Why use Drama in Lessons? Drama isn’t just a subject, it’s a very powerful technique for adding interest and engagement to your lessons. But it’s often also one that some teachers steer slear of with the challenges of organising it and the potential for disruption. So I delved into our course archives and adapted this guidance written by our Lead Consultant for English and Drama Kevin Piper.
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When it comes to being a governor we all know that it’s easier to ‘support’ rather than to ‘challenge’, especially as the headteacher and their senior leadership team hold all the cards: they have all the information about how the school is doing, they know their way around the key educational issues.
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Imagine you’re 8 years old, it’s the middle of the night. A group of men smash down your front door and take your dad away. Mum says it was the police because he’d done something bad. Each year over 160,000 children have to live with one or more parents being in prison, which means it’s almost certain that there will be one child in your school, maybe even your class, who’s struggling with this. It can be very difficult for schools to help, mainly because there is no current means for automatically informing schools when a parent of a child
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Please note – if you are looking for this post it has been relocated here. Many thanks! Creative Education
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The debate on the relevance of games in education has raged for nearly thirty years now, but has a game finally appeared that can unite teachers and students through exploration and creativity? It’s possible, and the game is Minecraft. What is Minecraft? Minecraft is a difficult game to describe in a few sentences. Some describe it as a world-building game, as Lego in virtual form, or as an adventure game dotted with dungeons, monsters, swords and magic. In reality Minecraft is all of these things, and more. Moreover, Minecraft can be what you want it to be.
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Ordinarily, we don’t deal with politics on the blog – but then the teacher pension reforms are no ordinary issue. Much ink has and will be spilled on the rights and wrongs of the pension reforms, so I don’t intend to cover that directly. More I want to explore should teachers strike period? Gerard Kelly, Editor of the TES, wrote a typically strident assessment of the situation in the TES a few weeks back which understandably drew a few negative comments.
Read more →You have studied to become a teacher and you’re passionate about the subjects you wish to teach, but are you finding it increasingly difficult to find a job? If the answer to the above is yes, don’t despair. While it’s true that finding any kind of job is not easy in our current economic climate, teachers do have an alternative option – private tuition. There are many advantages of providing one to one tuition. You can create your own timetable, choose the days and times you wish to work, and decide if you wish to provide tuition in your own
Read more →It’s been a while since we did any posts on top tweeters to follow, so i thought I’d take up the gauntlet and we’ve put together a list for Science teachers. With these things there will always be some people I’ve forgotten to include and should have so help us build the list even bigger by comenting or tweeting me extra people you think science teachers should know about. A massive thanks to @hrogerson who supplied no less than 16 of these. It’s pretty much her post! Thanks also to @read2dreamtweet @dr_jameslogan @bluemoonjules @7mrsjames for their suggestions If you want
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Everyone’s talking about Prezi – the new online presentation tool that’s set to rival Powerpoint. Perhaps few would mourn Powerpoint’s demise, but is Prezi really all that different, and what are the benefits of using it in the classroom? The first is that it’s really pretty. Prezi calls itself the ‘zooming presentation editor’ and when you see one in action you’ll see it’s a very slick process zooming into and out of different text and embedded media. This may sound like a small point, but then this is a presentation – and looks are important to maintain engagement. The zooming
Read more →A worrying amount of NQTs never make it through the first few years of teaching. Even those of us that do make it through, with the nights drawing in and the pressure and marking piling up it’s natural to think “Why am I doing this?!” If you’ve lost your passion for teaching, if one government initiative after another has surgically removed your mojo – here are some tips to get you passionate again about your profession.
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This post is written by David Weston, Managing Director of Informed Education and first appeared on his blog here. These days, schools are awash with targets, estimates, and predicted grades. Used well, they are a way to embed a common ambitious vision for each child. Used badly, they are a demotivating, self-fulfilling prophecy of underperformance. It’s really important to understand the difference between these: Target: “I would like you to aim for…” – a reasonably ambitious goal that stretches the student. Prediction: “In my judgement you’re currently heading for…” – a professional opinion, based on evidence of assessment. Estimate: “Similar
Read more →After the massive success of the Sue Cowley behaviour management videos we showed in a previous blog post, I thought it would be nice to give away a few more freebies from our video archive. This week a free video from each of our 3 DVDs on creative science experiments. [myyoutubeplaylist ZYyjk25HhII, XDzI-Q10Vi0, -sMUfUuSNvw] There are 36 experiments in total across chemistry, biology and physics each with an explanatory video, student worksheets and health and safety guidance. Blog readers can get a £10 discount fo the full set by quoting the code Blog (cunning eh?)
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With an understandable concern about preventing cyber-bullying some schools and local authorities take the nuclear option when it comes to social networking and ban those sites wholesale. I’m tweeting to the choir here – but here are 5 reasons why social networking sites, whether they be open or closed, have a valid and important contribution to make to teaching.
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Schools have traditionally divided their students into the ‘academic’, destined for university and a professional career, and the ‘non-academic’, those channelled towards work or training after school. However, this narrow view excludes a third possibility – entrepreneurship. While many businesses are started by those with experience in their field as an employee, there are many businesses that could be started by anyone – including school leavers. For this reason, schools should encourage their students to consider a business career, and teach the skills needed to do so. One reason that schools tend not to prepare their students for a life
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After some grappling I finally got to grips with my unread blogs over the weekend, and came across this fascinating post from @dughall with some incredibly detailed comments and links to other thought provoking posts. The topic? Whether you’re better off doing your own thing for your next VLE and mashing up lots of different tools or just purchasing a proprietary version.
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