Primary Teacher UK

Job Hunting

Finished teacher training and still looking for a job?  The TES, although excellent, is not always the best place to look.  Looking at the individual authority will give you much better results.  Putting an advert in the TES costs schools money, the LA advert doesn't. Here's a quick comparison:

Primary jobs in Warrington on TES: 1
Primary jobs in Warrington on LA page: 8

You can use the TDA page to find direct links to your local authority and their teaching job pages.

The TES does have some resources for letter of application writing, job applications, pay scales and interview techniques which may just help you clich the job that you want.

Matt, who becomes a NQT this year, also put together a great collection of links for those applying for jobs.

Another call for SATs to be phased out?

As the the Year 6 test results start to return to school the chief executive of the GTC, Keith Bartley, who is in charge of setting teaching standards, said he was optimistic that the Government will have started to phase out the tests by the end of the year.

There was "not a lot of difference", he said, between his authority and ministers over the future of the tests. The GTC controversially called for the tests to be scrapped and replaced by teacher assessments in evidence to the Commons Select Committee on Education, which is conducting an inquiry into testing.

Ministers have already relaxed the regime for seven-year-olds - allowing them to be assessed instead. A pilot scheme this autumn will introduce similar measures for 14-year-olds. However, a sticking point may emerge over the tests for 11-year-olds, which ministers argue are essential for monitoring the performance of primary schools. The GTC conducted a survey of parental opinion which indicated that the majority were unhappy about the amount of testing. 

Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)

With a new prime minister comes the new education department - we now work for the 'Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)'.  According to the statement released it will play a strong role both in taking forward policy relating to children and young people, and coordinating and leading work across government on youth and family policy.

It "will assume responsibility for promoting the well-being, safety, protection and care of all young people - including through policy responsibility for children's social services".  The department will take over the Respect agenda from the Home Office and "lead a new emphasis across government on the prevention of youth offending".

The man in charge of this new department, Ed Balls, was appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury in May last year.  Alan Johnson has now moved over to the NHS.

The Guardian has a Q&A section on the new changes if you're interested.

Child killed on school trip by falling branch

What awful news: Daniel Mullinger, a 10-year-old boy was killed yesterday and three of his classmates injured after they were crushed by a falling tree branch during a school trip to a National Trust estate in Norfolk.

One of the injured children remained in intensive care last night following the incident at the 17th-century Felbrigg Hall estate near Cromer on the north Norfolk coast. Another boy, 10, suffered hand and arm injuries and an 11-year-old girl is being treated for leg and arm injuries. They are in a stable condition.

The children were taking part in a five-day activity holiday run by the Aylmerton Field Study Centre. What's good to see is the responsible attitude of the relatives to the awful accident. Mr Mullinger, Daniel's grandfather said:

"The branch could have fallen on absolutely anyone.  He was really looking forward to this trip. It's a one in a million chance of this sort of thing happening and you can't stop it. I hate to think other children would be stopped going on trips like this because of what has happened.  You can't blame the teachers. They must be absolutely distraught. They were there when it happened and I can't imagine how they must feel."

Our thoughts are with all those affected by this incident.

Less is more?

Want a really simple word processor for the children or even you?  Want it free?  Try Writer by Big Huge Labs.  There really is nothing simpler.  Reminds me very mush of View on the BBC Micro!  Thanks to Marc for this link.

Link: http://writer.bighugelabs.com/

Counting to a million

Have you ever challenged your children to count to a million?  Watch Jemery Harper count up to 1 million live on web cam.  Currently on Day eight (up to 95196) he thinks it will take him 3 to 4 months!

Now watching this would be an exciting maths lesson!

Link: http://www.millioncount.com/

More on Creative Curriculums

There is a speech on the DfES website today about the creative curriculum.  The speech, by Parmjit Dhanda, discusses how the Gloucester Excellence Cluster is raising attainment for pupils locally – and indeed beyond - through the City Curriculum. Its philosophy of hands on learning – children discovering for themselves how things work rather than just taking someone else’s word for it – is a sound principle for life as well as a route to good qualifications. And the ‘do less, but do it really well’ motto is making school less like hard work for both teachers and pupils.

Teachers TV already have a programme showing how the 'City Curriculum' has been implemented into Geography as well as another with two teachers explaining the curriculum. 

This type of curriculum is already common in primary school now, we're coming to the end of our first year of using the Bexley model.   But how is the fact that a number of primary schools in England are to become specialists - in the way that most secondary schools are now - as part of a pilot scheme from next term?

34 schools in clusters in different parts of England will specialise in music, modern languages, science, art and sport, and aim to hit raised test result targets.  Each cluster will get an initial £10,000, plus £65 per pupil for four years, £25,000 in sponsorship and £50,000 in capital funding.

Design and Technology

There are a number of Design and Technology websites available for children and teachers to use. Most are aimed at KS3/4 but still have some excellent resources. Technology Student and Design and Technology are good examples of these sites, but both contain good sheets and diagrams/videos suitable for upper KS2.

One of the best Design and Technology websites has to be that of DATA (Design And Technology Association), covering the subject from the Foundation Stage to the Secondary Strategy. All have examples of good practice, planning; links with literacy, numeracy, science... There is also a whole page of 'challenges and competitions' that you could put into place at your school. The page provides a list of links to Challenge websites, but these do take a lot of time and effort to get up and running!

The Nuffield Foundation also have suitable alternatives to the QCA schemes of work, all with adequate planning and resources. The Welsh NGFL site has excellent resources available for the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 QCA Units.

So...there are plenty of D&T resources available online. I always get questioned about there being a lack of websites for D&T and I hope this provides a good starting point. Also, if you know of any that enhance learning or save you time(!) please add a comment!

Candlestick Walk - Chapter Thirteen

Chapter 13 of the Candlestick walk is now up for all to download, read and comment on.  To make things easier all the Candlestick walk chapters and information is now on one page.  Please feel free to comment on these posts.

Is anyone reading this story still?  Would people prefer it in bigger chunks?  If there is no response then it seems pointless to continue posting the story up which would be a disappointment.  I know over 1000 people visit on a Sunday - is it to read the story? Just a yes in the comments will suffice to say that it is worth continuing.

You can download the full story so far, as well as the latest chapter, from: http://www.primary-teacher-uk.co.uk/CandlestickWalk/

Blooms Taxonomy

As a year 6 teacher and after reading Andrew's last post, I thought I would share some of the activities which we use across the whole of upper key stage 2, not just at this time of year, but throughout the term.

They are based on Bloom's Taxonomy, but also integrate De Bono's Thinking Hats and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. The children love using them and set themselves targets on how many points they can achieve. It works something like this...

The children are given the sheets on a Monday morning, with the activities printed on. We spend the first session of the day going through the activities and discuss some of the ideas that they may have. They are then given 2 - 4 days of the week to work through the activities at their own pace, in their co-operative learning teams. By the Friday, (and after using a huge amount of paper, glue and sellotape!) the children are ready to present their work to the rest of the class.

If you want to use the points system, we allocate 5 points to the Knowing/Understanding sections, 10 points to the Applying/Analysing sections and 20 points to the Creating/Evaluating sections. This is by no means set in stone and you could adjust these points to suit your needs.

You can download the Word files here.

Download investigate_a_book_the_bloomingsmart_way.doc

Download its_good_to_be_me_blooms.doc

Download spelling_blooms_activities.doc

Download the_spanish_armada.doc