Richard Wilson

 I have the pleasure to head up a Musselburgh Cluster project about money. All of the Musselburgh schools will be delivering the money outcomes from a Curriculum for Excellence at the same time and publishing the body of work for all to see at http://musselburghclustermaths.wikispaces.com/

The work will encompass all stages from Nursery to S3 at Musselburgh Grammar School. The project has a variety of purposes. We will have exemplars of planning formats, suggested lines of development for teaching staff, ways of assessing and tracking pupil work and publishing pupil work in a variety of formats. It will be very interesting to see a complete body of work across the schools that shows the progression as pupils move through nursery to secondary and how their grasp of money is developed. 

I have, however, one problem. The group are trying to find a Virtual Bank where pupils can set up bank accounts/credit cards, make purchases and keep an on-line account safely. I have had a quick search through a variety of search engines and can’t find one. Any ideas or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

I am still perstiting with my collaborative writing project and will be adding work from the pupils here at Pinkie St Peter’s. I have come across some other resources that can help provide advice and a focus for motivating and directing pupils. I have used Comic Life with success in the past and will continue with it as it really motivates pupils and adds interest to their writing tasks across a variety of genre. Please note that is it now available for Windows as well as Mac. Some other comic making free web-sites are readwritethink which is quite a safe one and very easy to use. A couple of others you may wish to use with pupils but need a good checking out are stripgenerator and stripcreator, both of these also have adult content, especially stripcreator, so use wisely. A really good writing resource is to be found at khake which gives lots of advice in communication skills. A good cut and paste piece for your school web-site can be found at the Free Dictionary which has news, word games and a free on-line dictionary. For help with a variety of things Fact Monster is a good starting point, well worth a look.

BT National Speaking and Listening Awards.

We entered the above competition and were fortunate enough to win a runner up prize of £500 for the work we have been doing in promoting the use of ICT in pupils’ work. As far as I am aware we were the only Scottish school to win! Well done us!!

Two new schools have joined our writing wiki for which I am both grateful and excited. The pupils will have new opportunities to collaborate on something that will stimulate their communication skills and excite them. Thanks to Macmerry and Carronshore for joining us. Ironically, I did my final teacher training placement at Carronshore Primary in 1976. Six weeks of hard work and fun, they were a great P7 class. I passed and this set me on my path to being a teacher, happy college days at Callendar Park in Falkirk. I will have to have a re-think on the wiki as it now includes a lot more than writing. The pupils have included animated movies, powerpoints as well as the more traditional types of “writing”. Maybe a re-name and re-launch. Also, thanks to Ollie for putting me onto slideshare. This is a great free resource that makes the pupils’ powerpoints into a slide show. Get it.

We got the go-ahead for the interview with Ann Widdecombe, this will take place next week and will be posted all over the place to get good coverage. You can view the pupils’ draft questions here.