There is no longer a requirement to teach Scottish texts (why?), but I suspect that many of us are still doing so. I have a really good Higher class for next year, so will be teaching (introducing?) my class to Chris Guthrie and the end of an era in Sunset Song. But I also know that it is not everyone’s cup of tea. I love the book, and think I do a good job of teaching it, but have met plenty who have ended up — if not hating it — certainly apathetic towards it. Me? I blame the teacher!

Anyway, I though I’d try and get a feel for what is being taught around the country so have set up a survey on Google Apps that I’d like to invite you to contribute to. Obviously, it is designed to get a feel for what is being taught in Scotland, but I would like to extend a cordial invite to any English Teacher anywhere to post suggestions for texts. My target students are in the 15-18 age range, and vary from able to very able readers…

If you want to add to the survey, you can find it at: http://bit.ly/highertextsurvey or if you don’t want to do that, you are welcome to leave a comment at the bottom of this post. If you just want to see the results so far, you can see them here: http://bit.ly/englishtextsresults

(Incidentally, it would be a great help to the survey if you could pass the link on to the English Department in your own school)

And finally… I’m glad to be back in harness! Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes over the past few months. I really have been overwhelmed by the kindness of (virtual) strangers.

This was our first day of getting ready for the imminent arrival of the HMIe and we had our first ‘war cabinet’ meeting. And that’s exactly the wrong terminology to use as it suggests confrontation and fighting… we expect neither from the visit!

I’m actually looking forward to meeting the HMIe team and getting the opportunity to share some of the great work my department are doing… but always there is the nagging feeling that it isn’t enough. As teachers, we can sometimes be the most reluctant people in the world to have anyone else look at what we do. Especially if they are going to pass comment on it. Especially if we value the commenter’s opinion. Especially if we have forgotten that this is exactly what we tend to do day-in and day-out to the young people sitting in our classrooms. No wonder the kids are scared or worried about offering their opinions… and they are just developing the skills and confidence that I have taken years to hone…

How refreshing would it be to have the kids go through the processes that I am currently undertaking? Working with their peers to understand what is required of them before collating their evidence and presenting it in an acceptable format. Identifying gaps in their own knowledge and working out how best to fill in the gaps and make sure they are ready for future tasks of a similar nature. It sounds like the perfect CfE project…

…and maybe that’s why I’m torn. I know that many of the kids I teach do have these skills – some of them in abundance – and yet lots do not and a few never will. They have been ‘judged’ and ‘found wanting’ by their ‘elders and betters’ and that is something that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. For my part, I try to encourage and cajole and humour and do everything I can to get the best out of my pupils. I am moving towards having my pupils work in the way I have described above, but it is hard going at times. Too often, they do not have the confidence in their own abilities to be reflective. They fear the process and cannot see the benefits it brings. Which brings me back full circle to the inspection.

Sometimes, if we are going to truly understand the learning experience for our pupils, we need to be reminded what it’s like to be the one trying to please…

I know that there is a lot of talk about the new ‘friendly’ approach to school inspections, but I’ve only been inspected once before when I was still just an unpromoted classroom teacher… and, to be honest, the lesson I delivered was such a disaster that I still have nightmares about it (I’ll tell you over a pint, but I’m not committing it to anything more tangible than that)!

Fast forward to today, and I am now a relatively new PT with lots of ideas and a large department who I think the world of and really don’t want to let down. I hope I’m not going to be found wanting…

One thing that is already making a difference to me is my network. The last time the school I was in was being inspected (Larbert High School, 1999) I had only my school colleagues to talk to. This time, I’ve already had several conversations with friends and colleagues from across the country who have been through the inspection process very recently. They are giving me lots of great advice and things to check on with the result that I am going in to the whole process with a much clearer notion of what I need to do. Absolutely invaluable for a PT about to undergo his first inspection.

As the inspection gets closer, I’m hoping to post some of my thoughts on the whole process along with any tips I can give to the next person who will be having visitors. In the meantime, I’ve got some marking to do, then some preparation for tomorrow, some planning for a forthcoming school trip, TeachMeet arrangements to make, a 4 year old to make chocolate milk for, and… and… and… and they wonder why teachers get tired! ;o)

Any of your good advice would be welcome in the comments!

Just in case you don’t know what a TeachMeet is, Tim and Moby (of BrainPop fame) have all the information here:

In short, it’s an opportunity to have an informal get together, to compare notes, and to hear about some of the great practice that is going on around Scotland. The beauty of the TeachMeet format is that speakers only have 7 minutes (or 2 if they choose) so you don’t have long to wait for another idea. (What could you tell us about in such a short space of time?)

You can sign up by adding your name to the wiki, or if you prefer, you can email your details to ‘teachmeetperth [at] gmail [dot] com’ and I’ll add you to the wiki.

Places are limited, so don’t hang around. There’ll be some free nibbles and a chance for you to add your voice on the night if you wish, and I hope you will be encouraged to speak at a future event…

All the details can be found on the TeachMeet Wiki: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/teachmeetcfe and feel free to drop me a line at the teachmeet email (‘teachmeetperth [at] gmail [dot] com’) if you’d like more info.

I hope to see some of you in Perth on the 16th!

• PS: In case any of you have got an imminent visit from the Inspectors, HMIe do identify TeachMeets as valuable CPD experience (Page 12 0f Learning Together: Improving teaching, improving learning)… ;0)

the importance of reading aloud in the development of literacy skills

My second year class are currently working on Aidrian Flynn’s play Burning Everest and I am determined to break away from the stilted reading that typifies pupils when they read aloud. There is nothing guaranteed to kill a poem or play more than a kid stopping at the end of every line! I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time getting them to a) read to the punctuation, followed by b) read as if they mean it.

I’ve taught Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est for as many years as I care to remember, and I still get a kick out of hearing a pupil ‘get’ the cadences and rhythm of the poem… which only happens when they stop reading the lines and start reading the words (Incidentally, I’ve found that presenting it to them as a piece of prose can often be all it takes to break bad habits!).

Another happy (and I think related find) is Dizraeli‘s rap/poem 21st Century Flux (video below). I defy anyone with an interest in the English language to be unimpressed with the message, and the medium. The notion of a 21st Century Flux is one that we are all to aware of in education, and I feel that we would do well to remember that language has changed and adapted and been alive through countless changes… just as education has. Trying to lock language or education down to one ‘right’ way of doing things is futile. Both are fluid and flexible and will change, no matter what those who cannot see do to prevent this.

So, enjoy the poem, and maybe enhance your enjoyment by reading it out loud yourself! You will feel self-conscious, which is a rather neat way of putting yourself in the position of those in your class that you ask to read out loud… Mmm… now that will be a fun lesson!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CIh7FWv4UA

We are all learners, especially the teachers…

So much for due process. So much for innocent until proven guilty. So much for Digital Britain…

It is our task to take the 20,000 soldiers who died on the 1st July 1916 (a number too large for most pupils to comprehend) and turn them into real people. People like Rifleman William McFadzean who was one of the first of the 20,000 to die on that day and in doing so earned a posthumous VC. His is a story pupils can relate to.

And now, the job of bringing the soldiers’ stories to life has become just that little bit easier thanks to the magnificent Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive (WOMDA), now renamed The First World War Poetry Digital Archive. For many years this has been a great repository of digitized artefacts from the Great War. Contemporary photos rubbed shoulders with scans of drafts and manuscripts of Wilfred Owen’s poems, audio recordings of veterans of the war sat beside extracts from Geoffrey Malins‘ films of the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of the Ancre, photos of the battlefields today were weaved in amongst the words of Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg et al…

For a long time, WOMDA was sitting quite neglected and was laid out in a very ‘old’ html format beloved of those who learned to design websites using Netscape Navigator… but not any more… The whole site has undergone a massive makeover and is once more an invaluable place to include when studying poetry or the Great War. One ‘addition’ that I am particularly taken with is the Virtual Simulation of the Trenches on Second Life. At first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking that it shouldn’t work, but a few minutes going through the Camp and then on to the trenches themselves will convince you that this could be a fantastic means of bringing the Western Front to life.

I’ve always had reservations about SecondLife, but this is such a great example of what could be achieved that I am starting to think afresh about its value in education. This is one highly recommended resource, and you can find it at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Frideswide/219/199/646/

This screengrab shows Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est as a gas cloud. Clever… and very, very effective!

When you first meet Greg Whitby, you are struck by one thing. He’s tall. Very tall. I’m about 6’3″, and even then I found myself looking up to him… by the end of the afternoon, I meant that metaphorically as well as literally! He set out his stall by telling how, amongst many other achievements, he’d set up his own company to help connect schools because he was fed up waiting for the Australian Government/Education Department to do it… and that was the point that I knew how relevant what he was going to say was to us here in Scotland. For me, that is the situation we are in with regards to Curriculum for Excellence. Too many people waiting for someone else to do it for them… except, of course, that really means doing it to them.

Greg started his talk proper by pointing out that one of the greatest problems facing education today is the ‘disconnect’ of so many of our children… and as he pointed out, if you asked the kids why they’ll tell you it is because the majority of conflicts between the school and the pupils are caused by banning things. Especially if there is no good reason for the ban in the first place. Remember, we are trying to create confident individuals, responsible citizens — but we start complaining as soon as they demonstrate this ‘confidence’ by complaining about the fact that we don’t trust them to be ‘responsible’… and they have a point.

Part of the problem stems from the way we have designed and structured our schools. As this clip illustrates:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6-MuRAWuMM]

We start our childrens’ education based on an arbitrary age, a pre-defined cohort of peers, and a timetable that is designed to suit the demands of the teachers. Where is the learner in all this? What Greg appears to do, and do very well, is start by considering what do the kids need, and what do teachers need, to do their work. This is an apparently simple change in attitude, but it has profound implications for how we deliver education. As he went on to say… well actually, listen for yourselves:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsA8sqepToo]

The tool is never wrong. Or as the analogy highlights, ‘school’ is never wrong… but of course, it is becoming increasingly irrelevant. What appeals to people is the ability to create mashups, to take what is there and make it personal and relevant to them — hence the appeal of Web2.0 tools. Now take that idea, and apply it to education. Instead of telling pupils what we’ve always told them, and delivering it in the same old fashion, we should start to look at what they need to know and find ways of delivering that in a relevant fashion. Analysing, evaluating, creating… in other words, hitting the top of Bloom’s taxonomy rather than plumbing the depths of remembering things to pass tests…

Greg told us about a friend of his in New Zealand who runs a Primary/Elementary school. Some of the pupils had been studying desert islands, so the head went to the local garden/building supplies, bought 40 tonnes of sand, dumped it in the school grounds and said “There’s your island…” Pupils and teachers then went on to make trees and sculpt and mould the island… you’d have to be a really poor teacher to not find some opportunities for genuine learning in a situation like that… and yet I fear that these chances are few and far between. I will have to come back to why I think that is on another day…

What was refreshing to hear was how Greg acknowledges that many many educators pay no more than lip-service to personalising learning. He also introduced me to an expression I’d not heard used in this context before:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w4ZiG-wZSw]

Greg’s notion of de-privatisation sounded as though it should be political… but is actually the process of getting teachers to open up and share. Open the classroom door and share, open the filing cabinets and share, open your mind and share. For too long, and in too many classrooms, teachers have closed the door and hidden away. Too many poor teachers are still in a classroom wasting a child’s time at school because no one, except the pupils, knows what is going on in their lessons. This is obviously something Greg feels passionately about, and is quite brutal in his assessment of. Basically, if you don’t make the grade, go play in someone else’s sandbox. Except, I don’t know if it really is brutal because, as came across loud and clear, he wants people who are passionate and committed to making a difference and who will lead and teach their pupils to become true learners… and that is what I want my own children to experience.

There’s a lot more to be said about GregMeet. In my next post, I’ll take you through some more of the points he made, and also get some more of the videos posted… but if you want more from #GregMeet, you should check out Ollie Bray’s excellent post about the points made…

End of part one!

Got Milk?

What is the point of Twitter? Well, quite apart from the connectedness and sense of community with my fellow educators, sometimes it just makes me feel good. Especially when it only requires a couple of clicks to know you are going to put a smile on someone else’s face…

On Friday night, I saw a tweet go by wanting to know how much milk was where I lived. I followed the link and found myself at the blog for Room 8 @ Melville Intermediate School who wanted to know:

…how much milk costs in your country or location, and then anything else about milk.

I checked with Mrs W, then posted a quick reply.  I also thought I’d see if I could do a little bit more to help the class with their project, so I retweeted the request… and within a matter of hours, there were 20 replies on the school blog from all around the world, including one from someone who only drinks soya milk.

I’ve just noticed that the blog has been updated to reflect the number of responses. As the class teacher says:

If you are someone whose left a comment, tweeted or re-tweeted the original request then thank you so much the students will absolutely love it!

So, ask me again why I like Twitter? It’s because it really does make the world a smaller place and it really does connect people… and I also like to hope that for one group of pupils, there is the realization that the world they live in is listening to them after all…