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

There’s no one in town I know
You gave us some place to go.
I never said thank you for that.
I thought I might get one more chance.
What would you think of me now,
so lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
now I’ll never have a chance.
May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
So what would you think of me now,
so lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
now I’ll never have a chance.
May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.
And if you were with me tonight,
I’d sing to you just one more time.
A song for a heart so big,
god wouldn’t let it live.
May angels lead you in.

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?”

The class have been preparing a little memorial service - need appropriate music?  We have found lots on iTunes and downloaded, one of the class will bring speakers so we can listen to it.  I’ll also take pictures of the war memorials on my iPod so they can see the names on the war memorials here and in France.  We’ll be able to record the little service whilst we’re there and podcast it when we get back.

As if all that wasn’t enough, thanks to Joe, via his Tumbleblog, I downloaded the Métro map of Paris from http://www.isubwaymaps.com/.  Although you can’t really see the full map, you can see it joined together and can open up the bit you’re looking for - likely to rely on the paper variety in Paris, but very useful to put on our iPods in class for a bit of practical work.

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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.