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

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.

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!

    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!

“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!