Save our school!

Shortly before half term the local county council sent a proposal to our staff to close our school. I feel the timing was not coincidental and indeed feel that the council are doing everything in their power to try and force the closure with as little resistance as possible. Unfortunately for the council small schools are made up of an incredibly close knit community that will do anything to ensure that a high level of education in an inclusive and caring environment continues.

This post focuses on some initial ideas as part of our response to the threat of closure.


Listen to the community

The council has displayed no interest in listening to the views of the community, the staff or pupils regarding whether their decision is the correct one. A questionnaire that was not easily accessible until we as a school sent out a clear link has been created by the council however how they are going to use the data collected from this is questionable. The council met with parents on an individual basis which put undue pressure on parents and undoubtedly led to some views not being heard. As a school we have been part of an open dialogue both online and within school and are listening to everyone's views and opinions as should be expected. 

Publicise our plight

It is difficult to put into words the injustice we feel in the proposal to close our school. We feel it is important to increase exposure to our cause as closing our school will lead to a gap in the provision of education in our county. Our headteacher and a classroom teacher recently went down to London to meet the prime minister as we were recently voted the highest performing school in the constituency. 

Thankfully this picture made the front page of the local paper this week as the public struggles to conceive why the council would close such a successful school. Today our school council wrote a letter to the prime minister sharing their thoughts which are both lovely to read but at the same time very sad.

Write a response that clearly states why the decision is wrong 

Research is already being carried out to ensure that our official response to the proposal from the council is clear, concise and correct unlike many aspects of the proposal itself. We are under no illusions that we are in a David vs Goliath situation but by working professionally on our official response we really do hope that the council see sense and leave our very successful school alone.

Understandably i do not wish to go into further details until after our official response. As the council are far better at political gamesmanship than ourselves. The problem is that if they win everybody loses.

Adaptability

Thursday 29th January 2015 was no ordinary day it was another day where an ability to juggle plates was very much needed! Although a certain amount of adaptability is needed in a variety of careers and situations I believe it is a crucial skill in primary school teaching especially in small schools.

8:45am - Arrive at school.
I would have preferred to be in earlier but also like to read and exercise before work and don't want to get up earlier than 6am! I noticed as i pulled in to the car park that the Year 3/4 teachers car wasn't there which reminded me that I was teaching all four year groups.

9:00am - Banging headache
For no reason I can really think of I had a splitting headache which always makes teaching children extra tricky. I thought about giving the learners a heads up but decided it would be better to give them tasks that would keep them busy and hopefully quiet!

10:30am - Meeting with football team
The day before I had heard about a football tournament in a week's time so I was keen to discuss the plan for this with the players at break time. Unfortunately having scheduled the meeting I forgot that I was on duty and so the meeting had to take place with one eye on supervising the yard.

12:00pm - Countdown
Last year i set up a catch up club at lunch time for my LA learners but more recently I had realised that it would be worthwhile to set up something similar for my HA learners. So we have started playing Countdown at lunch and while I and hopefully they value the session it is another thing to think about and more time where I am motivating and hopefully educating during my non contact time.

12:49pm - Last minute cover
Literally minutes before the children were due to return to class after lunch i was asked if I could stay teaching the juniors in the afternoon over my PPA as the Year 3/4 teacher was not well. Of course this was ok but I was due to meet my masters tutor at 1pm.

13:00pm - Masters tutor arrives
Conscious of trying to make a good impression I spoke to my masters tutor and tried to explain the situation. Thankfully he was very understanding having worked in education for many years. I managed to find an activity that a teaching assistant could lead for 20 minutes before the football coach was due to arrive.

13:20pm - Football coach arrives
While in mid flow conversation the door bell rang heralding the arrival of the football coach. I apologised to my tutor and asked if I could have 5 minutes to sort out the transition of half the class to PE and explain a quick activity for the remaining half that they could complete while i finished my conversation.

13:40pm - Snow
Having dispatched my masters tutor it was time to take the other half of the class out for hockey. Of course i didn't realise I was teaching PE so it was a case of tie off and sleeves up! A couple of drills later and the heavens opened with a downpour of snow forcing us back into the classroom.

14:20pm - The disappearing clipboard
Things calmed down for a while but then I could not see a clipboard which I was pretty sure should be on my desk. I eventually found it but the planning for the football tournament had been replaced with an angry face drawing! Annoyed that one of my class had thrown away my planning I asked who had done the drawing to a sea of blank faces. Thankfully the culprit has since owned up.

15:15pm - Sending the children home
Following the dismissal of the children I was left to get on with the pile of my marking I had created for myself.

18:10pm - Late finish
Completing my everyday after school tasks seemed to take longer (probably because I had twice as many books to mark) and this was the latest finish on a normal school day with no clubs so far in my teaching career.

That day is probably not dissimilar to one's experienced by many of my colleagues in education but hopefully shows the need to be quickly adaptable and juggle many plates. 

Early lessons learnt from teaching the infants.

With the start of 2015 comes more work in the form of teaching the infants in the afternoon. I actively seek challenges and working with a class of 2 and a half year old's to 7 year old's when I am junior trained certainly is one! In all seriousness I was conscious last year that I had a lack of experience in the foundation phase and so when the opportunity arose I was quick to volunteer to cover the class. That experience last year limited as it was set me in good stead for covering the class this term and although still learning every day I do now feel comfortable teaching in the foundation phase.

I do hear teachers in primary state that they are afraid or lack confidence teaching in the foundation phase when they are primarily junior teachers and vice-versa however I also feel that embracing the challenge of teaching lower down or further up the school can help you develop as a teacher.

I have now taught/covered lessons/coached learners from two and a half through to nineteen across all four key stages in the six and a half years I have worked in education. This has led to a wealth of experience and an ability to adapt to learners needs that is vital throughout education. I am also sure that I made the right choice a few years ago changing my focus from secondary to primary education.

Teaching in the foundation phase is great fun and I feel I am making a real difference to learners education something that I didn’t feel i was doing as much when working in secondary. It is lovely to work full time and be able to spend some time teaching every learner in the school.

Although I have only been teaching in the foundation phase a couple of weeks I feel I have already learnt a few lessons that impact upon my practice.

1  Lesson 1 - Keeping learner’s attention in the foundation phase is hard!

In the staff room yesterday a colleague told me that you often feel the learners in the foundation phase are about to switch off and stop concentrating when you are talking to them. This is certainly true and therefore it is important to have strategies to get them engaged, keep them engaged and to be concise and easy to understand when they are engaged.  One fun and effective stratergy I picked up working in a SEN resource was bad sitting. When the teacher calls bad sitting learners are required to sit in a variety of silly ways until the teacher calls good sitting they are then required to sit in the correct manner. The learners in the foundation phase I have been working with really took to this and although some still need prompting to listen it has helped with their attention.

    

    Lesson 2 - Learners in the foundation phase tell it like it is!

Although the learners I teach in KS2 will show signs of disengagement I have found that learners in the foundation phase have no problem telling me that what they are doing is boring or “not fun”. This honest feedback is useful though as it means you can adapt your lessons to try to make them more engaging sometimes on the spot. Thankfully this honesty is counterbalanced by a great desire to please and learner in the foundation phase seem to be great at paying compliments (a boy in year 2 said thank you to me for teaching him!) which is good for morale!

    

    Lesson 3 - Photo’s are important for showing what work learners have done.

We have recently bought a new floor book for the foundation phase and it is quickly becoming a useful resource in collecting evidence of learning especially practical activities. I am keen on photo collage’s something I saw in a foundation phase moderation meeting while on training practice as an effective and interesting way of displaying practical work. I do however feel that the floor book requires greater involvement from the learner, perhaps words and pictures they associate with the learning along with clearly displayed learning objectives.

I am thoroughly enjoying teaching in the foundation phase and I hope that I can spend plenty of time teaching in that phase in the future.  



Lessons learnt in 2014, aspirations for 2015



2014 has come to an end and 2015 begins so I thought it worth reflecting on the lessons learnt in 2014 and how I can use what I have learnt to improve my practice in 2015.

Lesson 1 - Communicate

As I develop as an educational practitioner I am increasingly aware of the need for good communication both up and down the command line. The more people aware of the direction you wish to head and the more aware you are of the direction that others wish to head the more chance of getting to the planned destination successfully. Like most young teachers I am filled with ambition and have joined the teaching profession to attempt to make a real positive difference to children's lives. I am full of ideas of how we can maximize learning opportunities for the children but now better understand that these ideas come to fruition much easier if everyone is aware of what the ideas are and the benefits to them.

Christmas Market an idea that came to fruition!

Lesson 2 - Routine

Having a good routine for non-contact time before and after school is imperative for keeping on top of planning, preparation and assessment. Although there are incidents where it may be impossible to keep your routine returning back to it as soon as possible helps keep you on top of the workload. The best routine I have had is arriving half an hour before school and spending 15 minutes talking to staff, 15 minutes preparing the classroom. After school I have all the books open ready to be marked, write down a quick evaluation (what went well? what could we improve?), tidy the classroom and if possible plan the following weeks lessons at least in rough. When I am able to keep that routine I feel on top of the workload and the learners can see and discuss their feedback in the next lesson. 

Lesson 3 - Collaborate

This goes back towards communication however collaboration is a good way of making the most of resources and experience from other educational professionals. One of the best and certainly most exciting learning experiences that the learners in my class had last year was when @davidleighevans came in to do some STEM work.

STEM work, creative designs using gears and levers.

I am also a newly converted fan of online forums on twitter such as @edchat and @primaryrocks. Although initially apprehensive about joining in a chat on twitter especially after 6pm I have found it to be a good community to share ideas while lounging on the sofa with a cup of coffee, sometimes even with the football on! 

Hosting a Christmas market in your classroom

In my last post I discussed the European Christmas Skype conversations that my class had taken part in and this work fed into a week creating a European Christmas market in our classroom.

Learners were inspired by trying to be the most successful stall with two small prizes available for the best looking stall and the most money made at market. The work that nearly all of the learners put in was fantastic thinking about persuasive language, product placement and the literacy and numeracy skills that underpin enterprise work.

There were stressful times where it felt as though we wouldn't get everything finished however the learners were helped by wonderful support staff who also really bought into the idea and helped learners to make craft, cook cakes and decorate their stalls.

Many parents commented on the success of the market from what they could see on the actual day and when the money was counted by the learners the found they had made £131.10 profit an amazing achievement!

The market was a success and it worked in our school environment with our learners however i do feel aspects would not be transferable to other educational environments. Learners were given a lot of freedom and some learners could have abused this if it was not for the group leaders and support staff i had available.

I would however encourage other staff in education to think about hosting a Christmas Market as the enjoyment and excitement it generated in the learners which was channeled into their work was immense.  

The use of Skype in the classroom at Christmas

One of my focuses this year has been on helping the learners to experience a variety of cultures and early on in this academic year I spoke to my headteacher about a plan for a European Christmas Market.

Using both the etwinning website and Skype in the Classroom I managed to find 6 schools interested in Skyping with my class to talk about Christmas. The idea being to allow learners to research items for their Christmas market by talking to children from that country. 

The Skype conversations have been fantastic experiences especially singing with other schools from around Europe. However it did take a lot of work to organise and hopefully I can re use the links i have forged in this project in future projects. 

I did find that my learners were not really able to use the schools as a form of research in unstructured conversation due to the language barrier. If i was to plan the conversations again I would perhaps focus more on more of a show and tell rather than just a tell. Seeing items and pictures brought in and completed by learners throughout Europe was interesting and avoided difficulties in translation.

How should remembrance be taught in primary school?

The underlying focus of this week has undoubtably been on Remembrance but it is a topic that is difficult to deliver to primary school children.

Firstly it can be over glamorized with learners thinking that war is “cool” and not thinking about the emotional costs involved and the lasting impact that war has.

Secondly it can become overly depressive with learners getting upset remembering loved ones they have lost.

Therefore I have tried to deliver the topic in a balanced manner focusing on the costs of war, giving thanks and an understanding that we need to think about both sides in any conflict.

This week the lessons I delivered focussed upon the importance of remembrance and learners listened well to my own thoughts and were happy to share there's. I believe the learners give extra weight to my thoughts in this area due to my involvement with the army reserve.

On Tuesday afternoon learners practiced their handwriting by copying out Ode to Remembrance however only some of the learners were able to understand the words and the message they conveyed.

One thing that the learners did do which worked well and which I will do again was to record a short sentence from the learners on their thoughts or remembrance. This video was very effective and although learners found the technical issues amusing they showed some great maturity in their thoughts.