Don Ledingham’s Learning Log

I had a fascinating discussion with some headteachers recently about the time they spend on their jobs, the difficulty of their jobs and challenge that such time pressures and other demands present.
I know I’m presenting a significant challenge by asking headteachers to spend up to two days a week focusing upon the teaching process by observing [...]

  
I was invited to attend the North Berwick High School Slow Food lunch on Thursday. What an exceptional event - over 700 pupils fed a very high quality meal in two sittings.
Congratulations to all involved   Jane Hamilton in particular - thanks to all who sponsored the event.

Difficult to beat when your Dad turns up at Macmerry Primary school with one of the biggest combine harvesters in the UK!
 

I was in Macmerry Primary School this morning observing a P1/2 class and a P3/4 class.
I watched active learning  in action when I observed the infant class work in three groups on reading and writing. I was really impressed by the ability of the pupils to work independently with real quality, whilst the teacher worked with another group. [...]

We heard from Valerie Irving, one of our Quality Improvement officers, this afternoon who had visited Oslo, Norway before the summer.

Two of the key principles which guide the education system are:
“The right for every student to have teaching adapted to his/her abilities within the class framework”
“The mode of teaching must not only be adapted to subject [...]

We are holding our Curriculum Architecture Conference on Tuesday 1st October.
Nearly 100 people will be in attendance including headteachers, teachers, pupils, elected members, employers, parents, unions, and reps for further and higher education.
The main part of the day will be given over to discussing the attached document. Mixed groups of ten will work their way [...]

I had a great visit this week to King’s Meadow Primary School in Haddington. At the beginning of my visit I had a chat with Headteacher Donald McGillivray about boy’s writing. Donald has done a fascinating analysis of boys’ attainment across the school and the statistics show that boys’ writing is of a much lower standard than [...]

There are three points of focus that I’m taking during my school visit programme:

Self-evaluation;
Distributive Leadership; and
Learning tasks.

I’m going out to Kingsmeadow Primary School tomorrow. HT Donald McGillivray sent me a paper which outlines how they know their school and how leadership is distributed right across the school.
It’s really helpful to get this kind of detail.
Self Evaluation [...]

Here’s a link to some of the poems I’ve written over the last ten years.
These assorted poems were held on another website which is now defunct. I suppose they have some relevance to who I am and what’s important to me - which in turn influences how I go about my professional life.
Many of the poems [...]

Following one of my recent posts about political scrutiny I was thinking about whether or not we could expose ourselves to further scrutiny.

I was further provoked in this area when listening to Professor Michael Fullan during yesterday’s Scottish Learning Festival  where he was talking about one of his Six Secrets of Change. Michael Fullan has had a significant [...]