Primary Teacher UK

2 marks for swearing!

An exam board is to review its marking guidance after one of its top examiners gave marks for a script which contained only a two-word sexual expletive. The Times reported that Assessment and Qualifications Alliance chief examiner Peter Buckroyd gave a pupil two marks out of 27 for an English GCSE paper.

He is quoted as saying the candidate had demonstrated more skills than one "who doesn't write anything at all". AQA said this was not in line with its guidelines, which would be clarified. The pupil is reported to have written "**** off", and would have had another mark for adding an exclamation point.

Mr Buckroyd is quoted by the Times as saying: "It would be wicked to give it a zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for - like conveying some meaning and some spelling."

The top five toys under £25

With it still being half term for many with children here is a list compiled using reviews from shoppers of the top 5 toys for under £25. The interesting thing is how educational some of these products were. There are so many comments about their educational value and the skills they helped children with.

You can find the post here: http://www.decidewhattobuy.com/blog/2008/05/top-five---toys.html

All the reviews can be found by clicking the links to the relevant products. They go through to the consumer review site, Reevoo.com.

Wii have a problem

Having got a Wii for Christmas and becoming slightly addicted to Super Mario Galaxy I couldn't help sharing this website with fellow Wii people: Wii have a problem (http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/) shows some of the injuries and accidents that can happen from playing withw your Wii. Let's hope the Queen doesn't injure herself!

The only possible way I can link this to education is by using the sites in Argument texts - Wiis should be banned because....

PS If anyone wants to join me for an online game email... :)

Mr Magorium’s Box of Tricks teacher downloads

There are some new KS2 fun resources for the end of term from the National Schools Partnership linked to Mr Magorium's Box of Tricks. The magical resources can be downloaded from www.nationalschoolspartnership.com/boxoftricksresource.

There are four booklets (all as PDF files) which can be downloaded: numeracy, literacy, magic and creative. Between the four booklets there is enough material to provide a whole weeks worth of work, finishing in a magic show on the Friday afternoon. What a great way to finish for Christmas!

Tracking Santa

I've found the reason behind why NORAD track Santa each year. According to Google "it was more than half a century ago, on Christmas Eve in 1955, that a Sears Roebuck & Co. store in Colorado Springs advertised a special hotline number for kids to call Santa. What the company didn't know at the time was that they had inadvertently misprinted the telephone number. Instead of Santa's workshop, the phone number put kids through to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace defense of the U. S. and Canada. Worse, it wasn't just any number at NORAD: it was the commander-in-chief's operations hotline. In the spirit of the season, Colonel Harry Shoup, the director of operations at the time, had his staff check radar data for any indication of a sleigh making its way south from the North Pole. They found that indeed there were signs of Santa, and merrily gave the children who called an update on his location. Thus, a tradition was born, and NORAD has continued to help children track Santa on Christmas Eve ever since."

The countdown begins December 1st on NORAD's website, where families can find a new kid-friendly game or activity every day until December 24th. And starting at 1:00 am PST on December 24th, you'll be able to track Santa's trip in real time. You can download Google Earth and add the NORAD Tracks Santa iGoogle gadget to your iGoogle page anytime, but make sure to come back to noradsanta.org on December 24th to download the special Santa Tracking file for an enhanced 3D Santa-tracking experience.

Link: http://www.noradsanta.org/

Early Sesame Street for Adults Only

Sunny days! The very first episodes of “Sesame Street” are available now but just don’t bring the children. According to a warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

The extracts below are from a post by Virginia Hefferman in the NY Times. I recommend you read the whole post - isn't it amazing how things change!

Safety: "On the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything."

Depression: "The chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.)"

Drugs: "Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. Episode 1 spends a stoned time warp in the company of backlighted cows, while they mill around and chew cud."

Obesity: "As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict."

Slums: "The concept of the “inner city” — or “slums,” as The Times bluntly put it in its first review of “Sesame Street” — was therefore transformed into a kind of Xanadu on the show: a bright, no-clouds, clear-air place where people bopped around with monsters and didn’t worry too much about money, cleanliness or projecting false cheer."

You can view Sesame Street clips on You Tube. Enjoy the memories!

Free Flight Simulator on Google Earth

Here's something that I saw on The Gadget Show which children may like in class - a flight simulator built into Google Earth.  Can they fly the plane to the capital on England, Wales and Scotland?

Download the latest version of Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/). Load up Google Earth as usual, click on the globe, and hold down CTL + ALT + A. This will bring up a dialog box allowing you to choose a plane, and a runway ... and get flying!

The plane can be controlled by the keyboard, mouse or a joystick. The full controls can be found at the Google Earth website.  Once you've activated it, the Flight Sim can be entered and exited through the Flight Simulator option in the TOOLS menu, allowing you to change plane and airport.

EDIT: On some PCs you to need hold down CTL + WINDOWS + A instead of the above.

Diary of a Trainee Abroad

It's the time of year when colleges and universities are overwhelmed with fresh-faced and enthusiastic new recruits, for whom 16 hours a day and a novella's worth of lesson evaluation seem reasonable; cynicism and bitterness unthinkable and the first teaching practice scarily imminent.

I have very fond memories of my first placement, which was in a rural, village school in southern Germany, so I thought I would reproduce a short diary extract for your (I hope!) amusement.

Monday
Today sees the start of my teaching practice at a village primary school in southern Germany.  I will be teaching the children English as a foreign language for the next month.  I introduce myself to the head using my first name.  He then presents me to his colleagues and I smile as 12 teachers say in perfect English: “Welcome Mr Luke”.  I notice that class sizes are somewhat smaller in Germany; the largest in this school has 23 pupils.  This seems to have a positive impact on behavioural expectations as it is not unusual for a teacher to arrive at the classroom to find the whole class sitting down and working quietly.

Tuesday
I fall off my bicycle on the way to school and am forced to spend the day teaching whilst looking as if I had slept rough.  When I arrive the staff are debating whether the introduction of an inspection framework will improve teaching in this part of Germany.  One colleague went white when I told her that English schools can be inspected with only two days’ notice.  It turns out that many of the recent reforms were influenced by ideas already implemented in England and she is worried that this aspect might be imported.

Wednesday
I observe an ICT lesson for the year five equivalent class today.  The class teacher told me that ICT is officially classed as integrated into other subject delivery so German primary schools are lucky to have more than one or two computers.  In this session the children have cardboard keyboards as they pretend to compose emails.  After school I was taken hostage by mentor and we travelled to her house.  She refused to let me go until I had eaten my own bodyweight in cake and told her everything I could about the English school system, much of which seemed bonkers when discussed with someone who has no real targets, performance management, national curriculum or inspection regime.

Thursday
There has been a significant drop in temperature and it is –10°C with snow and freezing fog; as opposed to the balmy +18° sunshine-filled day that greeted us only five days ago.  I am finding it easy to engage the children in spite of, or perhaps because of, the language barrier.  I find that a not-exactly-sparing use of comic mime can carry me a long way towards making them understand new vocabulary!

Friday
Slightly disconcertingly, I awoke from a dream in which I had forgotten how to speak English.  I suspect that the cold weather and early mornings are doing something to my subconscious but my suspicions turned to conviction when I found myself singing nursery rhymes in German whilst cycling to school – turn left when you can see Switzerland and right when you can see Austria.  I will miss this place.

Link: teachinglinks@googlemail.com

First days back at school...

There's a fun article by Cassandra Jardine in the Telegraph this week about the first days back at school. Here's a few quotes from the article that I think ring true with primary teachers:

"..while some are busy making sure they have the latest fashion footwear for the occasion, others are clearly dreading the return to the classroom. "

"The worst symptoms are to be found in those starting a new school. That, I know from experience, can take months of adjustment."

"By half-term, the nerve-strain of too much novelty will have led to regular headaches and even requests for days off school. "

"Sharing a playground with six-foot teenagers, finding their way around, making new friends and remembering the right books and equipment threw all of my children, even the confident ones. "

"And each year, at just this time, I promise myself we will get into the habit of early bedtimes and early rising a week before term kicks off, so that there isn't a panic at the last minute.

What's funny to me is that although this article is written about children starting school somehow it just seems to ring true with teachers starting as well!

Some fun

I've come across an excellent blog with visual illusions and pictures that are just begging to be discussed in school with children. Some of them would make excellent examples for discussion in P4C. Others are just there because they are. For instance have a look at this paper artwork made out of everyday coloured paper! Maybe that's something to do for a Christmas card this year! :)

Note that not everything on this site is suitable for children.

Link: http://algebraoflife.blogspot.com/