Tick tock tick tock!

Where is the time going? I've not been able to post much this week as there is so much going on! However, I am off to South Africa on Friday to work on setting up curriculum links with a school out there. I hope to post more detail about our objectives later today. While away I am going to try using the PCS Blogs (GCSE and KS3) to set cover work and monitor how well the classes are doing by getting them to post a comment at the end of each class - I feel a headache coming on!

The picture is of me getting hands-on with a fire hose as part of the Fire Safety Course run by Firefighters at Portchester Fir Station. The course is coming to its conclusion and I must say a huge thank you to Andy Earl and Geoff Baker for their excellent instruction!

Apart from that there's then the skiing to look forward to (a holiday at last - one day I'm actually going to just sit on a beach!). Together with getting job applications together it's been crazy. My Carbon Footprint this year is going to be huge so I am offsetting the flights and working to reduce in other areas.

I'm happy that there is some excellent guidance coming from government at the moment. I would never have thought to teach about climate change and global warming at all - so ta very much! I'll be writing the SoW asap! Now if I could only figure out what to do with the rest of the time as I need to give the colouring-in and map reading a bit of a break.

I seem to have hit the 1000 mark which is great news - this hopefully means that readers are getting something useful from here. I've still got to attract my first readers from Australia and Africa though!

Right better go and teach!

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High Impact, Low effort

This month is the start of the #29daysofwriting challenge. I enjoyed this last year and will be using my Staffrm account to post. I'll also be reporting here, both to give a little more detail and to keep a log of what I have written. The challenge developed a great sense of community last year, which is why I'm choosing to write on Staffrm. What I would say to those who are new to writing or don't want to run out of ideas is: Write for yourself. Clarify an idea, write something out loud. The process of distilling thoughts into writing is immensely beneficial to your practice. If other read, comment and respond, that's a bonus. Ignore the muppets who know nothing of your context, style or students. Mix it up - I like to read about real stuff from real classrooms and schools and also about other stuff. If we always write about school, how does that work for workload? If you've nothing nice to say, don't say it. So, the following has been ...

What makes a learning experience profound? Personal reflections and possible implications for classroom practice.

I have recently begun a Leadership Pathways journey. As part of the first core day, we were asked to reflect on a profound learning experience. This got me thinking about how many profound learning experiences I have both been involved in, and how many I have been able to give to others. Our group came up with a huge long list, but these are my five. Emotional Connected Demanding Reflective Collaborative As always, these are personal thoughts and quite mixed up. I put them here so that I can look back on them (plus they’d get lost inside my world-cup-free brain) 1. Emotional I can’t think of a time where deep learning hasn’t engaged my emotions. From being awe inspired to that tingle feeling when a student gets a light bulb moment. From this-is-the-happiest-day-ever, to I-think-I’m-about-to die. How often do we engage the emotions of those we teach? Here, I would argue that having a safe learning environment i...

Banned Word Board

Today I want to share some simple ideas that I have found to be very effective in the classroom. I can't say that they are my own original ideas, although I have played around with them. The first is the Banned word Board. This is a simple display in the classroom that lists a number of words that are not allowed to be used by pupils in their written or oral answers. The effect has been an increase in the quality of written work, and I have almost made comments such as 'Sir it's simple, the stuff just affects the thing and causes people problems'. Pupils are now more able to use specific language, something that is vital especially at GCSE. I have had to make a few modifications, such as the introduction of 'Heavenly Words' This is an additional display placed on the ceiling. I found this necessary as pupils needed some stimulus in finding replacement words. After advice received after posting the idea on the SLN forum , I have also introduced semi-banned words...

David Rogers

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