Primary Teacher UK

Inside the Staffroom

The Telegraph has a funny article about what teachers talk about in the staffroom.  Worth a read before going back into school!  The end of the article concludes with 5 tip to stop parents getting bad marks from teachers!

1. Don't endlessly write letters to the school. It's fine to make a point, but if you complain constantly you will be regarded as a loose cannon.
2. Don't assume you can see the head teacher (or teacher!) when you want to. You wouldn't walk into any other workplace and expect instant access to the anyone.
3. Don't criticise other parents or badmouth their children.
4. Don't let personal feelings of animosity towards a teacher interfere with your child's education. The teacher is there for the child, not for you.
5. Don't use staff Christian names uninvited or flirt with any of your child's teachers. Ever.

Education in the New Years Honours List

The Guardian and the BBC are both reporting on David Hart and Anna Hassan who are in the New Year Honours list. 

Headteachers' leader David Hart, who has often criticised ministers but backed their plans to give schools more autonomy, is knighted, along with Professor Ivor Crewe who helped deliver universities' support for top-up fees.

Anna Hassan, a dynamic primary headteacher at Millfields Primary School, in Hackney, east London, where 22% of the children have special educational needs, becomes a Dame.  She believes in the policy of "inclusion" - having children with special needs in mainstream schools, with appropriate support.

 

For a gull list of academics, teachers and educationalists in New Year honours list you can visit the Educational Guardian website.

Links and More Links

Two people have emailed me within minutes of each other to mention two sites which I hadn't heard of before.  I've had a look at both of these sites and they both contain a mass of information.

The first is the TA chat forum.  This forum is specifically for Teaching Assistants, and when I last looked had over 15,000 posts.  The address is:  http://ta.forumup.org/

The second site is The Grape Vine, a forum and information site for teachers to help teachers.  I notice someone has already put up a comment about Primary-Teacher-UK!

Both are well worth a visit.

Primary Teacher's Toolbox

As part of my planning I came across Tony Poulters excellent resource website ' Primary Teachers' Toolbox'.  Taken from the site:

Don't know much about history? Don't know much biology? Then, welcome to the Primary Teacher's Toolbox! Here you will find more useful links than you can shake a stick at. You'll also find a great many child-safe websites suitable for use with Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 children whatever the subject or topic you are covering. Why not try my "cyberhunts" to get children using the Net? Or use my quizzes? Or browse the topic information I have put together? Teachers and trainees will find many computer files and worksheets to download that may prove useful, particularly when using ICT in lessons.

The information isn't neccassily the easiest to find on the site, but I'm sure you'll certainly find something that's useful to you.

Excessive Monitoring?

The BBC has an article on how teachers are facing excessive monitoring which many feel intimidated by.  The poll which was conducted by the NASUWT union found nearly one in five teachers faced more than six observations in 2004/05.

Of the 6,887 members who responded to the survey:

• 37% had more observations in 2004/05 than in previous years
• 17% felt the lesson monitoring to be unhelpful or intimidating
• 35% said monitoring was not applied fairly.
• 46% of respondents were given about a week's notice before an observation
• 5% received no notice at all
• 16% received less than a week's notice.

The survey suggests only 52% can always expect written feedback about their performance, with 5% never receiving a written response.

Being in Special Measures I'm fairly used to being monitored and to be fair we tend to get more than a weeks notice.  I do however think that the monitoring is sometimes unfair.  How can a judgement be made on a lesson when only 10 / 15 minutes of it is watched?  Can I judge a TV program from the first 10 minutes?  Can I judge a film from the middle 10 minutes? I think observations should be the whole lesson, start to finish.  Then I'd feel happier with the feedback.

The New Year

Well I hope that everyone had an enjoyable break.  I'm looking forward to the new year celebrations and getting back to work.   For me anyway, it's time to start sorting out that planning and what exciting and interesting things to teach my children this coming term so I'm going to be on the computer a little more now.  Any interesting links I'll post up.  The TES has posted an short article on 2005 Education news for those that spent the year planning and didn't realise that there was life outside teaching!

So why am I looking forward to getting back to school?  Because we're away for our weeks residential at the Conway Centre at the end of January which will be a great team building session for the class and I.  For anyone that's close enough to visit the Conway Centre I can't recommend it enough.  The service that they provide is first class, food is fantastic and the choice of activities that they have available to the children is so vast I doubt you'll be able to find something they can't provide.  We're lucky that we have single rooms for all the children which they love, a big change for a lot of the children that share all the time at home.

Anyway, I'm off out for yet another evening celebrating the holidays.  See you all in the New Year.  All the best for 2006.

RateMyTeachers.co.uk

I came across www.ratemyteachers.co.uk just now and don't really know what to think. This is a site that allows pupils and parents to, as the title suggests, rate teachers, and leave comments about them for others to view.

Some schools have already blocked access to this site from school computers.

Click here to read comments about this site from members of the TES forums.

Let us know what you think.

On a different note, I hope everyone had a really nice Christmas and has a great new year.

Track Santa as he delivers his presents

Can't resist posting this link.  You can now track Santa using Google Earth as he delivers all his presents.  He's warming up the sleigh at the moment, but expected to leave at 2pm GMT!

Merry Christmas

This weblog will be going a little quieter now for the next week or so as we all relax and enjoy Christmas, sorry I mean winter break!  (Don't get me started!)

This Christmas I am going to be relaxing with my family and friends, chilling out in front of the TV, playing board games and listening to some classic Christmas Music. (Don't forget to watch Channel 4's Bring Back the Christmas Number 1).

What's I'll not be doing is watching Teachers' TV (have you seen some of the exciting programs on Christmas Day!), despite nearly £18 million being spent on it this year.  Where are these 634,000 people that watch it?  They certainly don't visit this site or the TES site!  I also won't be listening to naff music that somehow has made it to number one or looking at my planning file (at least until January!)

Thank you for all your support and emails of encouragement over the year.  I look forward to continuing this site in 2006.  So barring major unexpected news, I’ll be on hiatus until after the holidays. We appreciate you, our readers, but this is the time of year to spend less time with you and more with our families. 

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Free Web Word Processor

I've just come across this online web word-processor - Writely.  Writely is a web word processor that provides simple and secure document collaboration and publishing on the web using only the browser.

First you create a document, either by typing it in or uploading a word / openoffice document.  Then you can edit it and share it with others just by providing their email address.  Then the document can be edited with your friend, with the changes being synchronised every few seconds.

How can this be used for teachers?  Imagine having to write a policy over the holidays, share it with your head and you can do it together.  Want to finish editing a document at school but don't have word, upload it into Writely and finish it off.  Give the children access and they can write a collaborative story together.

At the moment Writely is still in beta, but you can use it by signing in.  If anyone wants to try the collaborative features try adding my email address (rossa@primary-teacher-uk.co.uk) and I'll edit the document with you!

Well worth a look over the Christmas holidays.