My S1 Modern Studies class have now started their campaigns for the class mock election. We have started a blog where the pupils will be writing about the process. So far each party have added their manifestos to the blog. Please visit the blog and leave comments for the candidates. You can visit it here.

This week my second year classes have been learning about Christopher Columbus. We started by watching an epoisode of the Horrible Histories series about Columbus’ first voyage. I really like the Horrible Histories series as it explains some of the main events in History in a format which pupils find easy to understand, although some of the anachronisms do have to be explained. The pupils then completed their own story boards about the famous voyage to Sansalvador. This is a taks I use to discuss various historical events as I think the pupils enjoy this task as it allows them the freedom to use their imagination in the drawings but at the same time is structured in that they are aware of the story that needs to be told. I also end up with some fantastic cartoon strips to brighten up the walls of my classroom!

Part of the S1 Modern Studies course at Knox is to allow the pupils to plan and take part in their own mock election. They plan everything from manifestos to rosettes and party political broadcasts. I was talking to the pupils about this and I said that we could video the broadcasts and watch them back as a class. One pupil then pointed out that maybe we could do it as a podcast instead of a video. While this seems like a very good idea, I have absolutely no experience of podcasting and don’t know where to start or what equipment I would need. Does anyone have any tips for me? Knox Academy is planning to hold a Teachmeet on Podcasting at the end of February but the pupils may be ready to record their broadcast before this.

We were joined by Sue again today to help us pull together the project that we have been working on all week. Sue had set out a structure that could be applied to our individual sections. This means that the final project has a more consistant approach throughout. We spent the whole morning editing and bringing together all the Teacher notes and the Pupil notes and by 12.30 we had our final project. The web designer now has the task of turning our thoughts into an interactive, user friendly, online resource to be used in schools across the country.

We were then treated to another fantastic lunch with the most wonderful sandwiches I have ever seen! We were joined by the whole JMA team who seemed really interested in, and excited about, what we had been doing during the week.

This afternoon Emma had organised three curators from other departments to come to talk to us about the work that they do in the Library. They had been asked to bring along their favourite three items from the collections that they work with. Our first guest was Dr Marina Castrillo who is the Manuscripts Curator. Maria brought along a selection of manuscripts including a diary of a Scottish emmigrant to Canada. Dr Brian Hillyard who is the Rare Books Collection Manager brought along three rare books including one of the first books for the blind ever published. Finally we were shown a selection of graphic novels from John Birch the Assisstant Purchase Curator. This started an interesting discussion about using books, traditionally written off as mere comics, to engage the most reluctant of readers. I was particuarly interested in the Maus books which raises issues about the Holocaust.

I have had a fantastic week at the National Library of Scotland. I have been given the opportunity to work with a wonderful collection of manuscripts and learned a great deal about the workings of the Library. I have developed skills that I can use in the classroom, particularly in developing resources directly related to the Curriculum for Excellence.

I would like to thank everyone at the Library, particulalry the JMA team for making us feel so welcome and Careers Scotland for organising the placement. I also appreciate the support I have received from Knox Academy and East Lothian Council for allowing me to take this once in a lifetime opportunity. Finally, I want to say a massive thanks to the four people that I have spent a great deal of time working with this week, my colleagues Donald and Martine, our consultant Sue, and of course Emma who has supported us throughout the project.

If anyone reading this is thinking about applying for a EEBL Teacher Placement, particularly within the National Library of Scotland, I would encourage you to go for it. It really is a once in a life time chance to do something different which builds on skills required in the classroom.

We started the morning by planning an outline of the resource that we will be desgning. The obvious place to start seemed to be with taking a note of our key aims for the unit of work.

The aims we felt the unit will cover are:

• Pupils will gain  knowledge and an understaning of their local history and environment.
• The resource will provide stimuli for reading, writing, listening and talking.
• The task will promote individual research skills.
• Pupils will gain experience in differentiating between fact and opinion.
• The unit will promote cross-curricular links.
• The unit will take into account the key capacities and principles of the Curriculum for Excellence.

We then agreed that the title of our project will be ‘Tae see Oorsel’s…’ The final task will be a discursive piece of writing which of course relates directly to to the English curriculum. However, as a History teacher I am keen to promote a cross curricular theme and therefore the ideas that we have come up with will allow teachers in a variety of subject areas to use the resource. For example, in History, Geography, Modern Studies, RME, ICT, Art, Home Economics, Business Education, Maths and Modern Languages, to name a few!

We then started thinking about the layout of the resource and how it would look on the NLS website.

The remainder of the day was spent looking closely at some of the manuscripts held within the John Murray Archive to pick out sections that we want to use in the resource.

 Again it was another very productive day as we now have an outline of the resource and have done some research to find key extracts. Tomorrow promises to be another exciting and challenging day.

 This week my Second Year classes have been studying the Triangle of Trade as part of our Slavery and Racism unit. Their task this week was to produce a TV advert to highlight the treatment of the African people during the Middle Passage, when they were taken across the Atlantic on a tortures and dangerous voyage lasting nearly 3 months. I gave them examples of adverts such as those for Oxfam and the RSPCA etc. They were told that they must have a presenter and the rest of the group should act out the horrendous conditions faced by those poor people stipped of their freedom. We recorded the adverts and we watched them back as a class. The adverts that the pupils made were of a very high standard as they had paid attention to details such as the force feeding of the slaves, breaking their teeth to ensure that they got the food that was meant to keep them alive. In addition, the adverts included the cramped conditions and the harsh punishments faced by the frightened slaves.

Pupils regularly ask me random questions about a specific period in time. Perhaps they have seen something about Ancient Egypt on TV or have been thinking about the Native North Americans etc. While I feel confident in most aspects of History, very often, unless it is an area of the curriculum, my answer has to be, “that is an interesting question, I do not know the answer but I will try and find out”. The pupil almost always answers me with, “You are a History Teacher, you should know the answer”. To which I reply “Am I supposed to know everything that has ever happened in the world, ever?” 

While I do have a degree in History, and this is following on from a post that Luke Francis has recently posted, by the time you get to University you become specialised in certain areas. This is particularly so in History. Yes I covered some European Political History at University, along with some Early Modern British History and a fair amount of Scottish History, but by the time I was completing my Honours year I was only studying two areas of History - The Early Stewart Kings, which was my special subject and the Viking way of life in Scotland and Iceland, my dissertation topic. Therefore, there are many areas of History that, while fascinating though they are, I have never studied.

I would be interested to find out if this happens to teachers of other subjects. I suspect that it will happen less so to teachers of subjects that have difinitive answers, say Maths for example. History however, along with other Social Subjects, are such that there are many answers to a given question, so long as the answer is fully backed up with evidence. Indeed, History as a subject is so vast that surely it is impossible to expect any one person to ‘know it all’.

Integration is a hotly debated topic at the moment within the Social Subjects world. Many schools have already opted for an integrated Social Subjects course in S1 and S2. There is nothing new in the idea of course. In many schools the Science department, for example, already offer integrated courses and have done successfully for many years. Nonetheless, the idea of integrated Social Subjects courses stir up mixed feelings amongst all staff involved.

In weighing up the value of such a course there are a number of things to consider. Firstly, will one teacher teach the discreet subject areas separately or will the different subjects be merged into a larger unit examined from each angle?

Of course there are pros and cons to be added to the discussion. Taking the benefits first:

• Pupils have less teachers to become familiar with, making an easier transition from Primary School.

• Pupils have a better understanding of how knowledge and skills can be transferrable.

• Pupils gain a wider understanding of the topics studied.

• Teachers become much more familiar with the pupils as they will have the same class for longer.

On the flip side:

• Dilution of discreet subjects and skills.

• Non subject specialists teaching unfamiliar material.

• Lose of teacher passion for the topics.

• Pupils who don’t like a specific teacher will be with them for a longer.

• Pupils must make a choice at the end of S2 - will they have sufficent knowledge of the discreet subjects to do this?

As in most things in life, there are arguments for and against integration and it is down to individual departments to weigh up these arguments.

Since one of the aims of this blog is to give an insight into the life of a Teacher, I thought for today’s post I would give an account of my day. There was nothing special about today at all!

My day always starts with registration, an S6 class, all 31 of them! Today they were handing in forms for University applications. In addition, the house captains were reporting back to the class after a school council meeting. All this in the space of 6 minutes!

My first class was my mixed ability S3 Standard Grade class. They were working on preparing a guide book explaining all the weapons and new forms of technology used during the First World War. This task allowed them the freedom to choose which weapons were to be included in the booklet and design the layout themselves. The pupils like this project as they can concentrate on particular areas that interest them. While this was going on, I was giving back their ‘Causes of War’ tests and discussing their targets for the coming months with each pupil individually. The pupils displayed a very mature attitude when setting themselves targets as they were not only challenging but also realistic for each pupil.

The next class was a Second Year class. Yesterday this class was split into two groups and set the task of producing a TV news report about one of the dangers of modern day exploration. One group was concentrating on the black hole while the other group was looking at the bermuda triangle. Today they were finished their scripts and then we recorded the news broadcasts. This allowed the pupils to work together in groups and use the video camera. In addition, they also had compete control of their own reports. At the end of the lesson we watched the videos and, while they were highly entertaining, the class had managed to show the dangers faced by todays explorers.

During my non-contact period I prepared for my afternoon lessons, did some photocopying, deposited money that I had received from pupils for their Activities Week trip and marked some Standard Grade tests.

My S4 Standard Grade classes are looking at the Women’s Suffrage Movement.  The classes split themselves into a boys group and a girls group and I gave the groups some time to put together an argument and then we debated the issue  ‘Women should get the vote’. The groups took their arguments very seriously with some very heated debating going on. However, no matter which side they were on, all the pupils left with an understanding of the differing opinions about the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

At lunchtime, I held my weekly ’drop in’ session for my certificate classes where they can come and ask for help with anypart of the course or indeed with homework tasks.

The Higher class are looking at the Berlin Wall and today we were examining the reasons behind the building of the wall and its consequences. To show the more human side of the closure of the border, we watched a video which clearly outlined the devastiation of families being split up and the desperate attempts of the East Germans to cross the border.

Teaching is certainly one profession where it is impossible to be bored, no two days are the same and there are so many things going on. As I said this was a ‘normal’ day!

Today my S2 class were studying the Moon Landings as part of their Discovery and Exploration unit. We watched a video which outlined the arguments that the Moon Landings were faked by the US Government in a bid to beat the Soviet Union during the Space Race. In the film, all the famous conspiracy theories including, why the flag moved in an apparant wind, why shadows appeared from different angles and the famous C rock were examined and then tested on a film set.

Before starting the video I asked the class to vote on whether they thought the historic moon landings were real or staged. A huge majority of the class said that they thought it was fake. However, upon asking the class’s opinion after they had watched the video, the reaction was much more mixed. This progressed into a debate amongst the members of the class and very soon the class became a group of young historians, weighing up the presented evidence to form a  balanced, well thought out and well expressed conclusion.

The pupils of course did not realise that they had turned into skilled historians as they thought that they were simply discussing their own opinions. However, this proves that the transferrable skills that are developed through the study of History can be used in everyday life, even if the pupils don’t realise it!