Over the last year I’ve been working with pupils in Y7, Y8 and Y10 on a spot of local history. The “Eye: A Castle Connected” project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and Mid Suffolk District Council has involved renovation work at Eye Castle, outreach work with local primary schools and a variety of art, music and ICT workshops here in school. The Y8 and Y10 pupils have been particularly involved throughout the project and have made a significant contribution to the running of workshops, the design and production of resources for primary school children,information boards within the castle grounds anda new smart-phone app which will be available to download in the next month or so.
Category: Education
You may be familiar with the Channel 4 Time Team programmes which have done a great deal to popularise archaeology since 1994. Although our school site has not (yet) featured in the series it is nevertheless no stranger to archaeological investigations and has ‘turned up’ some interesting finds over the last decade. The building work for new sports facilities necessitated surveys that revealed a fascinating history of occupation from Anglo Saxon times to the present day. I was pleased therefore to have twelve pupils from our Y9 & Y10 accepted on Cambridge University’s HEFA which is run by Carenza Lewis who has also appeared on Time Team.
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iPad in the classroom
I’ve been experimenting with using the iPad in lessons and would like to recommend a nifty timeline application called ‘Timeline Eons’ reviewed by History Today in February. After having played with the free version for a few days I have upgraded to the full version for under six pounds and although there are probably a few fine adjustments to be made the App is well worth the outlay.
It comes with a pre-built “graphic representation of the entire natural and human history” which is fascinating but with a distinct American bias. If you have the free version you’re stuck with this state of affairs but with the upgrade there is the opportunity to add your own events which is great. So far I’ve used it with Y7 and Y9 looking at the spread of the Black Death and significant events from the twentieth century respectively.
I’m playing the image through to a Promethean IWB and the quality is excellent. The only slight problem I’m having at the moment is the hassle of hooking the iPad up to the RGB for the IWB. As well as risking damaging pins with repeated use it also means you can’t change between the iPad and say your PC or laptop as easily as you should be able to during a lesson. The solution is not too far away however as I’ve a KVM switch on order that should allow me to have all three hooked up simultaneously.
So there it is….a great way to use your iPad in lessons and not just for looking good in the staffroom.
“Widening access and improving participation in higher education are a crucial part of our mission. Our aim is to promote and provide the opportunity of successful participation in higher education to everyone who can benefit from it. This is vital for social justice and economic competitiveness.” HEFCE (www.hefce.ac.uk/widen/)
 If you search Google for the phrase “every journey starts with a small step” you get about 39,800,000 ‘hits’. The fact that you have to start a journey in order to get to your destination is self evident. Often however this first step can be as much about overcoming a psychological barrier as anything physical.
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Homework – keys to success
The Homework Conundrum
Homework is always a subject that generates comment and discussion. Â Teachers are either told that they are not setting enough homework or too much. Then there are debates about whether homework serves any purpose at all and of course let’s not forget the perennial brainteaser “what is a meaningful homework”. For what it’s worth my opinion is that homework is an essential feature of the school curriculum.
For many children homework poses no problems and is often even enjoyed! These children probably benefit from having supportive (nagging!) parents or carers a quiet place to work and a fair amount of motivation. Even then some of them struggle with the time management and planning aspects that are often required. But what about the kids who have none of this support? They are the ones who often have the most entertaining excuses for not handing their homework in on time but these ‘tall tales’ sometimes mask a number of genuine problems they have faced trying to do the task they have been set.
In school they don’t always succeed but when they do it is often because:
- there are very clear expectations and structures to work with;
- they have been able to discuss work;
- they have worked collaboratively.
One aim of homework is, of course, to get kids to develop a bit more independence and self-discipline in their studies but I’m becoming more and more convinced that sadly that’s exactly where most of the ‘problems’ with homework start. A majority of our pupils have internet access at home. So here are a few ideas my faculty are trying out…
Declining Interest?
I’ve just returned from a trip to Ypres with a small group of Y9 pupils. I wonder if anyone has found recently that it has become a bit more difficult getting pupils to come on trips out? I suppose until about a year ago I never really had any problem filling a coach to go on any day out or, for that matter, overnight or longer visits. Well, over the last academic year I’ve begun to notice that it’s getting more and more tricky to fill the number of places needed to keep the overall cost of the activity at a reasonable level. This year despite our usual ‘push’ we attracted only 26 pupils to take part in what I consider to be a really worthwhile investigation into the history of the Great War.
Maybe there are just so many different extra curricular activities on offer that the ‘market’ is now too crowded or perhaps the financial downturn is finally starting to force parents to think much more carefully about what to spend their hard earned cash on. Whatever the real explanation it means that now more than ever I need to be clear about the justification for taking time out of the school day and ensuring that what is on offer represents good value for money. Of course we always ensure that parents are invited to attend an evening meeting where they can get a more detailed picture of their son’s or daughter’s trip. But sometimes the content can be a little heavy on the admin and light on the educational justification or indeed the interesting details that their children are going to enjoy; result, parents are understandably puzzled and wonder if they’ve spent their hard earned cash wisely when on return from their trip little Henry or Henrietta, when asked what they’ve done, reply that the burger and chips on the ferry were very nice! Â So it’s probably wise to make sure that parents get a very detailed picture of exactly how the trip enriches the curriculum and why it is worth investing in.
Selling Trips
My presentations to parents now are structured under four headings:
Who is society? There is no such thing!
Politicians are frequently misquoted. People often say it was Margaret Thatcher who said that ‘there is no such thing as society’. In fact in her 1987 speech for Woman’s Own she actualy said “…who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business…”
Fast forward to a speech David Cameron gave in 2010 when he described the ‘Big Society’. Cameron said “We need to create communities with oomph – neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.”
With a little cross pollination you could end up with, “no government can do anything except through people….” who “club together and get involved”.
Self Help – A call to arms!
So today we learn that ahead of planned industrial action this Thursday headteachers and communities are being called upon to look after themselves, minimise disruption and keep their schools open. This call to arms may see those neighbours who are able and who hold the necessary qualifications help their community by making sure hard working parents are able to get to work as normal without worrying about their child’s school being closed. Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron would surely approve of such self help.
But here is the kicker. This has nothing to do with bringing communities together. Nothing to do with making a more robust, cohesive society. It’s not even really about making sure pupils get a good education.
Browsing Twitter recently I read a tweet by Mike Herrity (@mikeherrity), “The educational landscape of the 21st Century. Moving towards a new paradigm in learning.” Intrigued, I hit the link, and watched this RSA Animate based on a speech by Sir Ken Robinson in which he shared his thoughts on the challenges facing the public education system.
Although his comments about ADHD have attracted some negative responses it seems to me that Sir Ken otherwise presented an absolutely razor sharp analysis of past and present educational systems. A system that starts off with anything up to 98% of its primary school children judged to be extraordinarily good at divergent thinking and which then over the space of ten years causes this skill to be depleted is one that is broken. Current trends in educational reform don’t appear to be shaping up to change the paradigm. Some would argue that even now we are not seriously looking towards the future and are still chained to the past.
I don’t know about you but I find it irritating when problems are highlighted but no solution is suggested. Well, as luck would have it, just before half term I came across another link tweeted by Damien McHugh (@dmchugh675) and it struck me that what I was seeing was one way of seriously shifting the paradigm. Have a look and see what you think….
Richard A Miller 