Learning is so much fun!

I am spending the week with my sister, niece and nephew at my parents house. This is a photo of my niece, Amelie, learning about reptiles at the tropical zoo in Brentford (by my house).

Amelie loved learning about the food they eat and feeling how their skin is different to ours.. At just 3 years old every experience is still exciting and new! She is collecting stories about her holidays in a little book to show her teacher, whom she adores!

It makes me reflect on when this enthusiasm is lost...? It's interesting to see how my primary themed secondary school classroom, games and general mayhem brings back those memories for some of those who are so disillusioned with school!

Using Twitter in School

I've been using twitter for school projects for a while now, pupils tweet their progress and speak to teachers and students from around the world about their projects. It's totally brilliant for giving them a sense of audience (and making them aware of just how many people can access their stuff on the internet!) and pride, whilst also being far more reflective about their work; knowledge AND skills.

However, I am really struggling to get the school to actually unblock twitter. They are worried about pupils seeing inappropriate things, chatting to friends instead of working blah blah, the usual story!

So two things really, 1 has anyone got some nice examples of how the use twitter in the classroom and 2) any suggestions on how to get my school to unblock it?!?!

Comic life and istopmotion

There is something about macs which engages students! Our pirates from yesterday are spending today making pirate films, comic strips or animations.... Who said students can't concentrate for extended periods - one project, 1 day and the students don't even want to go to break or lunch!!!

Who says Secondary Pupils aren't just big kids...

Over the next 2 days our school holds 'Activity days'. All the different teachers organise a series of 2 day events focussing on different skills and activities that pupils might not experience in an every day curriculum. Obviously this involves a lot of trips (which can be pretty pricey!) for the students so my friend, Esther and I organised a pirate day (well.... if you can't pirate on an activity day, when can you?). Instead of trips, we had a series of team events to build pupils skills and to have tons of fun!

DAY ONE
1) Build your ship (or make it using paper origami skills)
2) become initiated with your pirate name, booklet and lots of singing (how to say YAAAAARGH and YO HO A PIRATES LIFE FOR ME).
3) Signing the pirate contract for your boat
4) Designing your skull and cross bones and agreeing tactics
5) Shipwrecked and stranded we swim the obstacle course to treasure island (obviously this was great as we soaked the kids with super water pistols and hose pipes - just before the great course in the photo!)
6) Cutlass fighting
7) a bit more singing (yo ho a pirates life for me)
8) analysis of a pirate film

DAY TWO
1) film and edit a pirate something.... (used comic life, istop motion or imovie)
2) final count of pirate prizes
3) treasure hunt (solve the clues about the history of pirates, pirate language and pirate geography) for the box of treasure!

As you can see from the picture - all the students really enjoyed themselves and so did the teachers!! 

It reminds us how important enjoying learning and being able to relax and have fun with the students is. I think in the land of continuous target setting and constant focus on progress, the sheer enjoyment of learning can get a bit lost! We should take some tips from the primary schools and look at their fun ways of learning - our pirates are learning about crafts, history, human rights, team work, film editing, maths, building their literacy and getting great exercise over the next 2 days - and enjoying themselves as well - what could be better?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!

In memory of Kajil....

One of my students died this week. It was a total shock - just a very sad accident. It's taken me all of this week to be able to write this post, but I wanted to remember her here...

Kajil was a lively, funny, (very loud!), enthusiastic and loyal student and friend. She arrived in Year 8 and left in Year 10, and even after leaving used to write me the funniest emails describing her new school and her new friends there. She stayed in touch with many of the form and she will be remembered fondly by all of us.

She loved a good bit of drama, and my over riding memories of her will be the day she insisted I should make more of an effort with my hair, brought in her curling tongs, and proceeded to curl my hair all through extended tutor time - and then insisted on a series of pictures(!) and the last sports day she spent with us - we'd been disqualified (again!) from loads of races and the form was getting really despondent, but every time anyone tried to sit down and stop cheering, she insisted they all stand at the front and cheer louder than everyone else!

She was a wonderful young lady who made the most of every second of her life. That she will be missed by many shows how much of a difference she made to the lives of us all.

Sherri, Kajil and Fatima at Christmas...

Georgia, Divya, Hirali, Ritika, Fatima & Kajil (leaning out) cheering the form on at sports day

Goodbye Kajil. You'll never be forgotten...

Busy department?

We were writing a list of all the outside agencies we work with, the consultancy I do, our active citizenship projects and the teacher training/development work we are involved in for our local authority inspection today.... it is 9 pages long!!! Busy department!

This sparked a debate with some friends in other departments about the value of after school activities vs delivery (traditional) of the curriculum.... quite shocking that some friends still believe that traditional imparting of knowledge is more important than projects that build learning skills and encourage reflection.... back to the knowledge vs skills debate - sigh!

Praise and Rewards

I have been thinking about potential masters topics for a while now... I was going to do a case study on our new classrooms (being put together over the summer hols - phew!) but my masters tutor suggested that I use the new rewards system some students have implemented in school. Although overseeing the system, I initially felt like a bit of a fraud as I have just supported their ideas and presented to SLT, not actually build the system but my tutor observed this is why its pretty cool.... Basically, some students, parents and teachers got together, researched praise and why its important, looked at the current school system and then re-wrote the entire system so it focusses on 3 things;

• a tangible, physical reward
• informing parents and the local community
• celebrating ALL achievements

The first stage of the roll out happened this half term. This consists of tiny cards the students can be rewarded for resilience in their learning, building or developing good relationship inside and out of school, being resourceful in their research or lessons and being relfective about their lessons, skills and general every day learning.

The cards work like a loyalty card and students can save them for a number of reasons; to earm money off school trips; to enter a raffle for 2 tickets to experience days; to buy school equipment or sports equipment in the rewards shop at lunchtime; to earn money off prom; to buy a fast track card for the lunch queue.

The system is whole school and seems to be working really well. All the students have responded excellently to the system and they seem keen to use it all the time - in fact, teachers who have not taken it up immediatly are now being asked why by the pupils! Great stuff. I guess only time will tell but the most interesting point is the y11s I was speaking to today said that the school equipment is the most useful as you can buy things before exams, but also, you feel like the teacher notices the good things you do! Great huh?

Time will tell if it really works but 2 weeks in, it seems to be pretty sucessful! It just shows, the students who designed it have been really reflective about their own motivation to learn and what helps it.... :-) They really a great bunch!