Lynne Horn

Today we moved over the Atlantic to the United States.  For S1 there was a question about some White House residents - namely the White House pets.  S2 had a baseball question and S3 had a bit of geography with a questions about the Grand Canyon.  S4 had a set of important dates in American history and once again  found the answers quickly.  For today’s lunchtime challenge Houses took to the pitch for a bit of cheer leading.  One House showed an amazing amount of preparation and came with costumes and routine rehearsed and prepared.  Another also had a great routine and cheer worked out.  The 3rd House had lots of keen participants, but were leaderless - fortunately for them, our History teacher resplendent in Davy Crockett hat, Stars and Stripes tie and rara skirt stepped forward and lead them in a routine and cheer.

For us that’s the end of the House part of international week - tomorrow is our 4th Equal Futures Day, which is always an enjoyable and thought provoking day.  My three workshops for the day are on Asylum Seekers run by  Save the Children, British Sign Language (one of the most popular workshops from last year) and finally a member of the Punjabi community on life in Scotland.

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Over to New Zealand today.  S1 drew kiwis (and they all drew the bird rather than the fruit).  There were cultural questions for the others and S5/6 tried to get as many as possible to join them in the Haka - some with more success than others and attempts ranged from something quite aggressive to something more Hokey Cokey than Haka.  Interestingly some struggled to identify an artist from a painting - didn’t seem to occur just to put in New Zealand artists as a search, it took me 2 minutes and I wasn’t looking for the answer at the time, so all credit to Iona, the only House to identify it correctly.  The House part of International Week draws to a close tomorrow with a visit to the USA.

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We moved to a colder climate today and all questions and tasks were about Norway.  There were questions on Norse mythology, the Vikings and the length of the coastline, as well as a language challenge and Art question on “The Scream”.  S4 had a tough challenge today having to identify this piece of music from this picture - they did and not only named it, but its composer and the play on which it is based and the play’s author.  For bonus points they also sang it to me, which made for an interesting French lesson.

Lastly teams gathered in the gym for the bobsleigh relay - in the absence of bobsleighs and snow, one person pushed the other round the course on a skateboard with time penalties for knocking over the cones.

Tomorrow we head off to New Zealand.

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We run International Week annually as a House Event with a question or task for each year group each day and a lunctime challenge.  The week will end with our 4th Equal Futures Day when the whole school from primary 1 to S6 + teaching and support staff take part in workshops over the day.

Today’s country was Jamaica and to start the week the questions were relatively simple (although the Art teacher’s art bonus questions proved more of a challenge).

Today’s lunchtime challenge was “How Low Can You Go?” with a bit of limbo dancing in the gym - the staff present chose to take photos and lower the bar (the High Jump coming in useful) with a lot of muttering about bad backs.

Tomorrow we move onto Norway in honour of our Norwegian exchange student who is also one of our House Captains - and the gym will host the bobsleigh challenge.

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 http://tobermoryhighschool.podomatic.com/

As well as the podcasts S4 have been making I’ve uploaded a couple of interviews my Intermediate 2/Higher class have done with our French Assistant Aude - I’m hoping that over the year they will do interviews on all the Intermediate and Higher topics which they can then use for revision/listening practice.  I’m going to play about with the interviews and make some games/exercises to go on the school website, but thought I’d put them up in the meantime.

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[slideshare id=171127&doc=enterprisepictures-1195406354848829-1&w=425]

Enterprise Week ended on Friday and for us it was the culmination of a few projects we have on the go.  My S1 class are entering a competition in which they had to write a story set in the place where they live.  Having done this we’ve been trying to take pictures to illustrate the story - thanks to the maths teachers I was able to take them out in small groups to do this on Thursday meaning that the classroom assistant could take out the remaining groups on Friday.  One of the groups have written about an evil hoover, fortunately for them I was about to take an old dyson to the skip, so it was able to lend it to them for its starring role.

S2 had to pitch their language film ideas to our studio heads - we were able to get round the need for the several judges needed between us and English by asking the local arts centre to send everyone available and drafting in our technician, our finance manager and a classroom assistant.  The 3 studio heads gave S2  a bit of a grilling, but also gave them hints on how to improve their ideas and decided which of the films should be filmed.

Finally we took to the skies at lunchtime.  Aircrews gathered at their planes and prepared for take off - highlights were

• greeting the passengers - each air crew made an effort to do so in at least one language other than English, with many using their French and Gaelic - there was even some Norwegian from our exchange student
• the safety announcements - at least one air crew did their announcement entirely in French with the others opting for a mixture
• the appearance of the 3 snakes - one group asked for the snake to be put away, although after it made a reappearance took it away for the duration of the flight
• the student who came to me and whispered, “are you allowed snakes on a plane?”
• the knitting passengers - it took one group a long time to spot the RE teacher who knitted quite openly throughout their flight
• the “celebrity” who refused to give up her mobile phone

Overall it was a successful task and a successful week.

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Tomorrow sees our Language contribution to Enterprise Week - boarding begins at 1.15pm and each House will have their own “plane” in the gym.  Colleagues have come up with ever wilder suggestions for things that passengers can do to test the skills of our budding stewards and stewardesses - we have decided against the singing nun and woman in labour, but there will be snakes on the  plane!  Each House will be expected to lead the safety announcement on their plane (and we do have the lifejackets), as well as deal with everything from passengers knitting to screaming babies (some dolls borrowed from primary 1 for the event) to passengers trying to use their moible phones.  In addition they will need to serve refreshments during some turbulence.

All of this weeks Enterprise Events have been very well attended and although we only need crews of 6, we need the others to be passengers. 

I put ICT as a category for this - the event will be videoed and there will be pictures, but as well as that we’ve got examples from the safety announcement from YouTube, downloaded mp3 files of airplane noises and of course we need a little background music,  courtesy of iTunes.

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Group of S4s today finished their podcast and very proud of it. Another group have also finished, but I’m going to get them to edit a bit more tomorrow, in their excitement they have gone for the “everything but the kitchen sink” style of jingles and sound effects, so much so that it’s difficult to hear the French (and in the bits I can hear there are one or two pronunciation issues!) However these things aside they are very excited about what they have produced. I tried to upload to Podomatic earlier but it disappeared so I’m trying to work out where I went wrong. As soon as I can upload to edublogs again (it’s having issues at the moment!) I’ll put one of them on here too.

However this being Enterprise Week I was thinking of all the skills they have brought to this, not to mention the 4 capacities (I’m only mentally ticking the boxes, honest!). They worked cooperatively, got to grips very quickly with unfamiliar technology, demonstated an “I can” attitude (mostly - they’re teenagers, “I don’t get it” goes with the territory). Most importantly from my point of view they have gone over all the vocabulary they need to prepare their standard grade conversations on school.

 Update

Worked out how podomatic works and the first group’s efforts can be listened to here

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This week is Enterprise Week and you can’t move in Tobermory at the moment for students demonstrating their entrepreneurial skills.

Some activities are running in classes - we have S2 preparing ideas for films to promote language learning which they will pitch to a carefully chosen selection of “studio heads” on Friday - if they don’t convince the films won’t be made.  Over in English they are running “The R Factor” - a Book Idol competition which will have S1 presenting their favourite books to judges on Friday (Friday again and as it turns out the same period - we’re all desperately seeking willing Simon Cowells and Alan Sugars!)

Inter-House lunch time events are also running this week - today the Technology Faculty was building bridges in the gym - I had the dubious pleasure of placing books on the bridges to see what weight they would hold before collapse, the winning bridge held 19 and didn’t smash when it fell, unlike many others!  Tomorrow Maths and Science are running an Enterprising maths competition - I have high hopes for our House which has no less than 3 Advanced Higher Maths Students.  On Wednesday the action switches to Humanities when teams will compete in “Have I Got News for You”, followed by PE on Thursday and a bit of Inter House Volleyball.

Our event will end the week and is “Come Fly with Me” - a giant role play to test language and communication skills.  Each House will have its own check in desk, “plane” and of course passengers - as well as dealing with a few awkward customers, they have to deal with a bit of turbulence - points will be awarded on the basis of customer feedback.  Think being at the end of the week is a mixed blessing, people keep suggesting more and more ideas to fit into the event - classroom assistant was going slightly demented this afternoon as she made signs for check in desks and Tobermory International Airport in English, French and Gaelic and is about to start on the boarding cards.  So on Friday look out for the reports as Air Alba launches the first direct flight from Tobermory International to Paris!

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As well as presence on Facebook, the British Legion also have an island in Second Life, where they have rebuilt the Cenotaph virtually in a Garden of Remembrance  on poppy island - more information here.

This poppy wreath was made by our local Brownies with a little help from some friends in the local community - our post has gone a bit haywire so we didn’t think the wreath would arrive (although it did with the help of the local posties, but it will keep for next year).

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