As teachers, we live to be creative and find new and better ways to help children learn.
But equally, as teachers, we have an immense workload and it can be really difficult to make all the hours add up in the day.
Many of us turn, reluctantly, to premade lesson plans (like those on tes.co.uk) as a way of squaring the circle.
But using somebody else’s lesson plan and being creative don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Here are 5 fun ideas for personalising a pre-made plan.
Honestly, how many hours have you wasted in this week, this month? How many meetings you’ve attended have been clear, focussed and prompt? How many have just descended into random discussion?
Follow the steps below and I think you can cut the time you spend in meetings by half. Imagine what you could do with all that extra time in your day!
Eating disorders are a growing problem among our students, but often it can be very challenging to identify which students are at risk.
Prevention is always better than cure, but anorexia can be hard to identify in its early stages – only becoming obvious when significant intervention is required.
So how do you spot a child in your class with the signs of anorexia so you can get the appropriate support? It’s worth noting that no sign on its own is enough to ‘prove’ a child has anorexia, but if any child exhibits a number of the signs below it’s worth referring the matter to the relevant specialist within your school.
We’re over half way through the year now, and no doubt you’ve been trying your hardest to keep your classes on a tight leash.
But now’s also the time, with spring approaching and youthful exuberance in full flow that your class can start to slip away from you.
So what are the early warning signs, so that you can address it before the learning starts to suffer?
An interesting guest post by David Evans of the SRE Project on the role of Drama in effective SRE.
“I am an actor really – giving a performance in the classroom.”
I must have heard teachers draw that analogy dozens of times. Often they will develop their thesis with phrases like ‘You’ve got to have your classroom character, wear your teacher’s mask or you wouldn’t survive.’
Pupils with EAL face two main challenges: they need to learn English and they need to learn the content of the curriculum.
Teachers have to accept that pupils with EAL may not always access every aspect of the lesson but we should plan teaching approaches to match needs and accelerate learning.
In our planning we should recognise that learning a language is more than just learning vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation; it involves using all these elements appropriately for a variety of real purposes or functions.
I was struck yesterday when I read this post by Seth Godin In Search of a Timid Trapeeze Artist (you can read it, it’s very short!)
What he says is generally true of all organisations – and of schools too.
Innovation in teaching isn’t really something you can dabble in, it’s a lifestyle choice. A choice to constantly drive at the boundaries of what’s possible in your lessons.
Those of us who try to be ‘a bit innovative but no more’ will always struggle.
That’s not to say innovation is easy – particularly when you’re burdened with workload – in fact it’s almost difficult by definition, but it’s definitely, definitely worth it.
I’d love to hear some of the examples you have of throwing yourself completely into an innovative project or teaching style. Sharing makes us stronger! Just tweet me @creativeedu or post in the comments below
There is no failure, only feedback.
But as much as we might know this implicitly sometimes the way feedback is given can make it feel like we’ve failed. The problem is particularly acute with teaching, as so many of the outcomes can sometimes be subjective. Were a class really engaged? Were students making sufficient progress? Was that lesson ‘good’?
So even if it’s not given in the right way, how do you turn criticism into positive feedback that will help you improve?
As the half term draws mercilessly towards its close, I started wondering about all those resolutions I made back in late last year and how they’ve fared – some well, some less well.
I suspect you may have made similar resolutions too. So if, like mine those good intentions have been swamped in a sea of workload, let’s take a moment to step back from it all and look afresh at where you want to get to, and what you need to do to do it.
Our guide to Twitter for teachers has been phenomenally popular. Countless kind people have retweeted it and spread it to an even bigger audience.
Which is why I’m pleased to announce that the guide is recently updated, containing new information on top science tweeters, top geography tweeters and over 40 Twitter #edchats for teachers. Exciting stuff!
To get your new copy just fill out the short form below and you’ll go straight to it.
We’re updating the guide all the time, so if you want to be kept up to date with the latest copy select the checkbox to keep you up to date with the blog and you’ll always get the freshest version!
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In a nutshell, augmented reality (or AR) is about superimposing a computer-generated image, sound or video on to a live view of the world. This can take a number of forms – with a web cam on the computer or even on your smartphone.
There’s no doubt about it, augmented reality is cool. But when it comes to using in the classroom, which applications go beyond the purely superficial geekery, to techniques that are actually useful in promoting learning?
You’ve spent a long time training to teach, and years honing and practicing your craft. What a shame if all that hard work were put at risk because of a simple mistake or misunderstanding. Here’s five bits of advice to prevent it ever coming to that…
It’s a sad fact that malicious allegations are becoming very much a part and parcel of school life, and you can never quite be sure who will be the target. When it comes to maintaining a professional distance the problem is rarely what actually happens, but more about the impression that students (and sometimes staff) get when you let that professional distance slip. Being whiter than white here is your best defence, leaving no-one in any doubt whatsoever. That can be challenging these days in the era of social networking, where it’s easy for pupils to find you. So if you do publish personal information online lock down your tweets and Facebook profile, or make it so that you can’t be identified, and block students that try to follow or friend you.
Lesson observations have traditionally been seen as a performance management tool, and to some people the idea of putting a camera into the classroom sets off Big Brother alarm bells! But when implemented properly, controlled and permissioned by the teacher and used by teachers to support one another, video has enormous potential to improve teaching and learning.
Professionals across the board, from sports people to surgeons, use video to perfect their style, technique and ultimately improve the outcome of their practice. We all know that video coaching in sport is common place; we understand why and can see the benefits. All of these benefits apply to the use of video in professional development.
Using video for teacher professional development has, until now, been a rare occurrence; excitingly this is starting to change. Rather than signifying Big Brother, video can help to shift lesson observations away from performance management and towards bottom up, teacher controlled professional development.
In the UK, with the new phonics matching funding, lots of schools will be looking for good programmes to invest in that can secure real progress for their students. So a note I received recently from David Morgan of Easyread caught my eye. How do you make sure that your literacy programme is the real thing, and you’ve not been saddled with snake oil?
When a literacy system is being promoted, the company will often publish “research-based evidence” for its success with schoolchildren. In itself this is a good thing, of course, but there are a few reasons to be wary of these results. The truth is that if the results achieved in these trials were routinely reproduced, then we would not have around 20% of children still struggling to learn to read.
So, if you are evaluating a new product, here are three questions to ask the publisher:
If it is the publisher that will often influence the processing of the results. It is only human nature!
These trials are often conducted in a small cluster of schools under close personal supervision by the publisher throughout the trial. That is quite different to a nationwide implementation of the same product. Ask to see the results of local schools already using the system but not in the trial.
You are being asked to make a substantial investment in a new system, both in purchase cost and internal reorganisation. Does the publisher take an equal risk, by guaranteeing the results you see match the trial results? If not, why not?
David Morgan is the Managing Director of Easyread, an international synthetic phonics system based in Oxford specializing in teaching struggling children how to read using multimedia materials delivered over the Internet. For more information, visit www.easyreadsystem.com
From initial charges that ‘it;s just an overgrown iPhone’ the iPad is now part of many teachers’ and schools’ essential kit.
But it’s fair to say that while Apple has created a beautiful, robust and powerful piece of kit finding the best apps on the App Store can be a challenging experience.
So I asked everyone on Twitter for some advice on what th best apps were out there, and @narthernlad came back with so many suggestions I’m going to split them over a couple of posts!
Here are some suggestions for literacy apps to try with your students. If you have any other suggestions for a great iPad literacy app, I’d love to hear them. Just add them in the comments below.
1) First Letters – Match the letters and listen to the song. Teaches the youngest children phonics
2) ABC Alphabet Phonics – A simple game where children locate the correct letter
3) Story Ideas – Can you guess what this one does? A slick new app.
4) Comic Touch – Make your photos go all cartoony warping images and adding speech bubbles
5) Toontastic - A great little app that allows children to create characters, settings and their own cartoons
6) Chicktionary - As the blurb says ‘Unscramble a roost of letters and create as many words as possible’.
7) Puppetpals HD - Create your own puppet shows with animation and audio in real time
8) Hangman - An oldie, but a goodie!
9) Word Search Kids – Again, no prizes for originality here, but still lots of fun
10) StoryKit - Create your own electronic storybook
11) Adventure Books – Trying to encourage your boys to read? Who could resist an exciting adventure?
12) Storyrobe - Create and share digital stories
13) Verses – Poetry, Poems and Poets – Fridge magnets with a 21st century twist!
14) Sparklefish - Another iPad version of an old favourite, complete a story in turns then see what you get.
15) Sock Puppets – Create and share your own lip synced videos
16) Alphabet Tracing – A fun series of animations to help children learn to form letters
17) Pocketphonics - A highly rated phonics app that covers letter sounds, letter writing and first words
18) Bluster - A vocabulary building game from McGraw-Hill
19) Learn to Spell – Reception – A nice looking app that does exactly what it says on the tin
20) Sentence Builder – Designed to help young children build gramatically correct sentences