Lynne Horn

I’ve had to tear myself away from long, lazy lunches and watching the Olympics (and isn’t Greco-Roman wrestling a fascinating sport!) to return to school, well all good things must come to an end…

So my aims for this term:

Continue to develop cooperative learning - had to give a little presentation on its benefits as regards behaviour this morning which seemed to go down well.  This time last year I had just done the 3 day “beginner’s” course, and have since done another 3 days over the year so I am brimming with more ideas and keen to take it forward.

ICT - iPods, blogging, wikis are all on my agenda this year, two important things though will getting the most out of the Smartboard and ensuring that I get as many sites unblocked as I can - I feel a mini revolution coming on, anyone coming to help me unblock the barricades??

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Well, not quite… Today my S3 class took on the role of teachers and went to teach primary 7 all about the Tour de France.  Starting in class they had written their own learning intentions and started with WALT and WILF and introduced a new friend “WALA” (We Are Learning About).  After an introduction and short video showing the route of the Tour de France they split  primary 7 into groups and then joined the groups themselves.  They had told the class that a special visitor would shortly arrive to answer their questions about the Tour de France and worked with them to prepare some questions - once done we went outside and called for “Lance” who duly cycled into the playground to answer their questions.
(another of my S3s who is into cycling in a big way and indeed sees himself as a potential future winner of the Tour).  Once all the questions had been answered they returned to the classroom to test what the class had learned using a Who Wants to be a Millionaire type quiz.

All in all a successful lesson and something which we’ll want to look into again next term.

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We returned on Friday after a great week in Paris and Ypres.  This was a trip for the whole year group (yes all 24 of them!), so was cross curricular rather than being for one particular subject.  In fact we could probably formalise this a bit more in future and add in the relevant ACfE outcomes.  Over the week we managed to cover a bit of Physics (the workings of planes coming into land at Charles de Gaulle), Maths (discussion of how to measure Eiffel Tower), as well as Art (Louvre), RME (class had studied cathedrals before we went to Notre Dame), Sport (very popular visit to Stade de France - not sure that doesn’t also cover RME!)  Not sure where Eurodisney fits into all this - just good day out!

After two nights in Paris we moved to Calais for the evening (more sport with Scotland beating France 7-0 in impromptu friendly on the beach).  The next day we headed to Ypres - we started off the day at the fantastic interactive museum “In Flanders Fields” - highly recommended, S4 were really engaged with the exhibits.  We had time to visit the Menin Gate and reactions were interesting, they were very shocked at the amount of names on the Menin Gate.  Afterwards we headed to Hill 62 for a look at the trenches there - most have done war poetry in English and the history class had been looking at WW1 in preparation too. 

Finally we headed to Tynecot and Langemark cemetaries.  The class had prepared their own memorial services in RME.  At Tynecot they played something by Cold Play (need to find out name) as they read out the names of the dead from the Mull War Memorials, the music then switched to “The Dark Island” by the Red Hot Chili Pipers and they read out their own thoughts and feelings, before laying a wreath and ending with a minute’s silence.  We moved onto Langemark and this time I read the final paragraph of “All Quiet on the Western Front” first in English so the class would understand and then in German, they laid the wreath and we ended with another silence.  Probably the most moving time of my teaching career.

The great thing about this trip was being able to prepare and deliver so many different areas of the curriculum - my colleagues were RME/English and Maths/Science, so between us we were able to cover at least some aspects of the curriculum with help from the notes others staff had sent with us.  What we couldn’t do was answer some of the questions this highly inquisitive and enthusiastic group came up with - so my task tonight is to surf a bit and see if I can find out “who owns the Eiffel Tower?”

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Title and pictures hopefully speak for themselves - S3 raised enough money to buy our poppy wreaths and send a donation to the Lady Haig Poppy Factory.

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I spent a day at Ulva Ferry primary yesterday learning a bit more about media scape.  Ulva and Dervaig primaries last year took part in the launch of the John Murray archive - John Murray wrote some of the first travel guides and to celebrate the schools were invited to write a very modern travel guide.  Ulva Ferry primary have written a guide to some of the island of Ulva’s many interesting places - you have a PDA with the media scape called Ulva Walk downloaded to it, as you do the walk when you get a marked spot, a satellite sends your PDA a signal via GPS, it springs into life and you get the pupils of Ulva Ferry giving you a little commentary about where you are standing, as you move away it stops until you get to the next spot.

Funding has been extended to this year to involve all of Mull’s primary schools.  I am hoping to have my S3 pupils works with the primaries some of which will have only relatively young pupils next year - in return we will use the primary pupils as local experts and then make up commentaries to deliver the media scapes in French.

I managed to make up a little sample yesterday and was amazed that it actually worked!  As long as you have the right map satellites seem to do the rest.

Apart from the technology part of the day it was definitely a Carlsberg inset - if Carlsberg did inset they would probably be like this - stunning views, sunshine and a lovely lunch.  As we move into a new timetable (we change on Monday of next week) and Curriculum for Excellence then hopefully this media scape project will start us in the right direction.  In the meantime have a look at the views around Ulva Ferry primary - it has 7 pupils and you have to think that they are probably the luckiest pupils anywhere to go to school here.

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Using a combination of the last of our Partners and Excellence funding and funding from the Bòrd na Gàidhlig we held what was possibly our last film making weekend.

Pupils came from 4 Argyll schools and worked in French, German and Gaelic.  Each group worked with a mentor and other members of staff were on hand for technical advice.  The weekend was slightly shorter than usual finishing at lunchtime on the Sunday - however there was no loss of quality in the films produced!

After a bit of drama (a workshop not a crisis!) on arrival on Friday the students were split into groups - each group was given a selection of props and a product to advertise - the two French groups did adverts for shampoo and spot cream, the German groups holidays and car and the Gaelic group mobile phones.  Scripts were written on the Friday night and afterwards the students relaxed (or were we trying to wear them out?) with a bit of salsa.

After a good breakfast and a quick reminder of the golden rules of filming the students got back into groups and started filming their adverts.  As always nothing lying around Ben More was safe and the centre’s mini-bus had a bit of a starring role, as did Kay’s car!  There were pirates in the grounds digging for treasure and trying to book tickets  by mobile on the next Calmac sailing to Hawaii (still trying to work out how much that would be for a car and passengers).  Meanwhile one of the German groups had abandoned holidays and were now advertising their Rent a Monkey service and indeed I think they sold it to everyone…

After a short break groups made a start on editing before assembling for one of Mark’s infamous quiz/karaoke/dance sessions, followed by a disco.

If all of this sounds exhausting then it was - especially as after the disco finished we’d to put the clocks forward - still haven’t quite recovered from that lost hour.

Sunday morning (we’d an extra half hour in bed…) saw the end of the editing, before everyone came together to see the finished adverts and they are very good - creative ideas and lots of good language, a credit to all.

As always the students were a pleasure to work with, willing to get involved and a credit to their schools - truly good examples of all the ACfE capacities.  For the staff it was a bit of a reunion and the good news it might not be the last - may be a bit of money to start planning next year’s event - watch this space. The weekend is too good to give up completely and I can’t emphasise enough what it means for pupils on the islands in particular to meet up with their peers.  In the meantime a few photos to show that even for staff a film making weekend is a bit of fun - and a couple of photos to show there was some work going on!

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Reading Ewan’s post made me reflect on a couple of things from the last couple of weeks.  We often talk about different ways to present information.  I like technology because once pupils know how to use it they can present information in any way they choose, so if we are working on grammar points they might decide as a group to make a film based on the point or a podcast or use Comic Life and of course there’s always powerpoint.

What I liked about last week’s RME day is that the end of day presentations were all very practical - dance, music, drama, film.

S2 are working on a Rich Task - they are designing structures to be placed in Tobermory.  In French I talked them through some of the famous architecture in Paris - each group has chosen one to research a bit, their research will then feed into their final presentation.  Most have chosen to present using posters, powerpoints, building models of the Pyramid at the Louvre (the most popular building to research incidently).  One group when they are with me consists only of two boys, the rest of the group are in Gàidhlig and come to me at a different time. 

Knowing the two boys are musical I suggested to them that they could present their findings in song - and indeed they’ve done just that.  They’ve taken the facts, written some music and they played and sang it to me today.  I did record it, but I don’t think the recording does it justice, so I’m going to wait until they can do it in music and get a better recording.  However it is fantastic and to whet your appetite, here is the chorus

Eiffel, big, long, shining, tall Eiffel

Symbol to us all, Eiffel

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 [slideshare id=314078&doc=easterslides-1205955608248267-5&w=425]

 Today S1/2 did a whole day  conference on Easter.  This day has a bit of a twist as they are expected to present or perform the Easter story in some way at the end of it. 

Today was very much a performance day with - one group worked in dance, another on drama, another in music and the last using a variety of ICT.  I worked with our librarian and we had a group interested in working with ICT group - we used digital cameras, video cameras, iPods, even my mobile phone to try and capture the story.  To make it less of a challenge on the day I made up some role play cards and allocated them to pupils (we had a group of 15), and made a list of shots to take.  As I then worked with smaller groups to make the studio based part of our programme the others worked on recording their characters for a podcast and making news paper pages.  At the moment we have a rough cut of the news bulletin, which I had to put together very quickly, and at some point I can download and edit the podcast pieces.  We tried to think about how the story would have been told today if the media had been involved, so there was lots of people being surrounded by cameras and microphones with questions being shouted from all directions, we used my mobile to take a slightly grainier picture so that it could be used as though someone had sent this film into the news to show that Jesus was alive again.

 At the end of the day we gathered again in the gym and each group showed their work - in music they had put together a medley from Jesus Christ Superstar, the dancers performed a dance showing struggle and events leading to the cruxifixion, in drama they narrated and showed the main characters and events and we showed part of our news bulletin.

I was very impressed with my little group - they had no script and improvised their stories and reactions, their thoughts and feelings.  In particular I spent an hour with a little group of boys, one as the news presenter interviewing Pilate, Caiaphas, Barabbas and Cleopas.  His questions were thought provoking searching and their spontaneous answers showed they were really thinking through the issues involved.

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As part of a unit on animals S1 have been using some high frequency words to allow the animals on the ark to tell of their experiences.  Click here to see the photo and read the stories.

Tomorrow we’ll be practising reading skills and finding out a bit more about our animals using extracts from these websites.  The animals chosen are all puppets we have in class - hence the need for the fox and the crow websites.

http://www.africanimo.com/

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=F1ARTF0006690

http://cyberechos.creteil.iufm.fr/cyber15/Environ/renard/renard.htm

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I’ve just uploaded 5 new podcasts - 3 are from S2 discussing cinema (task was to make it like a radio discussion). 

 S3 were challenged to come up with something to teach and revise regular verbs - they’ve done this very well on the whole.  Although they thought they’d finished on Friday, I got my colleague in learning support who is also a French teacher and the classroom assistant to cast a critical eye (or rather ear) over them.  The groups they had to improve their podcasts. 

Listening to all of these again there are still errors, but once all are uploaded I’m going to use these to “extend learning” (quote from HMiE!) - to see if they can spot the errors and think about how they can be improved.  We’d an interesting chat at our Faculty meeting about the use of questions and reminded ourselves of the importance of “error analysis” with classes to help them improve.

It’s been a interesting few days getting into using the iPods and iBooks - as always there have occasions when I have wanted to scream, but overall the results are worth it.  A group of S4s chose to present their hotel role play as a podcast and recorded and edited it in around 20 minutes this morming and I’ll upload it tomorrow - once I find which iBook they saved it onto!

Tobermory French podcasts

(some are still converting and haven’t appeared yet!)

 UPDATE:  THEY HAVE FINALLY BEEN CONVERTED AND APPEARED ON SITE - ONLY TAKEN 24 HOURS!

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