Primary Teacher UK

HMI Report

If anybody is interested the HMI report from earlier in January is now available.  It can be viewed from the Birchwood Primary School OFSTED page.  It's available on the right hand side dated the 13th January.  I'd be interested to see what poeple think about it. 

Do Tests in primary schools create too much pressure?

Test preparation makes primary school a "pressure cooker" for some children, a senior government adviser has told MPs.  Former Ofsted director Jim Rose said it was "a real issue" for some schools on the BBC.

Mr Rose is chairing the government's review of how children in England learn to read - now also the subject of a Commons education committee inquiry. He told the committee that "teaching to the test" sensibly was often unavoidable - but taken to extremes it "put children into straitjackets".

We are in this position at the moment - If our results improve we will get out of special measures - we've basically been told that - "Improve the achievement of pupils and raise standards in English, mathematics and science." What can we do but teach to the tests?  As much as I hate it as Year 6 teacher all I'm focusing on at the moment is English, Maths and Science.  It's not fair on the children, but it has to be done.  Rest assured once the tests are over in May we will be catching up on all the subjects the time that we have missed art, DT etc.

RE Resources

Our staff meeting tonight was using the Internet to help with RE and we were directed to an excellent page of resources on the 6 main faiths.  The page http://re-xs.ucsm.ac.uk/twentythings.html has a vast number of links which are useful in primary school, especially is you are looking at religions that you are not so confident on.

Some of the links that I especially liked are: Hindu Stories, Islamicity, Hindu Kids Universe, Sikhism Home Page, Faces of Jesus and the Religious Artifacts Homepage with line drawings and photographs.

Note that the original page above is not suitable for children but some of the links from the page are.

BBC Jam

The BBC has launched its new interactive learning service for five to 16 year-olds - BBC Jam.   The broadband service will see 20 commissions go live throughout 2006. The first six are maths and English for five to seven year-olds, science for seven to nine year-olds, geography for seven to 11-year-olds, French for 11 to 14 year-olds and business studies for 14 to 16 year-olds. It continues to build until September 2008.

All the content is specific to the area you live in, year group and can be viewed in English or Welsh.

Link: BBC Jam

Woodland Grange Primary School - Educational Find of the Year

Congratulations to Woodland Grange Primary School in Leicester who won Yahoo!'s Educational Find of the Year award for 2005.  Woodland Wide Web was founded in 1999 according to Deputy Head Richard Smyton and evolved over time, including Podcasts this year.  More details on the building of the site can be found on the TES ICT blog.

Playing an Instrument can Improve your Intelligence

According to an article on the BBC learning to play an instrument boosts intelligence and general well-being and should be a central part of the school curriculum.  Professor Susan Hallam at the University of London's Institute of Education said playing music together also taught children to work as a team.

But she warned teachers often faced an uphill battle to incorporate music into the curriculum.  The Department for Education and Skills said it recognised the value of music.  The study, Music Psychology in Education, sets out the latest research on music and its impact on the brain.

She said: "Music is as important for a well-rounded education as reading, writing and maths. Learning to play an instrument has demonstrable effects on intelligence and, when children play music together, teaches them about co-operation."

More details can be found on the BBC Education page.

Paired Reading

Little Miss Teacher has written an interesting article on how to use paired reading in the classroom along with some very useful resource sheets on punctuation, fluency and accuracy to help the children focus in on specific areas.  They can be downloaded from her site or Primary Resources.

Primary Resources and Heracles

Primary Resources has been updated with over 40 new resources this week, marked with a blue new symbol.  More excitingly though is the fact that the full version of 'The Labours of Heracles' has been released on the Primary Extra Website.

Taken from the Primary Extra Site:

'The Labours of Heracles' teaching pack has been designed to help Key Stage 2 primary school teachers deliver objectives on myths and legends in the National Literacy Strategy.  The story is presented in an easy to understand way with simple text and eight cartoon pictures for each of Heracles' tasks. The teacher's guide contains additional information about each of the labours and also highlights the many differences between versions of this story.

More details on the teaching pack available are available on the Primary Extra website.

Back from Conway

What a great week - I'll post more when I've caught up on my much missed sleep!

School poisoning

A teacher who may have been poisoned at school after drinking what she believed was water has been taken to hospital. Officers from Greater Manchester Police are looking into the possibility that she was poisoned deliberately, although no one has yet been arrested.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4647186.stm