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I’ve only got round to doing what I should have done a while ago and started adding links to a del.icio.us account. I’ve never understood the name and why it’s broken up the way it is and it did turn me against it a bit - silly I know but I can never remember where the dots go, but never mind - as Sam says to CJ in The West Wing, “let’s not dwell on your coming late to the party and celebrate that you showed up at all”!
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.
Just having another play with Wordle - this time looking at its use with poetry.
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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I’ve been looking over the last couple of weeks at local war memorials to see if anyone from Mull is buried at Tynecot which we are visiting with S3 next week. I took the chance today to go for a walk at Calgary Beach, before visiting the old cemetery in Dervaig where I came across the grave of someone who died in Dervaig in 1912 aged 80, but who had fought in Crimea and India - what things he must have seen and how different from Dervaig and Calgary.
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.
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.
I’ve seen many versions of Tom Lehrer’s “Elements Song”, but our chemistry teacher in school told me about this version - they’ll be dancing in the chemistry labs.
Thanks to Robert Hill for this useful tool called
Shared Copy - very easy to annotate and share websites. I think it has many MFL uses (and lots of other subjects too). I might use it for example to teach reading skills - here’s one I had a very quick go at, simple and easy to use, it can then be saved and shared with pupils. Or indeed pupils can annotate the sites and share with others.
Here is the link to the one I did earlier - I think others can now add to it
http://www.africanimo.com.sharedcopy.com/animaux/ac57e44f2c80d0eb5d677ba85efbb5e4.html
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
