Pinterest

I love Pinterest. It's a great site for finding inspiration. Usually the ideas are brilliantly simple! You might want to follow some of my boards at http://pinterest.com/primarydeputy/.

Here are some ideas I have adopted recently:

Homework Bingo
Anyone who hands their homework in on time gets to choose a square for the Homework Bingo game. Each week two squares are chosen at random and the children who chose them are given a reward.

Reminders
I've added this to the front of my classroom. I use it to add reminders for the children about what they are working on. Like a Working Wall, I guess, but I pick the messages!

Class rules display
This helped to inspire the class rules display in my classroom.

Book recommendations display
We will be adding post-its to our very own book recommendations display in school soon.

Reward chair
Our reward chair is used by the child who wins the class merit. They get to sit on it for the whole week!

Compliment Jar
Using ping pong balls, the class have been given a compliment jar to collect compliments from other adults. They aren't allowed to put in compliments from the teachers and teaching assistants in Year Four - they have to be from other adults, and each adult can only be added once. The compliment has to be directed at the whole class. When a compliment is given we write it on a ping pong ball and drop it into the jar. When it's full (it's likely to take a while) the class will be given a reward.

Effort grade
As part of their self-assessment at the end of the lesson the children also now give an effort grade to say how hard they worked in the lesson. 1 means they didn't really try at all. 2 means they tried, but not their best. 3 means they tried their best. 4 means they tried their best and they were an inspiration to others. It's been a useful way of seeing who is challenging themselves in class.

Rewards Treasure Box
The rewards in our treasure box are used to reward children in Homework Bingo.

Homework Books
When I return from my knee injury I'll be introducing some collaborative homework books. The children will be given a book, complete a piece of homework in it before passing it to another child next week. One of the homework books will be a secret mission book, a bit like this.

Lessons from Apple 1: Philosophy

 I recently read the biography of Steve Jobs. After reading the biography I came to the conslusion that I didn't really like Jobs much. He did some amazing things, but I don't like the way he seemed to treat people. There were a few important lessons I learned from him, lessons that could be applied to schools.

Apple's marketing philosophy is:

Point No. 1: Empathy
Apple should strive for an “intimate” connection with customers’ feelings. “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company,” Markkula wrote.

Thinking about pupils, parents and other stakeholders I think its important to have a real understanding of their needs. Everything we do is for our children. Listening to pupil voice is vital. Knowing the background to the pupils and recognising their needs is way that we can do our best for them.

Point No. 2: Focus
To be successful, Apple should center its efforts on accomplishing its main goals, and eliminate all the “unimportant opportunities.”

Focus means having a clear vision. Focus means all energies should be directed into achieving it.

Point No. 3: Impute
Apple should be constantly aware that companies and their products will be judged by the signals they convey. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” Markkula wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.”

Impute is a clumsy word, but its meaning is perfect for Apple, and is perfect for schools too. We want our pupils to have the best and so the best must be conveyed in all that we do. It's about trying to make our school look good. But it's also about raising standards of teaching and learning too.

Exciting Sentences

I've recently got into using Alan Peat's Exciting Sentences in the classroom. If you've not read it then it's worth getting hold of a copy. It's a book of sentence types, with quirky names, which children can use to improve their writing.

Here are some resources I've found to help you use them:
http://www.mellorprimary.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/How-to-write-exciting-sentences-booklet-Sept-2012.doc
This is a great guide to building up a progression of standards of exciting sentences in the primary school.

The Woodfold Primary English Policy has an appendix with a list of the types of sentences. You can find it at http://www.woodfold.wigan.sch.uk/media/downloads/ENGLISH%20-%20JUNE%202012.pdf

Some amazing videos:


Also, some posters that I made:


UPDATE:
Brilliant videos from Davyhulme Primary School

5B Super Sentences adverts from Davyhulme Primary School on Vimeo.

5A Super Sentences adverts from Davyhulme Primary School on Vimeo.


Do you know of any resources to help embed exciting sentences in your children's writing?

Files Not Piles

Here's a simple phrase to help you to keep a tidy classroom: "Files not Piles."

Planning: Never leave planning lying around - it instantly sends a message to anyone in your classroom that you can't keep track of things. It should always be filed. Of course the file can be open and used in the classroom.

Distribution: If you have things to be given out, keep them in letter tray.

Collecting things in: If the children need to hand in homework or anything else, make sure that you have created clear routines for the children to follow. Make sure homework or anything that needs marking does not hang around - show that you intend to action it.

Things to action: You're bound to be given things throughout the day that need attention. Consider organising these into files - things that need doing today, this week and sometime in the future.

Reference: Keep a file of data about the class. You might want to keep in there anything else that's relevant to your role.

Recycle: Don't let things accumulate - if it's finished with, put it straight in the recycling bin.

Always tidy up before you go home. It sends a message to your class that you want things to be tidy. It also means you get to stay on top of things!

Week 42: Something new that you want to try in the classroom

Due to the school's financial priorities being elsewhere, for the time being, the thing I'd like to try isn't going to be possible for a while.

I'm desperate to introduce handheld technology into my classroom, probably using iPads. I'd love the children to be able to access technology immediately, and whenever it's needed. The technology needs to be intuitive, simple and effective for pupils to learn so that the technology enhances the learning and doesn't become the focus for the lesson. Lots of teachers write about the benefits of iPads in the classroom. I want my pupils to find this out too!

One day...

Image: http://www.sgvcue.org/10_11events/cb_online_ipads.html

Reporting Vs Telling Tales

Using http://pinterest.com/pin/43276846389755399/ I made my own Reporting Vs Telling Tales poster. Feel free to download it.

Class Dojo

Since the start of the year I've been using Class Dojo with my class.

My class love it and I love it! If you haven't tried it yet, you should.

Class Dojo is a free system for recording behaviour in your classroom. It is a web-based tool, which also has an iPhone app meaning that it is really easy to use. When a pupil exhibits certain behaviours, you add it to their profile.

We already have an effective Behaviour Lights management system in school. Because of this, after discussing it with my class, we decided that Class Dojo would only be used for recording positive behaviour.

These are the behaviours we negotiated:

You can see that the Olympic values feature, but also creativity, participation, working hard and helpfulness. All of these were suggested by my class. 

It has made a real difference in the classroom so far, as pupils do their best to have their positive behaviour reported.

Do you use Class Dojo in your classroom? Has it made a positive difference?

Week 41: Comment on three blogs

Three excellent blog posts:

http://johntomsett.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/this-much-i-know-aboutstaff-well-being/
One of the most inspiring blog posts I've ever read. I learned such a lot about how to show you value staff, how to build a sense of community and belonging and how to look after people; all of which will help to drive a school on.

http://benwaldram.primaryblogger.co.uk/2012/09/03/nqts-enthusiasm-vs-experience/
In a school that's just appointed five NQTs, with three teachers who have just finished their NQT year, I enjoyed reading this blog post which reminds us that we all have something to learn, whether we've been in the job for one week, or one decade. Enthusiasm is the essential requirement to be a teacher.

http://year4blogspot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/presentation-monday_16.html
I loved hearing about the presentation pupils put together for their class. But, I don't just love this post, I love this whole blog! As a fellow Year 4 teacher I learn something amazing every time I visit the blog. If I was a pupil, I'd love to be in this classroom!

NPQH Gateway Day

Today I took part in my Gateway Day.

It was hard work. All of this before I even get on to the course! I can't discuss the activities I took part in, as we had to sign confidentiality forms.

There's not a lot you can do to prepare, but it might be worth doing these things:

• Read through your application forms one last time.
• Meet with your sponsor to discuss what they said about you in their telephone conversation (just for support and inspiration).
• Look again at the definitions of the NPQH competencies.
• Think about your senior leadership role - forget about your work with children. On they day they are only interested in how you lead people.
• Ensure you are familiar with EYFS profiles, RaiseOnline, Ofsted reports.
• Take a look through your school's development plan.

If you haven't had your day yet - good luck. The assessors were friendly and put you at ease as much as possible. There'll be about 8 of you on the day but you are assessed individually. The assessors told us to 'enjoy it'. Do your best and good luck!

Monthly Review: September 2012

September was a month I'd like to forget. During this month, the baby we were expecting was miscarried. We were around 10 weeks pregnant when things began to go wrong. I'm not going to go into any more detail other than to say that the whole experience, which happened over nearly 4 long weeks, was horrible. I hope none of my readers ever have to go through something like this.

Visit to Chester Zoo

After rearranging our topics, we moved our visit to Chester Zoo to Autumn 1 as it fits better with our Animals Around The World topic. We had a great day, and it's well worth a visit if it's not too far away from you.

School Council Meeting

I love finding out the results of our School Council elections at the start of the year. As the lead teacher for the Council I'm always impressed by the maturity of the councillors in September. To see them grow during the year is a real privilege.

Transition

As part of our transition programme we reconsidered how we teach at the start of September. The first few days back do not have any 'proper' lessons as we learn work with the children to set targets, teach how to set out work in books, agree class rules, go over break routines and lots more. Hopefully we'll see the benefit of this over the year.

New teaching arrangements

This year I will only be teaching for 50% of the week. It's going to be interesting to see how this works out. I'm looking forward to having time I can devote to my management duties, but it will be hard to see my class for so little. In fact, with all that's gone on this month, I've hardly taught. Hopefully that situation improves.