Day 1 of our harvest topic began with a tour of the school to see what grows here. Quite a lot as you’ll see…
Day 1 of our harvest topic began with a tour of the school to see what grows here. Quite a lot as you’ll see…
I’ve recently noticed two ways that higher education spoils my life. The first is more annoying, the second is probably more serious. They are: the tech and the system.
The alternative is Google and other web2.0 tools. Yes I am a Google Certified Teacher, so I am biased, but when I did collaborative data analysis with my staff a few days ago, they got it instantly – with no prior training. They collaborated on the same, secure Google spreadsheet at the same time, initially made mistakes but learnt from each other and from myself, getting the job done. The same had happened with Calendars a few days earlier. I couldn’t imagine being able to do the same things so efficiently and smoothly with the clunky systems that Moodle have to offer, or indeed Excel.
Other alternatives also exist. Textease is a brilliant suite of tools that work a bit like Microsoft Office, but start from where the children are. Similarly 2Simple produce some great software for very young children
The System is based on university success. Nations crave it. Lord Mandelson said it (when he was in power). Sir Ken Robinson declared it in 2006. And so on… The problem I have is not that some of the children will go to university and some won’t. It’s the stuff that comes the other way. And the thing is – it starts with the children who won’t go to university.
Opt in or opt out. It is not a choice for the primary child. You have to go to school. Parents can now be prosecuted if you don’t. By contrast, you don’t have to go to university. It’s a choice – a choice that takes considerable financial risk if you’re at or below the median** salary. Much of the primary school teacher’s effort can be taken up by ensuring motivation. This is not an issue at university – a student goes there by choice. And that student can fail the course if they don’t put the required effort in.*** So of course the concept of failure creeps back to secondary schools, where you can fail at ‘A’ levels and GCSEs, even though it goes all the way down to ‘G’ now. Apparently 6% of students don’t get a ‘G’ grade in maths and over 40% don’t achieve ‘C’ – the grade at which a GCSE becomes useful. This then finds its way into primary schools where you can fail by not reaching a ‘Level 3’ in the level 3-5 SATs, or where, if the school labours the point you can fail by not achieving the level 4, or not making 12 points progress. Some 11 year olds can’t opt out of this. They have no choice. They have to fail.
Is seven the right age to learn about failing in tests?
In our first ‘writing’ lesson, we toured the Paganel Primary school site and found a whole range of berries and interesting things without even leaving the school. But what could we eat and what could we not even touch? Can you spot what is supposedly the second most dangerous plant in Northern Europe?
Does an elderberry stem follow the Fibonacci sequence?
I saw these in Quinton Road, Harborne. Does anyone know what they are? Crab apples maybe?
Paganel staff collaborate on Google spreadsheets to analyse data and organise maths sets
Here’s 10 years of stuff that was created or bought, used once and then put in the PPA room for future use. Only it wasn’t used again.
Now it’s going in a skip… Is this a senseless waste or a constructive use of time and space?
Today I gave some training on using Google Calendars.
that it was really weird just letting my video do the talking – we didn’t even watch the video as a group (which would have been a bit embarrassing).
First day back at school and we begin with the usual. Big picture stuff: what happened last year and how we can get better.