Visit to Nature Nurture at Camphill

Wednesday was my birthday! And what better way to spend a birthday than with a group of outdoor experts on their weekly learning adventure around the Camphill Estate.

Camphill is a residential and day school on the outskirts of Aberdeen that specialises in providing holistic, nurturing education for children and young people with complex special needs. I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours being involved in the Nature Nurture session run by one of the schools management staff, Terri Harrison.

Children visit the school once a week and from the start, they were very excited about being at the school. It took them a good while to begin to wonder who I was, standing there trying very hard not to look authoritative but on the other hand not look like a target for excited children to bombard with questions and observations from the off.

The children were split into pairs so that they could 'look after' one of the adults. As I was a guest, I had no children looking after me. The looked after adults have a host of specific observation and guiding responsibilities though the children were very much in control of their own learning.

It was wonderful to see children confident and at ease in an environment that obviously has a very strong sense of safety and boundaries. What I saw was play-based learning at it's best with children allowed to take risks, explore and ask questions.

At one point, Terri produced some mallets, fabric and kitchen roll. I later learned that this was planned though to me it seemed like a spontaneous reaction to the children who, at this point were picking flowers. The mallets were used to pummel the flowers against the flag to make interesting designs. What started as a spark of interest from a few children quickly developed into an activity that most, if not all, children had a turn with. And, with a large amount of banging, hammering and walloping, no children's fingers were bruised (though I'm not sure about Terri's!)

Obviously, the ratio of adults to children make these activities manageable but to say that I was impressed by the children's ability to manage their own behaviour (something that these children find difficult) around a campfire and a claw-hammer is an understatement. These children were playing and exploring. But as well as that, they were learning control, restraint, awareness of others, risk and the value of the correct use of tools.

I came away feeling very positive that, as a mainstream teacher, I should also be ensuring that children have the opportunities to develop these skills as these children are in control of their learning and really on the right track to being successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors with the help of a group of very skilled and dedicated adults.

For more information and to support Camphill, visit their website.

Cycling Scotland - Cycle Trainer Course

Over the past two weekends I've been attending the Cycle Trainer course with Cycling Scotland. The purpose of the course is to become equipped with the ability to teach cycling skills to both children and adults. The course incorporates what I knew 20 years ago as the 'Cycling Proficiency'.

The course had a really good ratio of two tutors to 6 students, all coming from a range of cycling backgrounds from ex-professional racers to teachers getting back into cycling after a break. Having said that, the course was by no means targeted towards people who know a lot about bikes or commute regularly and it's value is for anybody; teachers, parents, cub/brownie leaders, volunteers, anybody who would like to help children to be safe both on and off the roads. Participants have already gone back and applied what they have learnt from this course to educate children in cities, towns and very rural areas. Here's a brief breakdown of what we learnt.

Day One - Ready Steady Bike

Bike safety check to ensure that all bikes brought were safe. This involved The 'M' Check where the bike is checked from front wheel, handlebars, pedals and chainset, saddle and seat pin and finally the rear wheel. A drop test from 6" or so can also reveal loose and potentially dangerous parts. Luckily nothing fell off my bike but it does have a fair few rattles!

It's also important to consider clothing. The general consensus amongst teaching colleagues is that it is compulsory for children to wear helmets during this training. It is not a legal requirement on the roads but strongly advised. I can think of several spills that I have had where a helmet has saved me from serious injury.

Clothing must also not dangle so as to risk getting caught in moving parts and sensible shoes is a must.

The rest of day one was spent on setting up games and courses to practice and assess basic skills like starting off, balance, control, braking etc. This was done in the park as it was a safe environment away from traffic and pedestrian risks.

Day Two - Level 1 of the Scottish Cycle Training Scheme

Dave from Dave's Bike Shed kindly provided a basic maintenance workshop which went through the correct adjustment of brakes and gears, how to split and join a chain and how to mend a puncture. These are all skills needed by children if they are to cycle independently and safely. Repairing a puncture is also a good activity for a rainy day in the classroom. Most bike shops will have a supply of damaged inner tubes that they are willing to give away as many people still take their bike to a shop to have the inner tube changed rather than fix it themselves.

The second half of day two was handed over to us where we worked in pairs to deliver aspects of the Ready Steady Bike course. This was great fun but also highlighted to importance of prior planning, modelling and ensuring that the rest of the group are engaged too and not just standing around. It's interesting to note how even competent adults feel the nerves when being watched by others!


Day three

This is where the tricky stuff came in. We all prepared activities to teach the core manoeuvres on actual roads. The core manoeuvres are:
Starting and stopping
Overtaking parked vehicles
Turning left from major to minor road
Turning left from minor to major road
Turning right from minor to major road
Turning right from major to minor road

Assessing risk was a major factor and contributed to the planning of which roads to use as well as dynamic risk assessment during the actual activity. Surroundings and hazards can change very quickly.

Day four was great fun as the group had gelled really well and we could learn to assess much busier roads and junctions working with multiple lanes and faster traffic. This would form level 2 of the Scottish Cycle Training Scheme which is more appropriate for developing cyclists at secondary school level.

A technique well worth learning was 'snaking' by which a bike snake is formed with an adult leader at the front and back. This is a very good way to travel with a group safely to the location you will be training at. It works by having a leader to model signalling and road position as well as leading the way. There is also an adult at the back whose job is to sprint up the snake in time to assess junctions and usher group through if safe before joining the end and protecting the riders at the rear. We practised this several times and the snake began to flow very smoothly and quickly through the town.

I can't recommend this course enough. It's free to go on, really good fun and so important to ensure that our children can enjoy their bikes on the road safely. It also goes a long way to disseminate road safety skills to drivers who perhaps don't always think about how their driving 'style' affects cyclists and pedestrians.

For more information on the Cycle Trainer courses amongst others, visit Cycling Scotland

If you live in the Fife area and cycle, you could do a lot worse than to check out Dave's Bike Shed for reliable bike repairs. (I know due to pre-course technical disaster. Dave fitted a new headset in good time and for a fair price)

Portlethen Fair-trade Videos and Stickybits

I've now finished the first part of my 2nd school placement which has been at Portlethen Primary just South of Aberdeen. This has been a steep learning curve as Primary 2 has been about as far from my comfort zone as a rural school near Banff but, like the 1st of my placement, I've gained new confidence and learnt many new skills.

However, like most teachers, it's far more fun when given the freedom to try new things and exciting ideas.  So, when I began the placement I jumped at the chance to create Fair-trade animations as part of Fair-trade Fortnight.

After some minor problems (no compatible camera, no microphone, only one laptop and no ability to install Crazy Talk software at short notice) we changed the animation project to a more simple video story format using the backgrounds and characters that the children had created.

The change worked really well as I soon realised that managing a P2 class was far from managing the 8 and 9 yr olds I'm used to. Not to mention that I now had a dozen netbooks with Movie Maker at my disposal. I now realise that it is not outwith P2 capabilities to independently order their collection of images into a sequence based on their co-written script. I must stop underestimating children!

So the finished results will be published on the class' Glow Fair-trade blog. In the meantime, the videos can also be seen attached to certain Fair-trade products by way of scanning the barcodes through the Stickybits Smartphone app. The class plan to make use of some of Aberdeenshire's iPod Touch devices to further enhance their Fair-trade table display. Until the children have had a chance to zap the products, the videos will remain hidden amongst the barcodes. So, get zapping with Stickybits and see if you can uncover Portlethen Primary's story of Fair-trade bananas, coffee beans, chocolate, cotton or sugar. Good luck.

Don't worry, I'll update the blog once children have had a chance to have a play!

WWF - The New Green File Format

The WWF have just launched a new file format designed to make us really think about the documents that we create that need to ever be printed. Let's think for a second. How many documents that we create and share actually ever need to be printed and kept?

Since studying at Aberdeen University, I have found that I have paused for thought much more often as my mouse pointer hovers over the print icon. Mainly this is due to the charge of 5p per print. However, part of this is also due to my acknowledgement of the amount of paper wasted every day.

As readers of the blog will know, this is the second time I have undertaken a teacher training course due to the GTC Scotland's list of unacceptable ITT qualifications. This is the second time I have begun to amass a huge collection of documents and evidence to justify my application to the General Teaching Council. I often wonder, how much could have been presented digitally?

I'm due to fly to London soon and in true student fashion, I have booked a low cost airline and take my luggage allowance in my own hands, literally! But when the computer tells me to print my receipt, does that mean on paper? Do I really need to hand the staff at the boarding gate a crumpled piece of paper to scan? No. I have a crystal clear colour screen on my mobile phone, scan that.

The wwf format is a print option much like printing to PDF. However, unlike PDFs which can be printed, there is simply no option to print a wwf file. Therefore, you can be sure that your document will not end up in a recycle bin, or worse, and encourage an awareness of paper wastage. So at a time when we are concerned about the future of the UK's forests and when we are desperately looking for renewable energy sources, responsible use of paper should definitely be high on our agenda.

Note, at the time of writing this, the PDF viewer on the HTC Desire did not recognise the wwf file format.  However, I'm confident that there will be a solution in the apps market very soon. I'll update the post when I find one.

End of Placement One

Friday 4th Feb was my last day at King Edward Primary School, near Banff. Coming from a large primary school in London to teach in Aberdeen, I was pleased to have been placed in such a polar opposite. The school only has 25 children in total, 15 of these made up my placement class of composite P4-7. I've learnt a lot about how rural schools operate and how Aberdeenshire council support it's schools. I was also given the opportunity to try new things and I was lucky that the headteacher let me run with my own convictions allowing me to learn from both the positives and the mistakes made along the way. 

Using GLOW

During my placement, one particular personal goal was to embrace Glow as well as getting the children using it regularly at school and at home. After some initial log-in problems, all children were equipped and ready to use the resources that I had put up. I created a Glow group allowing children to access links, games and an example Prezi presentation that they could access both at school and at home. It was important that the children get into the habit of logging on and we made sure that the children had the opportunity to log-in almost daily. I began to increase the use of glow to include web based games activities for use in number (and at home) as well as setting online homework. At this point, only the instructions for the investigations, some links and fun games were set online but I have every intention of developing what I have used in Glow to set some Glow Learn and Glow Meet tasks in the future.

Games Based Learning - using Endless Ocean

In the first part of my placement I used the Endless Ocean Wii game to set the context for diary writing from the perspective of the main character in the game. The children loved that they were using the games console in school and it provided motivation and a talking point both inside and out of school. I can see that a whole theme, carefully planned around a game like this can provide some really deep learning as children really get into the subject. I found that I could make constant numeracy references too so this really did help with embedding numeracy, literacy and ICT into the whole CfE.

Planning for Art

Following the castles theme, I planned a series of lessons to enable children to consider things that represent them in their lives. Children thought about what was important to them and we explored the idea of representing those things using symbols rather than pictures. The symbols were then used to create their coat of arms where they used paint to add contrasting, solid colours, black crayon to make thick, bold lines and then silver or gold paint and sponges to give it a metallic effect. They loved creating them and seeing what their neighbours had done. They also look fantastic on out wood panelled wall, above our big fireplace.

ICT presentations - using Prezi

I introduced children to Prezi in the last week as they were to begin their presentations to show their own castle. Their castles were to be a collection of features that they thought were important and were based on real, local castles owned by the National Trust for Scotland as well as fictional castles set in fantasy stories. They picked up Prezi extremely quickly and some rushed home to continue their presentations. I'm sure that this is a tool that they will revisit again and again.

Go Animate

Following an inset day on teaching & learning strategies for children with Autism and another inset delivered by Stephen from DoBe, I introduced a pupil with Aspergers to Go Animate as a way to express how he felt in a certain situation. I also mentioned that he could be the class expert and show others how to create animations. Little did I realise that he would take this new responsibility with such vigour. He is now 'booked' to deliver training to the other teachers as well as leading a group of children creating an animation for the Comic Relief assembly. One empowered pupil!

Plate Design

Another success story that I feel particularly proud of this term was the boy who was allowed to take part in a plate-making activity, even though the family were not in a position to pay the £7 for the plate. This particular child has difficulties in most areas of the curriculum although shows a real talent for making and designing things. The plate was no different except that he unfortunately left his design at home when the day for painting the plate came. Unperturbed, he preceded to recreate his exact design (I know because I saw both!) onto his plate from memory. His plate was one of the most well spaced out and carefully painted designs in the class. He was really pleased with it. 

However, when I returned after Christmas, his plate was still there. We discussed it in the staff room as well as with any other professionals who commented on the art-piece in question and I photographed it and presented the A4 colour print to him that afternoon. He was extremely proud and immediately went home to show his Mum. The next day he proudly announced that his Mum liked it so much she had agreed to buy it after all. At no point did anyone in the school send the print home as a selling tool. It was a celebration of his hard work. The fact that they bought the plate definitely showed the affect that ensuring praise goes home can have.

Chatting with Jacqueline Wilson

A while ago I read a twitter post about a forthcoming LTSwatch the web-cast but their behaviour was very good and they all seemed to be able to relate what she said to their own writing.

The web chat was not going to be online until 1pm, during their lunch break. However, as they had all written down questions that they would like to ask, I said that we would choose one to ask while the children were brushing their teeth at 1.15pm. We did, and she answered. The children were very excited to see the name of their schoolmate up on the big screen, on the Internet, for JW to answer.

Letting off Steam

What better after 4 weeks of hard graft in someone else's classroom, your own sleepless nights and not to mention your ill children's sleepless nights, than to walk 24miles in 24 hours. No, in black and white it seems like a daft thing to do but it was my way of letting off steam.

Having had to ditch the hike around the Lochnagar area due to the weather, me and my oldest pal Will (none other than William Wallace actually!) headed for the Gordon Way armed with heavy packs full of food, dry clothes and other necessities. I felt my binoculars far more justified Will's tin of baked beans when it came to extra weight but that was just one of the bickerings to be had as we hiked from 8pm Fri eve through to 2am before bivvying in the woods near the Bennachie Centre and hiking back to Suie car park the following morning via Pixie Heaven, which was another point for 'discussion'!

To read more about out planned coast to coast walk and the training (or lack of) that we are undertaking, click here.

Connecting with Connectivism

I’ve read so many blogs, so many research papers and listened to so many speeches recently that have all made the point that we cannot begin to imagine what job titles will be given in the near future, let alone the skills needed.

I’ve decided to tinker with something called MOOC. It stands for Massive Open Online Course and the one that I’m interested in (I think it may be the first and only one) focuses on the recently modern theory of Connectivism. I am interested in the idea that the skills and tools that children need to prepare themselves for an unknown future need to be learnt through experience and discussion with others. It sounds like Constructivism for the 21^st Century and beyond. 

The course seems to be pitched at teachers of adult education but I am interested in the application of online networks , twitter, GLOW and creation and collaboration online in Primary School settings. I’ve embedded the introduction video for anyone who may be interested and will post my thoughts here as I progress through the course. Obviously being halfway through my PGDE, I haven’t a huge amount of time to spend on this but please feel free to post comments, contributions etc. I’m really interested to hear from teachers who have already engaged in this idea.

The two questions knocking around my head at the moment are:

1)Is it all about ‘knowledge’?
2) Are we/can we really ever be really effective at filtering and quickly evaluating the amount of knowledge that we are now exposed to and still trust it’s integrity?

Principles of connectivism:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

(http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm accessed 08/01/2011)

 


















You can find the course information here

*DISCLAIMER! I am exploring this with an open mind and having just read some of the different reactions to the theory, my head is spinning. Perhaps by my 12^th week  I’ll be blogging a conclusion or perhaps by my 12^th teaching year  I’ll have figured out the pedagogy!

A New Blog for 2011

2011 is going to be the big year for me. So much to do, so little time and such a lazy Christmas and New Year to shake off. But this is the first step as I get my head screwed back on and facing the right way.

Monday sees the start of the second half of my first teaching placement. I'm back at King Edward Primary near Banff armed with loads of ideas for the Castles theme. Watch this space for the results of the Stickybits numeracy idea, the Fyvie Castle mobile showcasing idea as well as all the video and animation work I can get away with. I can't wait.

Amongst it all is going to be the dreaded Assessment B as well as finding out where my probation year will be spent, inevitably (and joyfully) moving out of this cold flat, running some holiday workshops and getting back into the walking and cycling. Oh, and a crazy idea to walk from Aberdeen to Ft William in the summer but I'll blog about that soon.

So, thats enough for just now. It's only taken a morning, a read through twitter, Juliet Robertson's blog, Teacher Tom's blog and I'm back in the right frame of mind. Here goes!!
 

 Click on the image below to be taken to the old blog posts of 2010