My 2008

It's been a really busy year both in my personal life and in work.

My own personal highlights of 2008 are:

• Celebrating our engagement and making arrangements for our wedding in April 2009.
• The birth of our beautiful niece, Emily.
• The birth of my beautiful goddaughter, Florence.
• Being asked to be Florence's godfather.
• Being Best Man for my best friend's wedding in June.
• Being Groomsman for my brother at his wedding in August.
• Attending two stag dos, one at Stockholm and one in Prague.
• Surviving a really busy year in school. The summer and autumn terms were particularly stressful - but I've done it!
• Arranging the helicopter visit to school.
• Surviving the credit crunch (so far!) It's not been an easy year financially as Lisa was not working for six months and we have a wedding to save for!
• Discovering Twitter, Toodledo, Delicious and Zamzar - brilliant tools that I don't know how I survived without!

This blog has been viewed over 16,000 times in 2008 (according to Bravenet) and Monday is the busiest day for hits.

The best tunes of the year are:

1. The Killers - Humann
2. Estelle & Kanye West - American Boy
3. Duffy - Mercy
4. Kid Rock - All Summer Long
5. The Outsiderz & Amanda Wilson - Keep This Fire Burning
6. Taio Cruz - I Can Be
7. Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
8. The Ting Tings - Shut Up And Let Me Go
9. Nickelback - Rockstar
10. Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal & Chrome - Dance Wiv Me
11. Alphabeat - Fascination
12. Gabriella Cilmi - Sweet About Me
13. The Script - The Man Who Can't Be Moved
14. The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
15. Madcon - Beggin'
16. Keane - Spiralling
17. The Potbelleez - Don't Hold Back
18. Razorlight - Wire To Wire
19. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
20. Kings Of Leon - Sex On Fire

Top Films of the Year:

• Forgetting Sarah Marshall
• The Dark Knight
• Quantum Of Solace

Top TV Programmes of the Year:

• Gavin & Stacey
• Summer Heights High
• Lost

Plans for 2009:

• Have a wedding that Lisa, myself and everyone enjoys
• Get fit
• Get a more powerful computer
• Get a better work-life balance
• End 2009 in a better financial position than it begins.

I hope you have had a successful 2008 and I wish you a wonderful 2009. May the best of 2008 be the worst of 2009!

Getting Things Done by David Allen - a review

I have enjoyed reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. It is full of really practical advice for getting things done at work and at home.Its subtitle, 'How to achieve stress-free productivity' suggests the book will tell you how to get things done without worrying and getting stressed, and I really think if I followed the advice right down to the last letter I would achieve the goal of stress-free productivity. However, I get the feeling that the book is not really aimed at teachers. As a result, it doesn't really explain how to get things done in a stress-free way in between teaching a class.

I'd love to see a version of this book, or similar, aimed directly at teachers.

I have learned a lot, however. I need to plan my projects more carefully and make my to do list more effective by using subtasks (time needed to play with Toodledo here). I regularly go to bed thinking about things that need to be done, so I need to create better collection methods to store all of my ideas and tasks so that they don't buzz around in my head. I also need to realise that not everything needs to be done right now.

15000 teachers call in sick each day

The Daily Mail reports that teachers are calling in sick at the rate of 15,000 a day. Almost three million working days were lost last year, up from 2.5million in 1999. Some 311,000 teachers took at least one day off.

Tories called the official figures 'very worrying', linking them with mounting bureaucracy and disruptive classroom behaviour.

The Government's school workforce statistics, which cover full and part-time teachers and classroom assistants, show the average number of sick days has risen from 5.1 a head in 1999 to 5.4 in 2007. The overall number of days lost was 2.9million. This equates to almost 15,000 teachers off sick on each school day. The total of 311,770 who took sickness absence is well over half the number working in English schools.

The rising levels of sick leave mean more pupils have to be taught by unfamiliar supply teachers who may not be specialists in the subjects they are teaching.

NUT acting general secretary Christine Blower said: 'Given the enormous pressures teachers are under, it is remarkable they have so little sick leave. The vast majority of teachers, sometimes unwisely, go into school, even though they may be ill, because of their commitment to the children. Unfortunately, too much stress is endemic to the job and it is the responsibility of not only the Government but the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats to explore ways of reducing the excessive numbers of initiatives faced weekly by schools.'

Despite record education spending under Labour, teaching vacancies have risen by a quarter in the past year - with four in ten new teachers quitting within a year.

Critics say they are weighed down with too many initiatives, too much form-filling and too much bad behaviour.

Mr Gove said: 'It's very worrying that the number of sick days has risen so dramatically.
'The Government needs to investigate the reasons so we can make sure there is as much stability as possible in every child's education.'

Whilst these figures are worrying, I wonder how comparable they would be to the private sector.

Getting Things Done: Advice

Other advice in the book:

There are seven primary types of things that you'll want to keep track of and manage from an organisational perspective:

1. A projects list
2. Project support material
3. Calendared actions and information
4. Next actions lists
5. A waiting for list
6. Reference material
7. A someday/maybe list

Most common categories of action reminders:

• Calls
• At computer
• Errands
• Office actions
• At home
• Agendas
• Read/ Review

Getting Things Done: The Five Phases of Project Planning

The process of project planning involves a series of steps that has to occur before your brain can make anything happen physically:

1. Defining purpose and principles
2. Outcome visioning
3. Brainstorming
4. Organising
5. Identifying next actions

The Reactive Planning Model:

The unnatural planning model is what most people consciously think of as 'planning', and because it's so often artificial and irrelevant to real work, people just don't plan. But what happens if you don't plan ahead of time? In many cases, crisis! What's the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan? Action - work harder, get busier! Finally, when having a lot of busy people banging into each other doesn't resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says, "We need to get organised." Someone then sits down and tries to organise the problem into 'boxes' before realising that this doesn't solve the problem. More creativity is needed and so brainstorming occurs. Eventually, the question needs to be asked: "So what are you really trying to do here, anyway." This is when the vision and purpose is agreed. The reactive style is the reverse of the natural model.

The Five Phases of Natural Planning:

Thinking in more effective ways about projects and situations can make things happen sooner, better and more successfully. These five phases must be completed:

Purpose

It never hurts to ask the question, 'why'? Realising the purpose for the project gives many benefits:

• It defines success
• It creates decision-making criteria
• It aligns resources
• It motivates
• It clarifies focus
• It explands options.

Vision/Outcome

In order most productively to access the conscious and unconscious resources available to you, you must have a clear picture in your mind of what success must look, sound and feel like. Purpose and principles furnish the impetus and the monitoring, but vision provides the actual blueprint of the final result. This is the 'what?' instead of the 'why?' What will this project or situation really be like when it successfully appears in the world?

Brainstorming

Once you know what you want to have happen, and why, the 'how' mechanism is brought into play.

Organising

What are the things that must occur to create the final result? In what order must they occur? What is the most important element to ensure the success of the project?

The basic steps of organising are:

• Identify the significant pieces
• Sort by (one or more) components, sequences and priorities
• Detail to the required degree

Next actions

The question to ask is 'what's the next action?' Decide on next actions for each of the current moving parts of the project.

What is black and white and RED all over... Children's work!

The Daily Mail reports that schools have barred teachers from marking in red in case it upsets the children. They are scrapping the traditional method of correcting work because they consider it ‘confrontational’ and ‘threatening’.

Pupils increasingly find that the ticks and crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow, or even in pencil.

Traditionalists have branded the ban ‘barmy’, saying that red ink makes it easier for children to spot errors and improve. There are no set government guidelines on marking and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.

Crofton Junior School, in Orpington, Kent, whose pupils range from seven to 11, is among those to have banned red ink. Its Marking Code of Practice states: ‘Work isgenerally marked in pen – not red – but on occasion it may be appropriate to indicate errors in pencil so that they may be corrected.’
Headmaster Richard Sammonds said: ‘Red pen can be quite demotivating for children. It has negative, old-school connotations of “See me” and “Not good enough”. We are no longer producing clerks and bookkeepers. We are trying to provide an education for children coming into the workforce in the 21st century. The idea is to raise standards by taking a positive approach. We highlight bits that are really good in one colour and use a different colour to mark areas that could be improved.’

At Hutton Cranswick Community Primary School in Driffield, East Yorkshire, the Marking and Feedback Policy reads: ‘Marking should be in a different colour or medium from the pupil’s writing but should not dominate. For this reason, red ink is inappropriate.’

Shirley Clarke, an associate of the Institute of Education, said: ‘Banning red ink is a reaction to years of children having nothing but red over their work and feeling demoralised. When children, especially young children, see every single spelling mistake covered in red, they can feel useless and give up.’

But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘Banning red ink is absolutely barmy. Common sense suggests that children learn by their mistakes and occasionally they need upsetting to teach them to pull their socks up. Self-esteem has to be built on genuine achievement, not mollycoddling, which only harms children in the long-run.

‘Red ink is the quickest way for pupils to see where they are going wrong and raise standards. I give teachers who have ditched their red pens nought out of ten. They’ve failed.’

A lovely cliche there, Nick. Is this really such a newsworthy issue? I remember being advised during my training at university (advised, not instructed) to use green pen rather than red as green is less agressive. I'm sure that psychologists have researched the impact of different colours. Therefore, avoiding using red pen is probably good advice. But as far as barring the use of red pen in a marking policy - surely that is up to the school itself.

Although recently I have used a few different colours for marking after being given a pack of different coloured pens, I usually mark in green. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find green ink pens in the shops. Maybe there are quite a few teachers who are avoiding marking in red...

Are SATs in doubt?

The future of SATs was thrown into doubt yesterday as a damning report blamed a culture of complacency among testing officials for this year's marking fiasco. Two exam chiefs were suspended and a testing quango was scrapped as an inquiry into the late and chaotic delivery of results to 1.2million children revealed that the system runs on the mantra 'it'll be all right on the night'.

The peer appointed to investigate the marking shambles warned that tests for 11-year-olds next year would be 'difficult' to administer efficiently and welcomed a Government review of the testing system. Ministers scrapped SATs for 14-year-olds in the aftermath of the marking fiasco and have indicated that the current arrangements for 11-year-olds are not 'set in stone'.

The inquiry into the problems, led by Lord Sutherland, uncovered a catalogue of 'massive' failings by the Government's testing agency and the U.S. outfit it hired on a £156million five-year contract to organise marking and the delivery of results. But it also prompted calls for Children's Secretary Ed Balls to apologise and accept some responsibility for the fiasco after he repeatedly claimed it was at 'arm's length' to ministers.

Suspended exam chief Dr Ken Boston told the inquiry that Mr Balls' department was 'in no way' kept at a distance and was in fact intimately involved at all stages, from the granting of the contract to the setting of the tests.

Primary pupils lead the western world in Maths

The Daily Mail writes that primary school pupils lead the western world in maths skills, according to a new survey. Our ten-year-olds have outstripped their peers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand as well as the rest of Europe, including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.

But the news from the international comparison of 425,000 youngsters was not all good. English children have been passed in their turn by youngsters from Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic portrayed as a nation of barely-civilised simpletons by Sacha Baron Cohen's comic creation Borat. Experts said a traditional curriculum and a belief in the importance of maths and science were behind Kazakhstan's success. Though poverty is widespread in the oil-producing country, it has an emerging middle class keen on rigorous academic education.

The improvement among English children follows the introduction of a daily numeracy lesson in primary schools, which put renewed emphasis on times tables and arithmetic.

The survey, known as Timms (Trends in International Maths and Science Study), is held every four years. Our ten-year-olds were 17th of 26 countries in 1995 but seventh of 36 last year, while 14-year-olds were seventh of 49 - up from 25th of 41 in 1995. Among ten-year-olds England was decisively outperformed only by countries on the Pacific Rim, including Japan and South Korea.

Primary curriculum overhaul

The Daily Mail reports that the blueprint was drawn up by former Ofsted chief Sir Jim Rose following a request from Children's Secretary Ed Balls. It amounts to the biggest shake-up of primary schooling since the Tories introduced a national curriculum in 1988. The national curriculum was organised around 11 subjects - an arrangement that has broadly continued to this day.

The Conservatives last night warned the plans, likely to come into force in 2011, would lead to a 'further erosion of standards'. They pointed to similar 'child-centric' reforms of the Sixties and Seventies which experts say led to a collapse in literacy and numeracy. Tory education spokesman Michael Gove said: 'In adopting this throwback to the 1960s, the Government is denying the highest quality of education to children in the state sector. The experiment with this kind of ideology - moving away from facts, knowledge and rigour - failed 40 years ago and will fail again.'

Under the plan, history, geography and religious education will be merged into 'human, social and environmental' studies. Other areas cover communication (English and modern languages), science and technology, maths, physical health and wellbeing, and the arts.

The aim of scrapping distinct subjects is to allow teachers to introduce them in other parts of the curriculum, for example teaching literacy or history through design and technology.

However, 69-year-old Sir Jim, the Government's key adviser on primary schools, insisted that some subject- specific teaching would remain, saying: 'High-quality subject teaching must not disappear from primary schools.' He added that he was not advocating a return to the 'vagaries of old-style topic and project work'.

Computer skills should be given more importance

A report at Becta says that today's increasingly computer-literate youngsters are improving their ICT skills so fast there is a strong argument they should be taught secondary school knowledge earlier at primary school.

This insight into the fast-developing skills of England's techno-savvy minors by education expert Sir Jim Rose is one of the key findings of the interim report of his independent primary curriculum review published on Monday, 8 December 2008.

He says in his report that primary and secondary ICT needs to be reviewed "to provide a better fit with children's developing abilities" so that English education does not get left behind by the technology revolution. He wants ICT to be given as much priority in the primary school curriculum as literacy and numeracy.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls, responding to the interim report, said 21st century schools needed to adapt to the times and make the most of technology to improve our children's learning.

Examples of the kind of things our hi-tech high-flyers might do at primary rather than wait for secondary:

• Using podcasts in their studies or making their own radio programmes
• Using ICT to produce well-presented essays and presentations on screen that they can share with the class or whole school
• Uploading their artwork on computers
• Testing rules and values by using formulas and spreadsheets for science and maths
• Discussing the use and impact of technology on society
• Analysing different sources online, e.g. for history subjects
• Helping their research skills for different topics, eg world geography, maps and weather forecasts
• Using the internet to share projects with other schools.

Sir Jim Rose said:
"Good primary teaching deepens children's understanding by firing their imagination and interest in learning. One highly promising route to meeting the demand for in-depth teaching and learning is undoubtedly emerging through ICT. The primary curriculum needs to be forward-looking. Advances in technology and the internet revolution are driving a pace of change which we could not have imagined when the National Curriculum was introduced twenty years ago."

Ed Balls said:
"We can sometimes under-estimate children's knowledge of ICT and that can be a missed opportunity to raise standards at primary schools. As Sir Jim's interim report points out, by age 11 children could already be using their computer skills to boost their studies across the curriculum. In maths, primary children are advanced enough to use technology to improve their learning rather than just play computer games, for example. Parents of our generation probably don't realise how fast children are picking up computer skills today. In our day computers were probably a novelty for older children in secondary school children whereas today they're commonplace. Teaching and the curriculum need to move with the times. We need 21st century schools which make the most of the opportunities technology offers to improve our children's learning."

Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta, said:
"There’s no question that technology plays an increasing part of our everyday life at home and school. Clear evidence shows effective use of technology really does boost a child's achievement."

Sir Jim Rose says in his report that ICT has the unique capacity to develop and enliven learning and in some schools ICT is not "working hard enough" to support learning and provide value for money. He believes that much of the ICT currently taught at Key Stage 3 in secondary school should be taught in primary school instead because it is "well within the capabilities" of primary children. Instead, by the time children reach Key Stage 3 they should not only be able to show ICT skills but also be already able to apply these skills across the curriculum to advance their learning.

The interim review report also says that ICT should be used more by primary teachers to give the required "depth" to lessons, so teachers can meet the pace and appetite for learning of the most able children and they are not held back.

Jim Rose makes a lot of sense here and it's about time someone said it. The ICT curriculum urgently needs updating and I hope it happens soon. Computer skills are essential in today's world.

Attitudes to maths fixed by age of 9

Children decide by the age of nine whether or not they like maths, and teachers will find it difficult to persuade them to change their minds after this age. This is why large numbers of pupils leave primary school unable to complete simple maths problems, according to research for maths tutoring website Whizz.com.

The site revealed that more than 90 per cent of children between the ages of six and eight said they liked or loved maths. But this did not last: between the ages of nine and 12, fewer than 70 per cent liked or loved maths. And almost 15 per cent disliked it.

These attitudes were accompanied by a general indifference to their achievements in the subject. More than one in 10 pupils believed it did not matter whether or not they were any good at maths.

A spokeswoman for Whizz.com said: “The older the child, the less their feelings towards maths, and towards their own ability, are prone to change.”

Richard Marett, chief executive of Whizz.com, said: “Being poor at maths is seen as okay in the UK, among both kids and adults. It’s much cooler to excel in arts subjects than it is in maths. This attitude does nothing to raise attainment.”

http://www.whizz.com/

The TEST

SATs revision already?

A survey carried out by Manchester University suggests that more than 350,000 Year 6 pupils have already begun revising for next summer’s SATs. A survey of 465 teachers and headteachers found that 60 per cent of schools now begin test preparation in the second half of the autumn term.

Professor Bill Boyle, of the Centre for Formative Assessment Studies, found that 38 per cent of schools were already spending up to an hour a week on practice papers or revision lessons by the second half of the autumn term. A further 14 per cent spent two hours a week on test preparation, and 9 per cent spent three hours or more.

By the second half of the spring term, two-thirds of primaries spent three or more hours a week drilling pupils for the English, maths and science tests.

Professor Boyle said: “Why are we still doing this? Why do we have this obsession with tests? These figures are far too high. But teachers will keep on while the system remains in place.”

The survey was carried out in the 2006-07 school year. Three quarters of schools said that the time they devoted to test preparation had increased over the past 10 years.

A study by The TES in 2002 found that only one in seven schools started test preparation in the autumn term.

Professor Boyle’s survey also found that time spent on homework had increased. The proportion of schools asking pupils to spend two or more hours a week revising for tests at home rose from 9 per cent at the beginning of the school year to 30 per cent by the Easter holidays.

Almost nine out of 10 teachers said the curriculum had been narrowed by the focus on tests, 69 per cent thought moderated teacher assessment would be a reliable alternative, and 32 per cent would like to see the key stage 1 model of teacher assessment informed by KS2 test results.
David Tuck, head of Dallow Primary in Luton and past president of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “As far as we’re concerned, we start booster classes after Christmas. We have children coming in sometimes on Saturday morning or lunchtimes. The focus on tests does create a very narrow curriculum and we have to ask if this is the best thing for children.

“One researcher was asking children about their levels and a boy said to him, ‘You don’t want to know my level, I’m a nothing.’ What have we done to children? Where are we going? We need to instil confidence.”

Gaining authority and respect

I enjoyed reading this article in the TES about becoming a line manager in school. Here is some good advice from that article:

Listen to others
People value the opportunity to have their say. You’re also more likely to make a better decision if you’ve canvassed the opinions of your team.

Delegate responsibility
People remember the leaders that let them take on extra responsibility, as it prepared them for being leaders themselves. It’ll also lighten your workload.

Be clear and fair
Relationships are transactional in nature: make it clear what you expect of your team and what you’ll provide in return. Never expect somebody to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.

Accept it when you’ve made a bad decision
People respect honesty - even if you’re telling them that you made a mistake. They’re also more likely to support you next time if they know that you’re prepared to admit when you’re wrong.

Don’t forget the small things
Praising and thanking your team for anything they do right, rather than focusing on what they do wrong, will encourage them to do more of what they’re doing right and engender respect along the way.

Meetings are a waste of time

Read this brilliant comment about meetings in the TES. I completely agree!! The number of pointless meetings I've sat through this year!

75 minutes a month

The TES reports that just 75 minutes a month discussing your work with colleagues can transform you from a bad teacher to a good one, increasing pupils’ rate of learning by at least 50%.

Professor Dylan Wiliam set out a new way for schools to introduce Assessment for Learning (AfL) in the classroom at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) conference in Birmingham this week.

The deputy director of the Institute of Education in London first introduced AfL, which uses assessment to improve pupils’ understanding, with Professor Paul Black a decade ago.
Since then, the Government has taken up the idea. But Professor Wiliam and other experts claim ministers have debased the method by focusing on its least radical and easiest to implement aspects.

Professor Wiliam says that if teachers hold monthly meetings where they report back on their progress, hold each other accountable and decide how to try to improve before the next meeting, they can introduce the AfL approach properly.

The “teacher learning communities” he envisages would focus on AfL techniques such as giving pupils feedback instead of grades, getting pupils to check and take responsibility for each other’s work, and increasing the time teachers wait for an answer after asking pupils a question.

“It is actually doing these things that is hard,” said Professor Wiliam. “Most teachers are aware of the ‘wait time’ theory, but they find it takes six months of trying for them to really slow down. It’s like trying to change your golf swing in the middle of a tournament. The idea is that every teacher makes a commitment to continually improving their practice. There are a lot of teachers who don’t think they need to improve.”

Professor Wiliam has trialled the approach in 60 schools in England and claims it is superior to the five days a year continuous professional development teachers are entitled to, which “doesn’t really work”. “If teachers stick with this, we will have the potential to increase the rate at which pupils learn by a least 50 per cent,” he said. “It makes a really bad teacher into a pretty good one and an average teacher into an outstanding one.”

Pupils on best behaviour

British primary pupils are better behaved now than they have been for at least 20 years. They are more likely than their predecessors to listen to their teacher and to do the work assigned to them, according to a major new study.

Led by Brian Apter, senior educational psychologist for Wolverhampton council, they oversaw a team of 71 educational psychologists, who carried out observations in 141 classrooms. This was one of the largest primary school studies ever conducted.

The psychologists found that pupils were well-behaved and focused on their schoolwork for “an unexpectedly high proportion” of their time in class. Children concentrated on work for 85 per cent of the time: a higher rate than has ever been recorded before in British schools.

This improvement in pupils’ behaviour began with a dramatic rise in the mid-1980s, and has continued steadily since. The researchers attribute this to the fact that the teachers provided clear and detailed instructions, and regularly praised pupils’ work.

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers’ Association, was not surprised. “Adults always say that it was better in their day,” he said. “It’s the golden-age syndrome. But I don’t think there ever was a golden age.
“Most teachers would probably say, ‘Yes, there’s more focused attention by children now than in the past.’ Lessons are better planned and pitched to individual children. There’s less opportunity for boredom, for being overstretched and understretched.”

The psychologists found no link between pupils’ behaviour and the size of their class, the number of adults in the room, the time of day, or the number of pupils eligible for free school meals.

But there was a link between behaviour and the size of the school: larger primaries tended to have better behaved, more focused pupils. The researchers suggested this might be because these schools offer higher salaries to their heads and benefited from economies of scale.

Read more in the TES.

People can't use apostrophe's

(Before I get started, I deliberately put the apostrophe in the wrong place in the title!)

The Daily Mail reports that apostrophe misuse is among our most common grammatical mistakes and it is also the most annoying. Nearly half of those given a short punctuation test were unable to use the apostrophe properly. They were guilty of a variety of slip-ups. The first was a failure to understand that plural nouns in English do not take an apostrophe.

The commonest evidence of this transgression is on display in countless fruit and vegetable shops, with handwritten signs advertising apple's and pear's for sale - the classic greengrocer's apostrophe.

A second error is the failure to punctuate a possessive plural properly. Forty-six per cent of those who sat the test got this alarmingly wrong.

They were also asked which mistakes they found most irritating.

Replacement of they're with their was voted the most annoying, followed by the use of a greengrocer's apostrophe to denote a plural - as in the incorrect boy's instead of boys. Another infuriating howler was confusing its with it's - the first the possessive form of it and the second an abbreviation of the phrase it is.

In the punctuation test taken by 2,000 adults, teachers were most likely to get the answers right, with more than 80 per cent getting full marks. Journalists and those working in public relations came second, followed by lawyers and civil servants in third and fourth places. Workers in transport and distribution came bottom. Women not only scored higher marks than men, they also claimed to care more about incorrect punctuation.

Londoners came out on top as Britain's best regional punctuators, getting 78 per cent of the answers right.

Surprisingly, the over-55s were bottom of the league. The 25 to 34-year-olds came top.

Professor Christopher Mulvey, an expert from the Museum of the English Language at Winchester University, said: 'To get it right, you need to look up the rules every time you think an apostrophe might be needed - and do this for the next six months in order to internalise the rules.'

I found the comment at the bottom of the Daily Mail article frustrating: I agree, I hate bad grammar - drives me mad. Why do they not teach grammar properly in schools anymore? This person has clearly not read the article properly - teachers are most likely to use the apostrophe correctly. I don't think teachers and schools are the problem for apostrophe misuse - it's the media and retail that show a complete disregard for correct grammar and punctuation. Teachers teach the rules correctly, but if this is not followed through by the rest of society it makes the process worthless. Unless children see a need to use punctuation and grammar correctly then there's no point in doing so. And if they see the mess that certain people can make of punctuation then they aren't going to see why it's important.

Scholastic's Top Ten Fiction Books 2008

Here are the top ten fiction books for 9 to 11 year olds, as chosen by Wendy Cooling for Scholastic's Literacy Time.
Toby Alone
The Battle for Gullywith
To The Boy in Berlin
You Wish (The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff)
The Dragon of Krakow: And Other Polish Stories
Kai-ro
Eggs
Ways to Live Forever
Before Green Gables

Read more here: http://magazines.scholastic.co.uk/content/5262

Great ideas for bringing technology to the classroom

I really enjoyed reading this report in the TES. I'd love to hear if anyone else is using this technology, and also where they learned how to do it!

£2.5billion spent and maths is still not adding up

Almost a quarter of children are leaving primary school with a poor grasp of maths even though spending on the subject has soared to £2.5billion a gear, public finance watchdogs have revealled.

Around 135000 pupils start secondary school unable to cope with their courses. This is little improvement on 2000 despite a 30% increase in funding over the same period.

About 66000 bright pupils are failing to make the progress of which they should be capable at primary school, while 34000 11-year-olds are no better at maths than most seven-year-olds. In a reversal of the usual trend, girls are falling further behind boys.

Tim Burr, the head of the National Audit Office said, "The rate of improvement in primary mathematics has slowed and almost a quarter of pupils are still not equipped with the understanding of mathematics they need to study the subject further, or to tackle subjects such as science once they start secondary school."

The £2.3 billion spent on teaching maths in primary schools works out at £572 per pupil and represents more than a fifth of the total expenditure of £10billion on primary teaching.

Although pupils in their final year at primary school achieved the best results so far in maths SATs last year, almost a quarter, 23%, failed to achieve the expected level.

I hope that the new framework will go some to to challenging this issue, but it still requires proper funding to train all staff to understand it fully.

5-year-olds to tell teachers how to teach

The Daily Mail reports that children as young as five will win the legal right to tell teachers how they should be taught and disciplined for bad behaviour, it emerged today. Pupils will be handed an unprecedented say in the running of their schools - from the uniforms they wear to the meals they eat.

But the proposed new duty on school governors to 'invite and consider' children's views drew an angry backlash from teachers' leaders who claimed it would be 'open to abuse'. Ministers have also been warned that schools will be vulnerable to lawsuits brought by parents who claim their children have not been properly consulted.

The row erupted after the Government this week accepted an amendment to an education Bill currently progressing through Parliament. The Liberal Democrats tabled the amendment after a Ofsted survey suggested a third of pupils do not believe they are properly listened to by their schools.

Regulations detailing what schools must ask pupils about have yet to be drawn up but ministers hinted in Parliament they would be wide-ranging. In the House of Lords, Children's Minister Baroness Morgan said: 'As a minimum, schools should seek and take account of pupils' views on policies on the delivery of the curriculum, behaviour, the uniform, school food, health and safety, equalities and sustainability, not simply on what colour to paint the walls.'

Ministers have already issued guidance to schools saying pupils can have a role in recruiting staff and observe lessons to give feedback on how well they believe they are being taught.

But critics complained the advice was akin to 'the lunatics taking over the asylum'. Yesterday Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, criticised the planned legal duty as 'unnecessary' and warned it would undermine teachers' authority, driving them out of the classroom. She said some schools were already allowing groups of pupils to stand at the back of classes observing lessons without the teacher's agreement and to sit on interview panels for new staff. And she was aware of a recent case where a teacher had gone for a job only to find she was subjected to a 'speed dating'-style interview, which involved spending five minutes talking to a series of pupils sitting at individual desks. The teacher concerned had considered turning down any job offer because of the school's 'disrespectful' attitude to staff. 'The proper use of student voice can aid learning,' said Mrs Keates. 'We have no problem with student councils, and good teachers will always engage pupils. But it's a complete nonsense to make it a duty on schools; it will be open to abuse and is likely to lead to more bureaucracy. The balance of relationships between teachers and pupils is extremely important and this shifts the balance in the wrong direction.

Mrs Keates said it could be appropriate for schools to seek pupils' views on disciplinary sanctions, but added: 'Where pupils have been consulted on behaviour policy they are usually more draconian than the teachers.'

Meanwhile Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, representing thousands of secondary heads, said: 'This is crazy.
'I'm a strong supporter of pupil voice but schools are increasingly consulting pupils because they think it is the right thing, not because Government tells them to. I am furious that yet another in this continual stream of legal and educational duties is being placed on schools. They all bring unintended consequences.'

I love working with our School Council and they have made a really positive contribution to our school. They are becoming more and more involved in important decision, e.g. how the Friends of the school spend the money. Later this year, they will take their first role in the interview process for a new member of staff. But I'm not sure it is right to give children the legal right to tell teachers how they should be taught. Whilst I welcome them explaining the views and ideas, surely this idea could become very damaging for staff morale?

REVISION:
There is also a very interesting interview with the head of Holland Moor Primary in Skelmersdale who have a very effective school council. Read it here.

Getting Things Done: The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow

Chapter Two
Adapted from David Allen's Getting Things Done





No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We

1. Collect things that command our attention;


2. Process what they mean and what to do about them; and


3. Organise the results, which we


4. Review as options for what we choose to


5. Do.

Collect

In order to manage the different tasks that we collect, we need to create 'containers' that hold items until you have a few moments to decide what they are and what, if anything, you're going to do about them. Then you must empty these containers regularly to ensure that they remain viable collection tools. What we're talking about here is making sure that everything you need is collected somewhere other than in your head.

There are several types of tools that can be used to collect your incomplete tasks:

• Physical in-basket


• Writing paper and pads


• Computers, e.g. http://www.toodledo.com/


• Auditory capture, e.g. answering machine or dictaphone


• Email

In order to make these in-baskets work:

• Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.


• You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with.


• You must empty them regularly.

If you don't empty and process the stuff you've collected, your buckets aren't serving any function other than the storage of amorphous material. Emptying doesn't mean that you have to finish everything. It means that you have to take it out of the container, decide what it is and what should be done with it, and if it's still unfinished, organise it into your system.

Process

This flow chart shows the basic structure for effective processing.

Organise

This stage refers to the categories in rings round the outside of the diagram, resulting from the processing of your stuff. Together they make up a total system for organising just about everything that's on your plate, or could be added to it, on a daily and weekly basis.

For nonactionable items, you need to trash, incubate and store for reference. If no action is needed, you throw it, to incubate you hold it to reassess later, or you could file it for reference at a later time. To manage actionable things you need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions and a list of reminders of things you're waiting for.

Projects: A project is a desired result that requires more than one action step. If one step won't complete something, some kind of stake needs to be placed in the ground to remind you that there's something still left to do. You don't actually do a project, you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it 'done'.

Support materials and reference files should be kept out of sight, but close at hand.

Calendars: Calendars should be used for next-actions. Three things go on your calendar: time-specific actions, day-specific actions and day-specific information.

• Time-specific actions: This is a fancy name for appointments.
• Day-specific actions: These are things that you need to do sometime on a certain day, but not necessarily at a specific time.
• Day-specific information: Use your calendar to keep track of things you want to know about on specific days - not actions you'll have to take, but rather information that may be useful on a certain date.

Daily To Do Lists: These don't work, for two reasons:

• New priorities reconfigure daily work so consistently that it's virtually impossible to nail down to do items ahead of time.
• If there's something on the list that doesn't absolutely have to get done that day, it dilutes the emphasis on the things that truly do.

Next action lists: You action reminders go here. Any longer than two minute nondelagatable actions you have identified should be tracked here.

Incubation: This is where you store your ideas for projects that you might want to do someday, but not now. There are two types of systems:

• Someday/ Maybe: It can be useful and inspiring to maintain an ongoing list of things you might want to do at some point but not now. This is the parking lot for projects that would be impossible to move on at present but that you don't want to forget about entirely. You'd like to be reminded of the possibility at regular intervals.
• Tickler file: This is a system that allows you to almost literally mail something to yourself for receipt on some designated day in the future, e.g. your calendar.

Review

• The item you'll probably review most frequently is your calendar. It's a good habit, as soon as you conclude an action on your calendar to check and see what else needs to be done.
• Then you'll check your Next Actions list.
• Each week you need a weekly review.

Weekly Review: This is the time to:

• Gather and process all your stuff
• Review your system
• Update your lists
• Get clean, clear, current and complete.

What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I suggest you do this weekly instead of yearly.

Do

There will always be a large list of actions that you are not doing at any given moment. So how will you decide what to do and what not to do and feel good about both? The answer is, by trusting your intuition. Apply these four criteria to help you decide:

• Context: A few actions can be done anywhere, but most require a specific location.
• Time available: When do you have to do something else?
• Energy available: How much energy do you have?
• Priority: Given your context, time and energy available, what action will give you the highest payoff?

What does your tie say about you?

Research has explained what your tie reveals about you.

MEN should take care when choosing which tie to wear, for it could reveal more about them than they realise.

A purple tie might look just the thing with a lilac shirt but, psychologists say, it gives the impression the wearer is envious, arrogant and vulgar.

Other colours to steer clear of include green – which suggests greed, jealousy, and bad luck.

Yellow, on the other hand, suggests individuality and reliability, while a red tie shouts passion, strength, energy and ambition.

Even worse are novelty ties which, researchers found, are worn by people trying to appear more significant, sexy or outgoing than they actually are.

Psychologist Dr Ludwig Lowenstein, who carried out the study, said: "When one considers the nature of the person wearing a particular colour of tie one must also take into consideration other aspects of the personality such as whether the person dresses to impress, wants to attract, control or look superior. Colours have been used throughout history to denote power, fear, anxiety and to have many other symbolic characteristics. Many people are impressed by colour and how and when it is worn. Be careful as you may be judged on what you wear rather than who you are."

Navy indicates calmness, coolness and confidence, while Dr Lowenstein, who runs Southern England Psychological Services, in Hampshire, suggested brown shows reliability. His research also shows that pink ties should be left in the cupboard as they suggest soppy romantics looking for sympathy.

But Kevin Stewart, fashion stylist at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh, said that it was more important to be in season."Choosing a tie should be about what you, as an individual, like to wear. This can be quite tricky. "As men have become more fashion conscious they want to choose the colours and styles of the season. I would agree that novelty ties should really be banned, but I don't think it matters what colour of tie you wear as long as you like it, it enhances what you are wearing and you feel good wearing it."

David Walker, of tie makers Peckham Rye, which commissioned the study, said: "Skinny ties are understated and subtle without being too showy. A bit rock and roll, shows you're a bit savvy and edgy."

Other advice includes never wearing a spotted tie with a striped shirt, while a plain bow tie with a checked shirt says creative, eccentric and very swish.The scarf wearer is trendy and very with it, coming across as more intelligent with an air of elegance about them.

And while having an open-neck shirt can look cool if you are under the age of 45, for those over 45, researchers warn, it can look a bit "Sasha Distel", conjuring up images of a hairy chest and a suntan framed by a cheap belcher chain.

BROWN: Considered to be a solid reliable colour. Abundant in nature, earth and for genuine people.
NAVY: Symbolises unity, harmony and tranquillity. It indicates calm, cool and confident types.
RED: Suggests strength, passion, energy and ambition, as well as leadership power and anger.
YELLOW: Appears solid, earthy and reliable. For out of the ordinary people who are very much in control.
PINK: For someone who is a soppy romantic, perhaps looking for sympathy or craving admiration.
GREEN: Gives the impression of greedy, jealous individuals who are generally unlucky and gamblers.
PURPLE: Envious, arrogant and gaudy. Purple suggests superior vulgarity and should be avoided.
NOVELTY: For people who are trying to appear more significant, sexy or outgoing than they actually are.

I have worn every one of these colours at some point - I shudder to think of the messages I have inadvertently given out!!

Cancellation of KS3 SATs

Some interesting letters in the TES regarding the cancellation of KS3 SATs.

Cut the clutter and instil a love of learning

Sir Jim Rose, the leader of the Primary Review, is due to make his interim recommendations in the next few weeks. But he has already told the House of Commons seclect committee on children, schools and families that his key goal is to instil a love of learning in children - and increased specialist teaching could help with this.

When asked how creating a more balanced curriculum would square with teaching to the test that is common in Year 6, he answered that the tests were not the only issue. The key, he said, was to create a system that would bring out the best in fast-developing 10 and 11 year olds. He hinted that one of the most important ways to do this would be to bring more specialists into primary schools.

He said: "The problem in Year 6 is more than that [teaching to the test]. It's the dgree of expertise you need to keep up with lively 11 year olds who are on the march to good quality work in secondary. Eleven year olds are terribly underestimated in what they can achieve. If you have a class teacher system hanging on in there, you are asking a lot of the class teacher. Look at what they are capable of in music when they have a specialist teacher or someone in PE who really knows their subject well."

Poetry being 'frozen out' by schools

The TES reports that the teaching of poetry is being undermined by the free market. Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, has warned that the decline in the children’s poetry market could no longer be ignored and said only one major publisher, Macmillan, now publishes new poetry for children.
As fewer primary teachers appreciate verse, the diversity of the form is not being taught, so demand for new books has dwindled, he said.

“I would argue over whether the market knows best in this instance,” he said. “There are ways booksellers could discover and promote poetry more proactively. The best advocates are poets themselves. While reading is seen as an individual activity, poetry is a social activity. There also needs to be a demystification of poetry. There is an assumption that poetry is difficult, not just among booksellers but among teachers.”

He called for more support for teachers in gaining children’s interest in poetry, and for poets’ status to be raised through a high-profile Man Booker-type prizes. People probably know and love poetry already - through lyrics, rhymes or the text of children’s picture books,” he said. “Adults see it as a niche thing and project that on to children, but children don’t have those hang- ups. If children are not turned on to poetry, they will lose the opportunity to engage with literacy in a way that enriches them, and in the long term there is a danger for the entire poetry infrastructure because we are not growing a new generation who like poetry and who want to read and write poems.

“Poetry has sat at the heart of British experience for thousands of years. It would be very sad if it shifted from that position.”

An Ofsted report on poetry in schools last year found that poetry was the worst taught part of the English curriculum.

Michael Rosen, the famous poet, said, "Poetry is being frozen in the ice of the national literacy strategy. What is needed is needed is a specific poetry curriculum."

Bad handwriting can limit exam success by up to 40%

The TES features an interesting report about handwriting. It writes that bad handwriting isn’t just hard to read - it can limit exam success by as much as 40 per cent. Pupils with bad handwriting are less likely to do well in written tests and composition exercises than their neater classmates. And boys are particularly likely to scrawl, which may explain their continued underachievement in writing tasks.

The assumption in British schools has always been that handwriting is an issue of neatness, rather than something directly related to the process of composition. But academics from Warwick University argue that handwriting is more than the transcription of ideas; it is directly related to how we generate and process those ideas.

“Handwriting is not just about training the hand,” they say. “It is about training the memory and hand to work together to generate and correct mental images and patterns of letters, and translate these into motor patterns of letters, automatically and without effort. Handwriting is … a language act, rather than just a motor act.”

When pupils can write fluently, the process does not interfere with other mental processes. But if they struggle, they have to devote large amounts of memory to the task, leaving them with less capacity for generating ideas, selecting vocabulary or planning what to write. “It may be that handwriting can crowd out the composing processes we value,” the academics say.

This idea was reinforced when they tested the handwriting speed and ability of 198 Year 6 pupils from three schools. A high proportion of results for composition reflected pupils’ results in separate handwriting tests. Boys’ handwriting scores were significantly lower than girls’, and they were more likely to be in the lowest category of handwriting ability.

This reflects national concern over boys’ underachievement in key stage 2 writing tests. This year, only 60 per cent of boys scored level 4 in the writing test, compared with 74 per cent of girls.

“At a time when improving composition … is a national priority, this suggests that intervention to improve handwriting … may be of benefit to boy writers,” the researchers say. “Early intervention is desirable - this is not an issue that improves spontaneously.”

They conclude that children with average or poor handwriting have only a 40 per cent chance of achieving level 4, the expected level for 11-year- olds, in national tests. So ignoring poor handwriting fails to address a significant and continuing obstacle to pupils’ achievement. “UK national testing does not assess handwriting speed or fluency, and addresses only writing style and neatness,” they say. “We may be failing to assess an important aspect of writing.”

The report is based on: The Links Between Handwriting and Composing for Year 6 Children’ by J. Medwell, S. Strand and D. Wray.

No more KS3 SATs - but what about KS2?

The Government has decided to scrap the Key Stage 3 SATs with immediate effect. Unions, opposition political parties and newspapers all showed their support for the decision.

But primaries are left bitterly asking why the Government has decided to retain KS2 tests. David Fann, chair of the NAHT primary committee, said, "From what I hear, the announcement has caused complete and utter devastation in primaries."

It seems that the KS2 tests provide some sort of accountability function at the end of primary school.

The child in my class are gutted!

KS3 SATs are scrapped... What about KS2? :-(

The Daily Mail reports that SATs tests for 14-year-olds have been scrapped in a humiliating U-turn by Children's Secretary Ed Balls. And school exams in other age groups will be radically overhauled, he said.

Mr Balls told the Commons today that the key stage 3 tests taken by pupils at 14 were 'not justified' and would be dropped with immediate effect. Tests for primary pupils will remain but the high-stakes examination for 11-year-olds leaving primary school could be scrapped by 2010. The assessment of seven-year-olds will be downgraded.

Mr Balls's announcement cuts a swathe through the controversial testing system embraced enthusiastically by five previous Labour Education Secretaries after its introduction by the Tories 15 years ago. It follows a marking fiasco this summer which heaped misery on thousands of pupils after results were delayed and inaccurately recorded. The overhaul also comes on the back of criticism from teachers and parents of the high-pressure examination regime.

Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity

As I read this inspirational book I want to blog my thoughts and what I've learned.

Chapter One seems to set up some of the ideas for the rest of the book, regarding setting up new practices for your workload.

Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments:

1. If it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfurnished in anyway must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what the author calls a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through.


2. You must clarify exactly what your commitment is an decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it.


3. Once you've decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organised in a system you review regularly.

Why are things on your mind? Most often, the reason something is on your mind is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet:

• you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcome is;


• you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/ or


• you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you can trust.

Most to do lists are merely listings of stuff, not inventories of the resultant real work that needs to be done.

New curriculum to focus on skills

The TES reports that the new primary curriculum now in development is likely to have a much greaer emphasis on skills than is currently the case, it has emerged. The document - to be adopted in 2011 - looks increasingly likely to highlight skills alongside content, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

The authority is supporting the review of the primary curriculum being led by Sir Jim Rose, the former chief inspector for primary education. The interim report is due out at the end of this month. The QCA has submitted evidence to Sir Jim from surveys with pupils, seminars with heads and other stakeholders, analysis of Ofsted reports and research.

Mick Waters, director of curriculum at the QCA, said: “I think one of the challenges (of the review) is to stop arguments about what is in and what is out, petty arguments over poets, painters and battles. We want to help children understand big ideas behind knowledge to understand the difference science can make to society and the benefits of learning about science for an individual. We need to give them an appetite for more knowledge, the belief that they can make a difference. That is a really different outlook on the primary-age child from the one existing 20 years ago.”

Emma Payne, deputy head at Hillcrest Primary in Bristol, has worked with other schools in the area and the QCA on innovating the school’s curriculum. She said: “We need a new national curriculum because the current one was designed in a different time. I have been shown one of the drafts of a new curriculum and was really excited to see a focus on skills. One of the main problems with the curriculum is there is a big focus on knowledge, and it is too easy to cram children’s heads with stuff, rather than the skills they need to apply with any stuff.”

Paul Jackson, joint head of Gallions Primary in Newham, is part of the Open Future scheme run by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, which offers a skills- based curriculum. He said: “Jim Rose has been to visit our school and I’ve taken the children to meet Mick Waters. The idea that seems to be coming through is freeing up time, allowing schools to take their own direction.”

Sir Jim’s remit, set out by Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, calls for the introduction of languages, less prescription of content, and potentially developing areas of learning rather than subjects.

The primary curriculum’s content is now organised by subject. There are also subject-specific skills and thinking skills, but these are embedded in the curriculum as attainment targets. In the summer, Sir Jim told a meeting of educationists that it was likely the primary curriculum would remain subject-based.

The QCA, in a review of the primary curriculum in 10 countries, has found only two that organise their primary curriculum by subject rather than broader areas of learning, namely Norway and Slovenia. The latter has said it wants more cross-curricular work.

Out with the X-Factor culture

Primary schools are to receive formal guidance on how to combat the effects on their children of the rampant celebrity culture. They will be expected to interest pupils in 'real world' jobs and to discourage them from aspiring to be reality television stars or footballers' wives.

Shows such as The X Factor and Big Brother have previously been blamed for giving youngsters the impression they can become overnight successes without any hard work.

In future, primary schools will be encouraged to organise enterprise days or job talks from figures in the local community.

The proposals are expected to form part of Sir Jim Rose's review of the primary curriculum, with an interim report due next month.

John Crookes, an advisor at the QCA said, "If there are low expectations within the community and no role models from the world of work, you have difficulties. One young girl said she wanted to be a footballer's wife. Her dad is a university lecturer. He wasn't very pleased."

A recent survey of 1000 youngsters by the DCSF' Talented and Enterprise Taskforce found that just 1% thought being intelligent or good at school work meant they were talented.

Preventing stress

Back in February it was revealled which LAs had the highest stress-related absences in the teaching workforce. After feel a bit stressed myself in the last few weeks (although it could be more to do with a bug I've been trying to shake off for a while) I enjoyed a report in the TES Magazine which gives some good advice which I really need to try to follow:

• Have a cut-off time and stick to it. Whatever you have done at say, 6pm, is enough. Go home.
• Prioritise. Achknowledge that you can't do it all. Start with what is absolutely necessary and drop the optional.
• Never work when you are exhausted. The quality of work will be low and make you more stressed.
• Always stop for a drink at breaktimes. It is not a waste of time, because you can work more effectively after the break.
• Work as a team. Always share out the planning and preparation with colleagues. never plan a set of lessons without looking at the previous years' first, to avoid duplication.
• During the school holidays, stay off campus and and something completely different. A refreshing change makes you work more efficiently.
• Exercies reduces stress. Take time to raise your heartbeat every day.

Without a shadow of a doubt I've been guilty of not doing every single one of these. Need to try to put myself first for a change. I've recently purchased a copy of "Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity" by David Allen for £6.99 on Amazon.co.uk after a recommendation by Mark Warner. I hope this also helps me to learn to prioritise.

VCOP Teacher

Just found this great blog written by VCOP teacher. The blog has lots of great ideas for writing poetry. The ideas are simple but really powerful and will help to develop aspects of VCOP. A really good site. It's just a shame that I found it the day AFTER National Poetry Day!!

Spelltube.co.uk

Further to a post about learning spellings earlier this month I discovered Spelltube.co.uk. The site has 'brings the weekly spelling list into the technological age'.

Interesting and memorable spelling videos have been created for each of the 3000+ words in the National Spelling Bank. Teachers can generate and assign a word list to their Key Stage 2 pupils. Various characters help to reinforce spelling concepts in an enjoyable way that will appeal to various learning styles.

I think I could definitely use this in class.

The Countdown Kid

The Daily Mail reports that 11-year-old Kai Laddiman became one of the youngest ever winners. Kai beat James Bruce, a 25-year-old teacher, by finding three seven-letter words, being spot-on in a numbers game and working out the conundrum in only 14 seconds.

Kai, from Broad Oak, East Sussex, auditioned for the show in London in January, beating off hopefuls as much as six times his age. He and his mother Naomi were then invited to record the show, presented by Carol Vorderman and Des O'Connor, in Leeds. Kai, who has already got a grade B in AS-level maths said: 'Although everyone else was older, I wasn't nervous at all.

He said, "I got an extra cushion to prop me up on the chair so the cameras could see me over the desk. It made the seat a lot more comfortable so I wasn't complaining. I just concentrated hard and did my best. I enjoy the Countdown letter games, such as the conundrums, the most. Numbers are a bit trickier but I wouldn't say they're difficult either.'

Kai has three younger brothers and attends Heathfield Community College in Old Heathfield, East Sussex.

Spelling Tests axed because they're distressing

Don't get me wrong - I really am a stickler for correct spellings. Poor spelling and grammar (used by adults, at least) infuriates me. But I loathe spelling tests. I fail to see the benefits of spending around 1/2 an hour each week running a spelling test, knowing full well that many of the children will spell the same words wrong in a piece of work immediately after the test. Quality teaching of word rules and spelling patterns must be the best method.

I was impressed by this post from Tom Barrett regarding good spelling resources on the net.

In the news today is a primary school that has axed spelling homework because pupils find learning lists of words 'distressing'.

The Daily Mail reports that children at the Whitminster Church of England Primary, in Gloucestershire, will no longer be given a short list of words to learn each week because staff believe it leaves them feeling like failures.

Parents' groups called the move 'ridiculous' but headmistress Debbie Marklove, whose school has just over 100 pupils aged four to 11, has invited parents to a meeting to explain her reasons. In a newsletter, Mrs Marklove wrote: "You will notice that the children will not be given spelling lists to learn over the week. We have taken the decision to stop spelling as homework as it is felt that although children may learn them perfectly at home they are often unable to use them in their daily written work. Also many children find this activity unnecessarily distressing."

She added: "Spelling lists are sometimes just tests of memory. If children get five out of five when practising with mum and dad and then get one out of five at school it can give a sense of failure. I would like to emphasise that we are still teaching spellings at school as normal, as is demanded by the literacy curriculum.'

A spokesman for the school said no parents had complained about the policy.

But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said the decision would come back to haunt her pupils as some spellings, particularly irregular words, needed to be learned. he said, "Youngsters will feel a sense of failure more strongly when they go into the world of work and can't produce a letter or a report for their employers," he said. "There are quite a lot of words which you essentially have to memorise. Lots of parents and grandparents will remember doing spelling tests either pleasantly or unpleasantly. But for all that, it is a necessary part of the learning process."

A report from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority this year showed that most primary school-leavers are unable to spell such basic words as 'height' and 'rigid'.

Gloucestershire County Council's head of improvement, Karen Charters, said: "It is entirely for the school to decide if it wishes to use spelling lists."