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Monday 30 August 2010
Monday 26 July 2010
Jousting
Continuing with my theme of History Activities Week in the final week of term, my year 8s did jousting on Thursday morning.
Our final year 8 unit is a chronological one, Entertainment Through Time. This usually involves watching portions of A Knight's Tale for the jousting scenes, and to show the class barriers in medieval society. With only one lesson left after watching said scenes, I decided we would do a bit of re-enacting.
My first idea was to create tableaux and annotate them, this being one of my favourite things to do, but then I remembered I had some pipe lagging and it seemed foolish not to use it...
Each team had four members: a jouster, a horse, a jester and an armourer. They were provided with tinfoil and rubber bands with which to make armour, with the brief that they had to cover their bodies from waist to neck. There was an ulterior motive for this.
They didn't do a bad job -
The rules of the joust were simple. One hit between waits and neck - 1 point. Hit to the head - 2 points. Unhorse the opponent - 3 points. I had to think of a way to measure the hits, which is when I came up with the poorly-conceived notion of dipping the pipe lagging in nutella so that we could see where the hits occurred.
Now, theoretically this would have been fine, since their clothes were mostly covered and we were going outside. I implemented a 1 point deducation for getting chocolate spread on the horses. But then it started to pour with rain, so we had to move the venue inside.
The first attempt was quite good.
As the jousts continued (inside the History mobile) I realised that (a) the armour was falling off, (b) I had been a bit generous with the chocolate spread and (c) they were not jousting, so much as battering each other with the lagging.
Which is how we ended up with this -
Afterwards, I had to spend considerable time with wet wipes, removing Nutella from the walls, posters, my dress, my hair, the ceiling and the windows, and then ring a parent to apologise.
Sometimes, I think the mark of a good lesson is having to ring a parent to apologise.
Our final year 8 unit is a chronological one, Entertainment Through Time. This usually involves watching portions of A Knight's Tale for the jousting scenes, and to show the class barriers in medieval society. With only one lesson left after watching said scenes, I decided we would do a bit of re-enacting.
My first idea was to create tableaux and annotate them, this being one of my favourite things to do, but then I remembered I had some pipe lagging and it seemed foolish not to use it...
Each team had four members: a jouster, a horse, a jester and an armourer. They were provided with tinfoil and rubber bands with which to make armour, with the brief that they had to cover their bodies from waist to neck. There was an ulterior motive for this.
They didn't do a bad job -
The rules of the joust were simple. One hit between waits and neck - 1 point. Hit to the head - 2 points. Unhorse the opponent - 3 points. I had to think of a way to measure the hits, which is when I came up with the poorly-conceived notion of dipping the pipe lagging in nutella so that we could see where the hits occurred.Now, theoretically this would have been fine, since their clothes were mostly covered and we were going outside. I implemented a 1 point deducation for getting chocolate spread on the horses. But then it started to pour with rain, so we had to move the venue inside.
The first attempt was quite good.
As the jousts continued (inside the History mobile) I realised that (a) the armour was falling off, (b) I had been a bit generous with the chocolate spread and (c) they were not jousting, so much as battering each other with the lagging.
Which is how we ended up with this -
Afterwards, I had to spend considerable time with wet wipes, removing Nutella from the walls, posters, my dress, my hair, the ceiling and the windows, and then ring a parent to apologise.
Sometimes, I think the mark of a good lesson is having to ring a parent to apologise.
Tuesday 20 July 2010
Spanish Armada
Today was Spanish Armada day, in the pond.
The school pond was cleared out last week by the teacher whose classroom overlooks it, who got a bit tired of looking at traffic cones and broken chairs and roped some kids in to remove the weeds and litter and make it a bit of a beauty spot. So, I decided to get in there and litter it with some boats.
The kids made paper boats in their art lesson and I set fire to some of them to show the whole fire ship concept.
The kids tried to sink some with missiles to show the storms the Spanish had to sail through. I got a bit splashed in the face, but it was OK. I had brought a change of clothes, thankfully.
It was fun. I ended up with water in the waders and I was quite shocked to discover how deep the mud was; in fact I was pleased I had climbed into the pond to put the map down before the kids arrived because I nearly fell over, several times.
It didn't work as I had imagined, but it was a lot of fun and I doubt they'll ever forget it. I bought them flags to wave and let them draw little Spanish beards and big English moustaches on with markers, and they enjoyed the fire ships especially. And I got to wear my pirate hat and show off a lot!
The school pond was cleared out last week by the teacher whose classroom overlooks it, who got a bit tired of looking at traffic cones and broken chairs and roped some kids in to remove the weeds and litter and make it a bit of a beauty spot. So, I decided to get in there and litter it with some boats.
The kids made paper boats in their art lesson and I set fire to some of them to show the whole fire ship concept.
The kids tried to sink some with missiles to show the storms the Spanish had to sail through. I got a bit splashed in the face, but it was OK. I had brought a change of clothes, thankfully.It was fun. I ended up with water in the waders and I was quite shocked to discover how deep the mud was; in fact I was pleased I had climbed into the pond to put the map down before the kids arrived because I nearly fell over, several times.
It didn't work as I had imagined, but it was a lot of fun and I doubt they'll ever forget it. I bought them flags to wave and let them draw little Spanish beards and big English moustaches on with markers, and they enjoyed the fire ships especially. And I got to wear my pirate hat and show off a lot!
Monday 19 July 2010
Movie Maker
This is what passes for innovation at this end of term...
Me: I want to do Tudor websites with my year 7s this afternoon but I am not sure where to host them.
Helpful Teacher Friend: Hmm. Don't know. But you could get them to do something in Movie Maker, it's awesome! Yeah...like....Tudor timelines! In Movie Maker!
Me: Um, OK, really? Not websites?
HTF: No! Tudor timeline movies! Amazing!
Me: OK. How hard can Movie Maker be? I watched my year 9s using it a few years ago....
And so, having managed to get an unprecedented four lessons of computer time in a row for the last weeks of term, I set my pliant year 7s a Movie Maker task. This proved a challenge for us all, since none of us are particularly well-versed in it; but we seem to have done alright.
Their task was to create a timeline of the Tudors in Movie Maker. This sounds like an extremely loose and open-ended task, because it was. I gave them some suggestions for how they could interpret the task, as well as the option to work individually or in pairs, and we had done a few lessons of prior learning on Henry VIII and his six wives and why Elizabeth never married.
The results can be seen here. You may get bored with the same two songs over and over again.
Here are my learnings from the project:
Know your resources. The computers have recently been upgraded and I hadn't realised that there were no CD drives in the new ones, so I had to rip the CDs they brought in and put music on shared resources for them - which is why the same two songs are on most of the videos. I also discovered ICT no longer lend headphones. This was not the best time to discover this for the first time.
Have music available. There must be freely downloadable music out there for things like this. I spent zero time finding any; in fact, it didn't even cross my mind until now, after the fact. Instead I set them a find-music-and-bring-it-in homework.
Have an example. If I had made an example ahead of time, I would have been more helpful to the students when they got going, as opposed to learning with them.
Have a planning session. I had the whole class work for an hour on researching before they got started on their movies. With hindsight, I would have spent half of this time talking through possible timeline options for them.
Allow time to evaluate. The issues created by the music hoovered up so much time that we rushed to get them uploaded at the end. I would have preferred for them to watch each others' and give hints and tips on spelling and things like colour schemes, before we put them live on YouTube. Some of the spellings make me wince, but the achievement is not lessened by it, I suppose.
They did enjoy playing, though, and were astonishingly closely focused on the task for the entire length of the project, which is unprecedented. To be fair, though, I attempt a few risky activities with this class and they usually rise to it very well. I am impressed with how they managed to come to the program with no prior experience of it in most cases, and just figure it out. I was also delighted to note that the most academic were not the most skilled.
Unfortunately, due to the length of the project and the fact that I am devoting their last lesson to a pond-based Armada extravaganza, I didn't get to continue the Wallwisher project I had planned. However, the wall will still be there in September, and I am keeping this class as they move into Y8, so I may pick it up with them first lesson back, to give them a bit of continuity of learning and a chance to get some extended writing done early in the term.
Me: I want to do Tudor websites with my year 7s this afternoon but I am not sure where to host them.
Helpful Teacher Friend: Hmm. Don't know. But you could get them to do something in Movie Maker, it's awesome! Yeah...like....Tudor timelines! In Movie Maker!
Me: Um, OK, really? Not websites?
HTF: No! Tudor timeline movies! Amazing!
Me: OK. How hard can Movie Maker be? I watched my year 9s using it a few years ago....
And so, having managed to get an unprecedented four lessons of computer time in a row for the last weeks of term, I set my pliant year 7s a Movie Maker task. This proved a challenge for us all, since none of us are particularly well-versed in it; but we seem to have done alright.
Their task was to create a timeline of the Tudors in Movie Maker. This sounds like an extremely loose and open-ended task, because it was. I gave them some suggestions for how they could interpret the task, as well as the option to work individually or in pairs, and we had done a few lessons of prior learning on Henry VIII and his six wives and why Elizabeth never married.
The results can be seen here. You may get bored with the same two songs over and over again.
Here are my learnings from the project:
Know your resources. The computers have recently been upgraded and I hadn't realised that there were no CD drives in the new ones, so I had to rip the CDs they brought in and put music on shared resources for them - which is why the same two songs are on most of the videos. I also discovered ICT no longer lend headphones. This was not the best time to discover this for the first time.
Have music available. There must be freely downloadable music out there for things like this. I spent zero time finding any; in fact, it didn't even cross my mind until now, after the fact. Instead I set them a find-music-and-bring-it-in homework.
Have an example. If I had made an example ahead of time, I would have been more helpful to the students when they got going, as opposed to learning with them.
Have a planning session. I had the whole class work for an hour on researching before they got started on their movies. With hindsight, I would have spent half of this time talking through possible timeline options for them.
Allow time to evaluate. The issues created by the music hoovered up so much time that we rushed to get them uploaded at the end. I would have preferred for them to watch each others' and give hints and tips on spelling and things like colour schemes, before we put them live on YouTube. Some of the spellings make me wince, but the achievement is not lessened by it, I suppose.
They did enjoy playing, though, and were astonishingly closely focused on the task for the entire length of the project, which is unprecedented. To be fair, though, I attempt a few risky activities with this class and they usually rise to it very well. I am impressed with how they managed to come to the program with no prior experience of it in most cases, and just figure it out. I was also delighted to note that the most academic were not the most skilled.
Unfortunately, due to the length of the project and the fact that I am devoting their last lesson to a pond-based Armada extravaganza, I didn't get to continue the Wallwisher project I had planned. However, the wall will still be there in September, and I am keeping this class as they move into Y8, so I may pick it up with them first lesson back, to give them a bit of continuity of learning and a chance to get some extended writing done early in the term.
Wednesday 7 July 2010
Technology and Literacy
We have a literacy focus in the Humanties faculty. It's been our focus for a while, and for the next year we're all focusing particularly on improving the quality of our pupils' writing.
Our deputy head is on a "which" campaign. She has noticed that students tend to write in short sentences without connectives, and is concerned that the word which will disappear entirely from our language; I assume an element of hyperbole here, but she does have a point. She looked at a range of textbooks and found that they were writtne in a short sentence/bullet point style, which led her to conclude that we are not giving our pupils good examples of writing to follow.
This week, we all had to return to our faculty meeting with an activity aimed at improving the quality of pupils' writing. I have had several, though unfortunately no time yet to try any out.
Idea 1. Wallwisher
I set up a Wallwisher this week for my year 7 class who are studying the Tudors. Wallwisher (my current favourite thing) naturally lends itself to short sentences, which can then be linked together to form longer paragraphs. My intention is to use the results of the Y7 homework in class on Friday to write a long paragraph about the Tudors. I will give them a series of connectives on small cards and challenge them to write the longest sentence they can, using the facts on the board.
Further ideas to follow when I have some more time to devote to this post!
Further ideas to follow when I have some more time to devote to this post!
Monday 28 June 2010
Wallwisher
I spent a useful hour chatting to Mark Anderson, a local ICT HoD and innovator I met on Twitter as I excitedly trawled through the tweets about Google Teacher Academy, online on Friday night about different tech strategies we use in school. It made me realise that a lot of what I do is focused on social networks and my Smartboard, and that there is a lot of good stuff out there which I have never tried.
New blog
I have long resisted the urge to begin a blog about my exploits at work. I've been blogging for more than a decade and questioned the wisdom of putting something new together: time is short.
However, this is a time for new initiatives, people! Following an Ofsted report which directd my school to focus more sharply on teaching and learning, as a staff we have formed learning communities to try and further our abilities and make our classrooms more effective places to learn. I joined the group on creativity. Some commented that I am creative already, but I still regard myself as fledgling to what I see when I go looking for new initiatives in the classroom.
As well as this, I was overjoyed to discover on Friday that I have won a coveted spot at the Google Teacher Academy London, which is being held in July. I carefully read the press release, which informed me that this incarnation of the GTA is focused on educational leaders. I'm really honoured to have been picked and feel there is something here which I need to live up to.
Hence, new blog. New ideas. What's the worst that can happen?
The title, by the way, comes from something our new assistant head has mentioned. I saw it written on the head's flipchart during a line management meeting and it really clicked with me. I used it as the title for my video entry to Google Teacher Academy, so it seemed like a good choice of blog name.
However, this is a time for new initiatives, people! Following an Ofsted report which directd my school to focus more sharply on teaching and learning, as a staff we have formed learning communities to try and further our abilities and make our classrooms more effective places to learn. I joined the group on creativity. Some commented that I am creative already, but I still regard myself as fledgling to what I see when I go looking for new initiatives in the classroom.
As well as this, I was overjoyed to discover on Friday that I have won a coveted spot at the Google Teacher Academy London, which is being held in July. I carefully read the press release, which informed me that this incarnation of the GTA is focused on educational leaders. I'm really honoured to have been picked and feel there is something here which I need to live up to.
Hence, new blog. New ideas. What's the worst that can happen?
The title, by the way, comes from something our new assistant head has mentioned. I saw it written on the head's flipchart during a line management meeting and it really clicked with me. I used it as the title for my video entry to Google Teacher Academy, so it seemed like a good choice of blog name.
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