Category Archives: Featured

Posts for the featured bar at the top right of the blog.

#LWF11 Dawn Hallybone – Games Based Learning in Primary

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Disclaimer: I would consider Dawn a friend, thanks to many interactions via Twitter & Teachmeets etc even though we’ve only met a handful of times..  I won’t go into great detail about the work she has done as her blog has details of it all. LWF Bio.

Dawn discussed using Nintendo DS & Wii with the pupils are so engaged in their learning that Dawn doesn’t really need to be greatly involved for large parts of the lessons.  Writing and learning underpins the gaming experience.

Sharing via Twitter and Teachmeet have been great inspirations for Dawn.  Redbridge game network has allowed them to share their knowledge and their resources.

They have developed great cross-currciular learning projects, with games based learning as a small inspirational part of it.  Kids enjoy their ‘secret learning’

Dawn’s school and the Redbridge network have began to look at evidence.  There are clear signs that Maths & English are improving, very clear signs that engagement, attendance and punctuality are improved considerably.

Again this is an example of fantastic innovation in Primary classrooms, this innovation needs to spread into the Secondary classroom.  How can we do this?  Costs are higher and timetables don’t make things easy.  I think we need strong leaders who can remove these traditional constraints.  And again, as Dawn said it;s about sharing the good practice that has gone one already.  Borrowing the great work that has happened via the Consolarium in Scotland that Derek Robertson spoke about earlier.  One school in the research group is Secondary.

Inspirational as ever – well done Dawn!

School Rewards 2.0?

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All schools I have been to have a rewards system in place, the yin, to the sanctions system’s yang. I think it’s about time school rewards were dragged into the 21st Century, and I have a few thoughts…

Yin & Yang

Yin & Yang

My current school is doing what most schools do every few years and discussing how we deal with behaviour: good and bad. The focus, as usual, has been mainly on the bad and associated sanctions rather than the good and their rewards. We currently use Capita’s SIMS as our information management system, within this is a behaviour module. Through this we can assign good and bad points to students. We call the good points ‘merits’. At present these count for little, a certificate at the end of the year if the pupils are lucky. Although not valued by many pupils, many will still strive to earn these merits, despite the fact they rarely even see the total they have earned. This has always puzzled me, I guess these merits also represent my approval of pupils, and this in itself is enough for some pupils. But still, I felt I was missing something. Continue reading →

Thanks to my network

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Interview reflection: Part 1:

I was successful in my interview for the post of Director of E-Learning at Stretford High School, I’m delighted and thoroughly looking forward to starting in September.

The day obviously went well, my lesson was praised as being good with many outstanding features, I’ll reflect upon that in Part 2 of this mini-series of posts. Further to this my presentation was praised as being excellent and the interview went well despite my apparent nerves.

I must thank everyone who helped me directly and indirectly to get to this point. I turned to my Twitter network on numerous occasions whilst researching and writing for my application form and whilst putting together my presentation. I must thank everyone who offered advice or opinion, it was all invaluable.

Twitter Mosaic: Make Art from Twitter (and then buy it!)

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