Richard Wilson

two girls reading

We had an in-service event in the Musselburgh Cluster on Friday the 10th of September. The focus for discussion at our school (Pinkie St Peter’s) was reading at the second level in the curriculum for excellence. The national attainment figures have more or less flat lined over the past few years and we wanted to see what we could do to try to improve the lot of the pupils in our care. Surely if we define ourselves as teachers then teaching  reading must be the greatest gift we can bestow  to our young people. Sadly, there are still some pupils for whom reading is at best a chore. If we can tackle this group and make reading a relevant activity using any stategy we can we could raise attainment for them at a stroke. The attached papers are the responses to a set of questions to stimulate discussion and try to formulate strategies to make reading meaningful for all. Have a read and comment if you would.

Good Practice in literacy Friday the 10th Sept 2010

A teaching colleague recently sent me this list of 11 things Bill Gates reputedly said in an address to High School kids in America. I say reputedly as I cannot verify that it is actually his. Nevertheless, you may find some resonance here and it is at least an amusing read.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. 

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. 

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. 

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. 

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them. 

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some school’s, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. 

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. 

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

bookbuddies

As part of this year’s development-plan-09-10 we are looking at many aspects of financial education. Under the current financial climate it seems prudent to provide the pupils with some fiscal guidance. Sometimes though our youngsters push their luck a wee bit. My own son, Lewis, who is 8 and has discovered the wonders of surfing the net has asked if he can get a preloaded credit card! These cards are used the same way as all others but you can’t get yourself into debt with them as they are only worth what you put in. I now use mine for all on-line transactions as the risk of someone getting my details carries much less risk. Check out if they are for you at this site. Lewis has discovered a site that sells dust cap covers for his bike, I never knew that there were so many designs. His money really burns a hole in his pocket.

In school we are putting together a set of resources for use by staff and pupils. There are loads of free resources to be had at the Personal Finance Education Group web site. The LTS web site also provides very good resources.

Although I have an interest in eBooks I have never got round to writing one, until now. I stumbled upon a really good free eBook writer called myebook that makes it easy peasy……. and it’s free. You can enter text, pictures, video or audio directly or if you have a pdf file you can drag and drop it and the book is made automatically. The myebook team hope to have the same drag and drop facility for word documents available in the next few weeks. This means all my historical policies, newsletters etc can be made to look more professional when displayed on line. No more scrolling down pages as the myebook allows you to turn pages like a real book. It has a search facility and can be fully customised. If you can type you can write your own eBook and publish it for the world or a selected group to see. You can see an example of a draft communication policy I made yesterday. OK, it’s my very first attempt but I’m sure you can see the possibilities for publishing school and pupil work in a very pleasing and good looking way. Try it whilst it’s free!

I’ve been dabbling in ebooks for a wee while now and am starting to get excited about the uses and possibilities they are beginning to present to us in education now. Things have moved on very quickly and loads of free resources can be had that can be read on a computer or one of many handheld devices such as the sony ebook reader or beebook. Over 22000 free e books can be downloaded from the Gutenburg Project alone, they even have their books in mp3 format so you can listen at the same time on your mp3 player or iPod. Whole novels are also free to use such as the Australian author DC Green, his children’s novels are being released free on pdf, check it out and download a freebie to use in school. I am passionate about trying to motivate reluctant readers and will use any which way I can to get them to read print. Comics can be a good way in and the good news is that the world of ecomics is starting to take off big style. Your boys hate reading but love Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Get the free all colour comics and take a risk at setting them as reading material. What could possibly go wrong! Many of the classic comics are now available as free downloads, you may have to check some of them out as they may have readership levels of 18 or so, but browse here for hundreds of free comics to use in school. Enjoy!

Today I am using Cyber Cafe to teach a P6 class more about internet security. We will be looking at how to keep ourselves safe from anyone who has malintent in anyway. I want to encourage the pupils to use the internet without fear and without identifying themselves by givng away too much information. Earlier I tried to see if there were any good sites where the pupils could build themselves a suitable avatar to use when posting. I found one called doppelme which seems safe and I include my avatar for your amusement.


I was wondering if anyone has used avatars for pupils in school instead of using either their real image or none at all. Not using any seems a bit boring and as long as the pupils are not identified it adds a bit when you read their work or see their efforts on-line. After attending a course by Ollie Bray on internet safety I have become much more mindful but want to temper it with the pupils having the ability ,through the use of an avatar, to personalise their presentations. I supppose that if they choose a (suitable!) psuedonym to fit their avatar that should be OK. Or, has Ollie made me paranoid and just use pictures instead?

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It is always a chore to get my son Lewis to do his homework, especially repetative things like times tables and spelling. I’m always on the look out for things that excite him, take the pressure off me as a grouch and let us both enjoy homework with pleasure. I was pointed in the direction of tutpup by one of my colleagues, Dale Armatage, who, like me has a young family. This resource is for addition, subtraction,multiplication, division, algebra and spelling. It reminds me of World Maths Day as pupils play against one another to answer questions against the clock. It’s great on the interactive whiteboard, just watch them go! Another couple of sites are A Maths Dictionary For Kids and Maths Whack ‘Em Booster, both highly interactive and fun. The maths dictionary is great and I know I’ve mentioned it before but I rate the stuff done by Jenny Eather very highly. Her writing for fun is a teacher’s dream resource to aid writing in class. Her other site, Rainforest Maths has had to be taken off line as it was being ripped off by commercial developers. That has always been a concern, all of the sites above are free to use and hats off to the developers altruism. Merchant bankers and the so called money men could learn a wee lesson here about helping others before helping yourself. If you use these sites please use the feedback to let the developers know how much you appreciate their efforts. Better still get your kids to do it……

    Duncansby Head near John O’Groats                        

 I’ve just spent the weekend going round Mid and North Wales supporting my son Johnny and his friend Steven who are cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats, (over 600 miles). My wife and I set up camp for them and carried their luggage to allow them some respite in their efforts. In the three days we were able to help they managed 82 miles, 79 miles and a huge 92 miles on the Sunday before ending up in a camp site near Clitheroe. We managed to get them a site with a bar, swimming pool and jacuzzi to help rest their weary bones. It was really uplifting to see the support they got from complete strangers. In one pub someone put a hat round and the locals donated £35.00 from their beer money to help their venture. (Sick Kids in Edinburgh) I know that today they are headed for Wanlockhead from Carlisle. A fair old slog. I will be setting out on Saturday with two of my other sons to lend support and boost morale by taking all of their luggage for the last push from Carbisdale to John O’Groats. I hope I can instil a sense of adventure and challenge into my three youngest boys so they can get out and about and explore this fine country of ours. They chose a new tent this year and we went off to our annual fishing trip to Glencoe. A tent that I can now stand up in, a luxury. This was the first experience for Harris, his older brother is an old hand now. I loved the excitement Harris had catching crabs and the wild excitement catching his first real fish. He won the title of Kingfisher which he retains until the next time. All fish and crabs were returned unharmed but confused. The exception being the fine mackerel that Lewis fought with, it was barbequed and washed down with a fine Wychwood ale by me! By the way, the campsite we use at Invercoe has the midge eaters fitted all around the site. What a difference, you can actually sit outside without being eaten alive. Bliss. They empty the dead midges into a large glass tube at reception every day, some 7 million of them so far this season. No sympathy from me for these little blighters. I hope to get them up there again before Autumn kicks in properly, we might even get two dry days strung together!

I found and interesting quote that made me think again about the purpose of schools. We are so wrapped up in so many initiatives and the sheer pressure of ‘managing’ a school that sometimes we lose sight of what is really important. The following quote from Anthony Seldon sums it up.

“This is about helping children become themselves. What is a school if it isn’t helping people find what they want to do? I don’t just mean careers. I mean teaching how to sing, dance, paint, act, write poetry, play tennis, play the guitar. We’d be a better, more harmonious society if people had these interests developed when they were young. But they don’t. That’s a cause of depression. And the things I’m talking about: children need them here [in school], but the more deprived the background, the less the infrastructure at home, the greater the need. If schools aren’t going to do these things, who is?” (Anthony Seldon,)

If we get the Curriculum for Excellence right we might just help achieve the above. Even if you don’t agree with Seldon’s politics his site is worth a look. Anyone who has enough brass neck to introduce happiness classes to 14-16 year olds has to be interesting!