Week 7: Your least favourite lesson when you were at school – what is it like to teach it now?

When I was at primary school I used to hate Science. I just didn't get it. I always appreciated the purpose of having a good scientific understanding, but I found it hard to remember all of those tricky words and concepts. From what I recall, science when I was school didn't involve a great deal of practical work. In fact, I can't really remember doing any.

Nowadays, due to my non-contact arrangements, I don't teach Science and haven't done for a few years. However, when I did teach science I tried to make it as practical as possible. I wanted the children to appreciate the 'miracles' of science and be amazed whenever they discovered something. Understanding those tricky words could often be difficult so I tried to make learning the vocabulary as fun as I could.

I do think that science is probably the subject that is hardest to make exciting in primary school simply because we don't have the facilities that high schools have in their science labs. It's in high school where we did all of the fun stuff like mix chemicals, use Bunsen burners and dissect.

NanoTasks

I signed up for free beta access to Nanotasker. It sounds ideal for helping me to manage various projects. Whilst I'm waiting for the site to fully open, I'm loving the productivity tips that they are sending me each week:

"What are NanoTasks?NanoTasks are when a task is broken down into the smallest tasks or steps possible and can’t be broken down further. For instance you may need to create a new training guide for your office. You can break it down to the following tasks are involved, “research best practices, write first draft, have Person X review it, edit draft, have 20 copies printed.” Those can then be broken down such as with “Research best practices” which can become “Google general practices for understanding, find 4 experts to contact about it, call person 1, call person 2, call person 3….”  The task “Call Person 1” can be considered a NanoTask as it’s an action that can be accomplished on it’s own.

Actions
Actions

• Think big picture steps on how to accomplish your task with high level broad steps.

• Then look at those steps and break them down further into smaller steps.

• Do this until each step is a small actionable item that is no longer feels overwhelming in nature on it’s own.

Thought To move a mountain you must do it one stone at a time."

I love this approach to project planning and I intend to break down all of my projects in this way.

Week 6: 5 attributes that you admire in your colleagues

There are many attributes that I admire about my colleagues. Here are just five of them:

1 Make time for others when they need it

I do my best to make time for others whenever I can. It's not always easy. However, many of my colleagues make it look SO easy and will give time to others for whatever reason. I am thankful for that, and we all appreciate it.

2 Tidiness

I hate clutter but it seems to follow me around. I'd love to be keep my areas of the schools tidier, like others do.

3 Organisation

I love to be organised and I admire my colleagues for their ability to organise and keep to timings well.

4 Focus

My colleagues focus on what needs to be done.

5 Fun

I love spending time with my colleagues and we always have a good laugh together!

Monthly Review: January 2012

Here's what's kept me busy during January


Teacher's Blogging Challenge
I launched a teacher's blogging challenge in time for the new year. It's a way to get teachers writing regularly. I'm not sure how many people are joining in but I'm managing to keep my challenge going!


Mini-Teachmeet
I organised a 'mini-Teachmeet' within our school. It was brilliant!


Getting older
It was my birthday earlier this month. 33 now!


Observing lessons
I'm part way through a process of observing lessons throughout the school.


Visit to Chester
We had a visit to Chester to learn about the Romans.


Meetings
I've had meetings galore. Meetings are fine, it's just the follow-up actions that can be a pain!

Engaging staff

I love this post on the Leadership Daily blog. 

As a leader, how do you engage your staff?Engaged employees are essential to a leader's - and organization's - success. Without staff who care about, participate in, and take ownership over the work, even the best leader will flounder. Here are three ways to win your staff's engagement:
 

• Be modest
Share both your mistakes and your successes. Staff will see that you're both human and don't have anything to prove.

• Show that you're listening
People tune in to body language. Manage where you look and what you do with your hands so that staff know you're paying attention.

• Don't have all the answers
Leaders should catalyze problem solving. Be willing to admit that you don't know what the answer is and invite your team to toss around ideas."

This sounds like great advice to me. Leading your staff is one thing. Engaging them is another. This straightforward advice is the sort of thing that would really motivate and interest the people you lead.

Good Leadership 2: Gordon Ramsey

This is the second in my series of posts about leadership skills in people I admire.

Gordon Ramsey
I love to watch Gordon Ramsey on TV. Here are leadership skills he displays:

High standards
I'm not sure that the language he uses to insist on the high standards from the staff in his restaurants but it's not hard to see how important he believes having high standards in all aspects of his businesses.

Listens to complaints
He has written in his books about the way that he loves getting complaint letters about his restaurants. These inform any part of his action plan.

Keep it simple and effective
In his Kitchen Nightmares programmes I've often seen him criticise a menu for the amount of choice it contains. How can the kitchen staff prepare so many dishes to the high standards needed? How can the house staff build up product knowledge about so many dishes? Put simply, they can't. Often the first change he makes is to redesign the menu - keep it short and simple and high quality and the customers will keep coming back.

Recognising strengths
Ramsey can quickly spot the strengths and unique selling points of people and places. It's so important that leaders can spot these and use them to make their business/school strong and different.

Everyone know the expectations
Regular meetings and liaisons with all staff allow expectations to be shared and maintained.

Image: http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/four-essential-business-lessons-from-chef-gordon-ramsey/

Week 5: My Favourite Film

I have tonnes of favourite films and it's hard to pick just one. Not one of them is to do with teaching by the way!

Probably edging into the lead is Bad Boys. Will Smith is my favourite actor. This was the first action film that I really got into and I can watch it time and time again and still love it!

Other favourite films:

The Social Network

The Pursuit of Happyness

Back To The Future

Die Hard

Anchorman

Star Wars

The Dark Knight

American Pie

The Bourne Trilogy

Old School
Signs
The Fugitive
Hitch
There's Something About Mary
Taken

Image: http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/Bad%20Boys%20poster%201.jpg 

Zzzzzzzzzz...

Since our baby arrived back in April, I've quickly begun to see the importance of sleep. It's not that I never knew it before. It's just that seeing the difference a few minutes' snoozing can make to a baby is fascinating to watch.


It's amazing to watch our baby get herself upset and worked up seemingly for no reason. Then she goes to sleep, sometimes for just a few minutes, and then she wakes up happy and smiling! Powernapping seems to be the way forward then!

It's helped me to understand why children can sometimes underperform in class. If they've not had enough sleep their body and brain can't cope. I wonder if schools should have a nap room!


I'm more guilty than most people for not getting enough sleep. One of my new year's resolutions was to go to bed at 11. It's proving to be impossible. It's more like 11.30 each night. I set my alarm for 6 each morning but I'm struggling to get up and the snooze button is both the best and worst invention ever. I realise that many people get far less sleep than I do and cope just fine. But personally, I'm finding that I need at least seven hours!!

Week 4: A funny story from your classroom experience

When I taught in Year Six I used to teach the children how to calculate speed of travel. A few lessons would culminate in the chance to create our own speed trap outside school. There has been a debate for many years about whether or not we should have speed bumps on the road alongside our school. Most cars stick to their speed limit, but some drive quite dangerously fast. The challenge for the lesson was for the children to find their own evidence to decide whether or not we needed speed bumps.

The children measured the playground. We then worked out how quickly vehicles must drive past the playground in order to break the speed limit of 30 miles an hour. The children then worked in teams to time how long the cars took to drive past and then worked out if the car was going too fast or not. If it went too fast a member of the group held up a 'Slow Down' message (which they'd written on a whiteboard). They found out that most cars kept to the limit, but there were a few who needed the warning.

It was in the middle of their investigation that the poor postman came along on his bike. The children thought it would be funny to time him as he rode past. I felt sorry for the man as he rode along whilst the children started running alongside him. He started to speed up to try to get ahead of them! Luckily the children worked out that he wasn't speeding and so he didn't get a warning. But his face as thirty children ran along with him suggests that next time he came past, he would probably go as quickly as possible!!

Roman Health and Safety?

On our visit to Chester Grosvenor Museum this week to learn about the Romans (I'll blog about this another time) the children had the chance to be archaeologists and sort through various stones. There was a display on the wall showing a cross-section of the ground. Of course, it was layered - remains from the Roman era at the bottom, rising up to a layer of washing up liquid bottles and carrier bags nearest the surface. It showed the children how we have to dig for clues about the past.

I happened to ask one of the children why they thought things were buried. He told me that the ground was lower in Roman Times. I asked him why. He said, "Because of health and safety!!!"