a lot of the Science objectives are not being met and we are therefore having to plan to teach them in Science ‘days’ to ensure they’re covered. Looking at History the National Curriculum targets are covered, but there are no longer topics such as ‘Egyptians’ covered in detail. To give an example, in our current ‘Making New Materials’ unit our History lessons are about the history of materials such as a Celtic bronze tool or weapon, a Greek ‘Olympic’ urn or a Chinese vase from the Ming Dynasty.

As ICT coordinator I am particularly concerned about my subject area and have requested that we consider teaching it discreetly for next year. ICT in the IPC (try saying that 3 times quickly!) is an integral part with frequent links to YouTube and other websites, and suggestions of activities from presentation making, to using Google Maps or animations. This in itself is great, we all know the importance of ICT being used across the curriculum, however, my concern is that the learning is never specifically ICT. With no time given to learn how to create these things I question how effectively they can be used to support the learning of other foundation subjects. As well as this the use of ICT within the IPC curriculum is a suggestion, with alternatives offered if ICT is unavailable, this could therefore mean that the children miss out on vital skills and do not fulfill the learning objectives as specified in the National Curriculum.

So far, due to a rearrangement in teaching schedules, I have only taught 1 and a bit units of the IPC. What I noticed from the units I have taught so far is that they have enabled me to teach a much more varied curriculum without being a subject specialist. For example, I am no art specialist, I teach it to the best of my ability, and will research as many resources as I can. If someone had told me that I would have to teach impressionism, Japanese print art, cubism and abstract art in a unit of work I would have panicked. The IPC explained it clearly, gave examples of famous or inspirational work in these genres and provided background information to help with any tricky questions the children had. At the end of the unit the children had such a range of artistic experiences which never would have been covered in previous years.

I think that this curriculum has been widely beneficial to my school. Next year the implementation will be easier, even if we change the units, as we become used to the format. The idea of an entry point to hook the children in and get them excited about learning, is exactly what I like and creating a class book to document our work is a fantastic record for the children and myself. Although the content of subject learning may seem obscure (such as the history of plastic) change will always seem this way until it is settled. My concerns about ICT as a subject are genuine but SMT have said they will review whether we need to make any adjustments for next year later on in this year. I look forward to exploring other units in the IPC.

You can see examples of my children’s IPC work on our class blog:

If you do have a look please leave them a comment, they’ll love to know you’ve been looking!

• Entry Point
• Impressionism and Japanese Print Art
• Abstract Art
• Cubism
• Expressing Experiences and Feelings through Art
• Aural Murals
• Composing
• Performance Art
• Class Ebook

When I was job hunting the year before last I had a few schools who used children to interview me as part of the interview process. This was usually either the school council or the year 6 heads of house asking a prearranged set of questions. This time when it came to the Digital Leader applicants I wanted the children to have much more free reign interviewing their peers.

After much begging I decided to open up the applications for Digital Leaders once more. This in itself caused a dilemma as I already have 17 Digital Leaders and don’t especially need any more right now. Equally however I want as many eager volunteers as possible to have the experience of being a Digital Leader. One option was that I get new ones each half term, in this case though I felt that it would be punishing those who had been dedicated for the last term to get rid of them and get new children. My final decision was to select 5 – 10 children out of those who have applied. Interestingly, in September my Digital Leader project had 19 applications (all of whom I gave places to). Now out of the 62 children in year 5, 37 of them have applied to be Digital Leaders.

Before making the decision to reopen applications I spoke to my existing Digital Leaders about whether they were ok with it. Their concerns were mostly that they wanted to get more credit for the fact that they had been working longer and that they wanted it to be special so not ‘everyone’ could join. We discussed how best to check the people chosen were the right ones for the job and they added in some extra questions to the application form. They also agreed to come along to the session where children were applying to chat to them about their answers and make notes on who they thought was responding well to challenge or teamwork.

During the session the children filled in the application form online and then tried to create a Prezi about our school when they were finished. It was fascinating to watch some of the Digital Leaders questioning the others. Some were offering scenarios ‘what if your friends are all playing football at lunchtime and it’s a Digital Leaders day?’ and then following it up with ‘Have you given up our time in any other way to show you’re committed?’ Others found the task of talking to their peers more challenging and merely watched taking notes of who offered to help someone else if they were stuck. At the end of the session I gave the existing Digital Leaders a chance to discuss and make notes ready to review the applications at our meeting the following week.

Ready for our meeting I took the names and classes off of the applications and replaced them with numbers. I then printed out copies for the Digital Leaders to read in groups of 2 or 3 and discuss. The discussions and input they had on the applications I found fascinating. They were carefully reading the questions and analysing pros and cons, comparing with the other applicants. After a while we came together and, using the numbers, discussed the applications.

For the question ‘Why do you want to become a digital leader?’ One applicant said:
‘i would love to become a digital leader because i have all of the greatist gismoes around such as an i pad, an i pod, a phone aq laptop and a tv. if somthing happens to the gadgets im sure to help!’
The Digital Leaders felt that this was more like showing off than actual helping and stated that even if they owned all those things it didn’t meant that were good at using them or could share that learning with someone else. Compared to:
‘I want to become a digital leader because I am good at technology and helping people. I work well in groups and I am good at laptops and making : ) ‘ s. My dad is good at technology and computers as well, and that effects me as well because he teaches me things. ‘
For the question ‘Can you give an example of something you have been responsible for in or out of school?’
‘I’ll never break promises.’
The Digital Leaders did not like this as there were no examples and they said that it sounded like something you would say because you thought that’s what the readers would like to hear. This on the other hand, really impressed them:
‘Everday i look out for peple who are lony and hert.’
They did not use the word ‘conscientious’ but that pretty much sums up their definition of why they really liked this answer.

At the end of our meeting I had a red, orange, green coding for most of the applicants and now I need to select the final members. I still think it’s an impossible job and really hope that I don’t dishearten those who don’t have a place but unfortunately I just don’t have the time and resources to spend training 40-50 children.

The new Digital Leaders are going to be the first guinea pigs for the old Digital Leaders teaching styles. Trying to enable them to explain and question rather than grabbing the mouse and showing them as well as having patience if it takes someone a while to do something. I’ll let you know how they get on with that another time! Watch this space.