My plan to post daily has once again come up against the harsh realities of school life. But until the next few posts make their way out of my brain and onto this blog, I thought I’d share something I’ve written for Andrew Field (of School History, Effective ICT, Content Generator fame) for his new […]
What would you add to Moodle?
Our school uses the Open Source software Moodle to power it’s website and the VLE behind it. One of the many things I love about Moodle is how it can be customised to the needs of individual schools. We have our own look, based on the popular clouds theme (developed by Julian Ridden), and I’ve […]
Where are we heading?
As well as sharing items from Google Reader, I have started saving specific quotes that stand out to me in a Tumblr. This came from a post from Tuttle SVC, which I’m not subscribed to, but was shared by Bud Hunt, who’s shared items I subscribe to. There is some pretty good research indicating that […]
Gin and Tonic?
Actually, the G&T jokes have come to an end in Wales. The term ‘Gifted and Talented’ has been replaced with the term ‘More Able and Talented’ in the new documentation from the Assembly Government. Since the TRL shake up came in in September, as well as coordinating the SMART programme, I also have responsibility for […]
And I’m feeling good
Our new unit this half term in SMART is ‘Community’ and we’re starting off looking at the class as a community. As part of that we’ve been talking about respecting other people’s feelings. Today we had a great lesson that created loads of buzz, so I thought I’d share it here. We started by talking […]
We didn’t start the fire
From now until the end of the year, Year 9 history classes will be focussing on the 20th century. We’ve got units on the Titanic. WW1, Immigration, Family History and 20th century personalities to come, as well as a couple of chances for pupils to devise their own enquiries, but we wanted to start by […]
Skills Wordle
Part of today’s inset was about having a discussion aboout what ‘skills’ we felt as a school that we wanted to make sure our pupils developed during their time with us. I took all the notes from the seven groups and put them in Wordle. Unfortunately there must be a problem accessing from school, as […]
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards
Tomorrow Today I’m part of a group of teachers giving presentations as part of an inset focused on developing a school vision. To help me get a shape I’ve taken the slightly unusual step of writing it out. I won’t use these words exactly, but it has helped me get a structure together and I […]
Wanted: Schools to link up with our year 7 classes
As part of next terms SMART unit looking at the idea of ‘community’, I’m trying to arrange eleven classes, ideally in eleven different countries, who would be willing to get involved in a small project linking their classes with one of our year 7 form groups. Clearly I’m not the only one thinking along these […]
Turning Bloom on its side
One of the things that stand out from a two day inset I went on last year (?) by Lane Clark was her assertion that Bloom’s taxonomy should be turned on it’s side. In other words, she questioned the idea that the ‘Higher Order’ skills could only be accessed once the ‘Lower Order’ skills had […]