Primary Teacher UK

Missing Numbers

Just a quick link to an online Missing Numbers game that Gareth has made on the Primary Resouces maths page.  We were looking at working out missing numbers in the Numeracy lesson we went in to computer suite to use the Missing Numbers file.  The children had to start on the <20 group and if they got over 17 could move up a level.  Each child had their maths book to do any working out neccessary  - the enthuasism of the children trying to get 20 / 20 was great.  It's such a simple learning program, but the children loved it and all asked for the web address - so I guess they'll be playing it tonight as well. 

Standards are Up, Standards are Down

The Department for Education and Skills published statistics on Friday showing that the proportion of 11-year-old boys able to read, write and do maths to expected standards in England went down this year. Last year 52% achieved expected Level 4 in their national curriculum tests. This year's provisional figure was 51%.   These results were amended from the initial results published.

The initial impression when this year's results were issued in August had been one of improvement, with two percentage points more of boys reaching the expected level in English as a whole and a similar rise in maths. But those initial figures do not give the overlap - the percentage of boys getting both English and maths.  And on the particular indicator of reading, writing and maths which the department has chosen to publish, it can now be seen that the performance of boys got worse.  According to the Guardian:

“Ministers have an almost impossible task of overcoming a 10% gap if they are to meet the 2006 target of 85% of 11-year-olds making the grade in maths alone.  There is also a target for 85% of 11-year-olds to pass the English tests at the required level by 2006. This year, 79% of pupils reached this level.”

Does this mean that the threshold for Level 4 will be a lower this year so that 85% of the children reach it in Maths and English?  What can we do to try and improve standards further?  Maybe we could set the children?  We've done this in KS2 hoping that this will improve the results, but according the the TES and Guardian this is not the case. 

Academics at the universities of Cambridge, Brighton, Sussex, and London's Institute of Education which shows that teaching in streamed sets doesn't help improve children's attainment.  The findings come less than a week after the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, published a white paper encouraging more schools "to group and set by ability".  The research, commissioned by the Education Department, warned that less able children were more likely to fall further behind in schools that used setting. Parents' groups called for a review of the setting policy, which they said caused "anguish and distress".

Gareth has produced a cartoon based on a similar results up, results down story!

BBC Schools

BBC Schools (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/) provide some excellent interactive resources that I found really easy and fun to use, and that the pupils I used them with loved. During work with Year 2, I used a couple of the 'Starship' activities as starters to lessons.

Starship Maths: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/index.shtml
Starship English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/index.shtml

The children particularly enjoyed one of the Numeracy activites, Cross the Swamp, that I used with the whole class. This is a mental calculation game that can be played using either 'addition and subtraction' or 'multiplication and division' questions with numbers in the range of '0 - 20', '0 - 50' or  '0 - 100', making it a good activity to use with both KS1 and KS2. It's well worth a look.

I also used the 'Count the sylablles' game from the Literacy Starship. Again, an activity that the pupils took to. BBC Schools also provide information for teachers, including lesson plans and worksheets, and information for parents. Best of all, it's all free, and great to use with an interactive whiteboard or on indivudal computers.  Enjoy.

Parents - Help Your Child Discover

I have a found a useful resource for parents, which we teachers can direct parents to. It is the DFES Help Your Child Discover site.

It offers leafelts on many ot the QCA topics we cover in many areas of the curriculum, such as Roman's, materials and settlements. The leaflets outline what the children will be learning in school and provide games and activities which parents can do at home to enhance their child's understanding of the topic. The leaflets can be viewed on-line or as a customised printed out.

This may be a nice resource to send to parents if you give out termly overviews of what you will be covering in class, or at least give you some ideas of what to write in them. The downside is that there is nothing on these particular pages for numeracy or literacy, although, these are only a few clicks away within the DFES site.

Deb

Microsoft Office for Free?

Well not exactly, but you can can have the equivalent features of Microsoft Office 2003 (the latest version) and more (e.g. Writing PDF files) on every computer in your computer suite for nothing.  A while ago I talked about open source software and in particular Open Office 2.0.  I have been using the Beta for the last month or so with great success.  Now the full stable version has now been released at www.openoffice.org.  You can download it directly from the download page.

OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program and database with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites (ie Microsoft Office). Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.

My big concern was how all the Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations that I have might not load up on the new OpenOffice.  Well I can assure you that I had no problems with 100% of everyday files that I opened and only a few problems, which could be fixed fairly easily with the 20 / 30 files that I opened to deliberately try and fox it.  Taken from an Eweek review:

While extremely fancy documents—think legal paperwork—may not make it over from Microsoft to OpenDocument in perfect shape, the vast majority of your papers and spreadsheets will translate perfectly from one to the other. Let me put it this way: Over the last four months, I've flipped hundreds of documents and spreadsheets from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org and back again, and I haven't lost a font or a formula yet. The new OpenOffice.org also boasts an interface that's much more like the Microsoft Office interface. Unlike Microsoft Office, though, you can run it on Windows, Linux or Solaris and, regardless of platform, it looks and works the same.

There are more reviews available at PCMag.com and The Chicago Sun Times among other places.  A quick search on Google will also reveal many other reviews.  As Andy Ihnatko says

"There's no risk involved. Download OpenOffice 2.0, throw your MS Office files at it, and see what happens. OpenOffice 2.0 really ought to be the first choice for all students, nearly every user and even many small businesses. It's definitely not a replacement for Microsoft Office 2003, but it's an utterly credible alternative. And for most people, it's all the Office they'll ever need."

If you decide to have a go let me know your findings and reactions to this software.

Hello!

Hi, I thought I could take this chance to introduce myself as one of the new bloggers to this site. My name is Matt, I'm a student teacher, currently in Year 2 of a 3 year BA with QTS degree. I am really pleased to be offered a chance to contribute to this site, and hope to post a couple of times a week.

When I was thinking about what my first post on Primary Teacher UK could be about, I started thinking about what inspired me to start teaching in the first place, and especially, why did I choose to teach in the Primary sector?

I remember when I was considering careers, I used to visit the Teacher Training Agency website (now Training and Development Agency for Schools), and when researching teaching as a career and routes into teaching, I always used to the select the 'Primary' box when I was asked what subject/area I wanted to teach. Teaching in a Secondary school never really crossed my mind.

I'm not even 100% sure why I am so focussed on Primary, and when a friend of mine asked me why I  hadn't chosen to teach Secondary, I couldn't answer. It just seemed the right thing for me.

So this got me wondering, what inspired/inspires readers of this blog to teach Primary children?

Reading Comprehension Strategy Checklist

Little Miss Teacher has posted a copy of her Reading Comprehension Strategy Checklist  which lists the main strategies on which she is focusing  this year in guided reading and reciprocal reading.  I've downloaded it and it's a great tick list which you can use to monitor your children's strategies.  Looking forward to hearing more about your reading strategies soon.

Crash Mats are too risky

Shaun Halfpenny, a headmaster from Cummersdale Primary School, Carlise, has once again triggered uproar after announcing that he is banning crash mats in the gym because of fears they they will encourage children to take too many risks.  He says that "children could become complacent and try to jump down from climbing frames when the coushioning is not there."

Last year, the same school insisted that children wear goggles when playing conkers.  He claims that he is following advice from his local authority, Cumbria County Council.  School Health and Safety officer Kym Allan said "Guidance that comes out from the National Governing bodies says that if you have soft mats under things, children will jump off onto them.  It actually is not the jumping off or the height they jump that becomes the problem.  In the majority of cases, it's the way that children fall that makes them break an arm or leg."

However Nick Seaton, chairman of Real Education, said: "The whole health and safety agenda is encouraging heads and governors to act in contradictory and illogical ways.  It would seem ludicrous to say youngsters will fall off equipment without the mats there.  Surely if youngsters do fall off, better they do it on crash mats than a harder surface?"

For more information watch Backlash on BBC2 tonight at 6.15pm

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

With Guy Fawkes night coming up on the 5th November (the end of next week!) I was going to share with you a list of sites with resources which may be useful, but I've been beaten to it by Little Miss Teacher.  So instead a link to Little Miss Teachers website and the list of resources that she's already found.

Strike action in Wales?

The BBC is reporting today that Teachers in Wales may strike as a result of how the teachers' pay system is changing.  The NUT say that as a result, your own pay may change - and possibly be cut.  Taken from the NUT website:

"Management Allowances have been frozen in value since April 2003. Now they are to be abolished. By the end of March 2006, every school must review its staffing structure and agree a plan to replace Management Allowances by Teaching and Learning Responsibility (TLR) payments. Teachers who currently hold Management Allowances are under threat. There is no guarantee that they will receive the same, or even any, payment for their responsibilities under the future structure.  Schools are being encouraged by the Westminster Government and its partners to go further. They are being pressed to review their staffing structures from scratch. They are being encouraged to review every teacher’s responsibilities and to consider whether they can be transferred or removed. They are being encouraged to cut many millions of pounds from the paybill for responsibility payments."

A Department for Education spokesman said:

"The pay changes mean that heads and governors have the flexibility they need to structure their schools as they see fit, to make best use of teachers' expertise and reward those taking on significant additional responsibilities, in an open and fair way - which has often not been the case in the past. We have ensured that existing allowances will be safeguarded for up to three years - this was agreed with five unions and the employers' association."

The NUT was not one of the schools which took part in devising the TLR system after being excluded from the discussions. The NUT has stated that it is "opposed to changes that lead to worsened pay, prospects and pensions for teachers."

This is comes after Schools in Wales where told they should not start their reviews of staffing structures, and the movement from Management Allowances (MAs) to Teaching and Learning Responsibility payments (TLRs), until January 2006.  The Welsh Assembly, pressed by NUT Cymru have deferred  the process by three months, to the 31 March 2006,  compared to England.  As a consequence, schools have more time to use the guidance from the WAG and NUT, both of which will be published after half term.