A good day

I attended the SLC HT curriculum conference today for the morning. There was a wonderful display of good practice stalls set up for us to visit, highlighting good practice from across the authority. Lots to see and I heard someone say she wished she wasn’t retiring soon as it’s such an exciting time to be involved in teaching and she’d love to be just starting out! Says it all really.

There was also a section on Glow – where we are, examples of good practice in our schools and where we might go next. In the primary section a teacher from Woodside and Caroline from Castlefield gave presentations with some of the pupils from their classes. I felt like Caroline’s Mum watching her up there, I was pretting much bursting with pride. Their input and that of the children let people really see what a useful tool it is for learning and teaching. Some of the pupils from my previous school of Castlefield made me laugh with their insightful remarks. There are no flies on them, as it were, when making truthful comments, and if they didn’t find Glow useful we’d have known about it! Feedback from the secondary input from Jaye was also very good and I spotted her pupils outside looking pretty proud of themselves afterwards.

Later I went for my coaching session. I was looking out the window, near the lift in the faculty of education, off Woodlands Road, waiting on my coach to retrieve his car keys. I became aware of the lift doors banging open and shut, as I must have been making them open automatically from where I was standing, and within a man desperately pressing buttons. Anyway keeking in, who did I spy but Jack McConnell. Not one to miss an opportunity….Malawi – the very man – I thought -as I thrust my arm into the lift to stop him escaping. So he’s now more aware of the Duncanrig Learning Community Rich Task linked to Malawi…. He’d previously taken the time to send a letter to one of the classes involved (at Southpark Primary, I think). I did notice my coach’s shoulders jiggling in the corner of the lift as he hooted about my brass neck and cheek! Anyway  my main, very politically incorrect observation, is that in close up view he is much more handsome than he is on the telly!

Catching the blogging bug!

Caroline the P7 teacher is a star! She’s curently setting up Glow and running a rich task amongst other things. Her recently started learning log is worth reading, it shows a reflective practitioner constantly developing how they do things! P7 were really excited that they got comments on their rch task blog and Southpark are also rip roaring away with their rich task blog too.

We were all back to school today and the heating was all sorted out. I’m feeling a bit busy just now as I only have two weeks left at Castlefield before I move on. Trying to catch up with lots of little jobs I haven’t completed is puffing me out!

At home I’m living in chaos – a new kitchen seemed like a good idea. However the building work prior to the kitchen going in has turned into an archaeological excavation…. First a big bed recess cupboard was dismantled, then a fireplace removed etc etc however the most fascinating bit was peeling back the layers of paper and paint to the original paint work from over a hundred years ago. Trends go in circles – it was chocollate brown and a sort of mushroomy, terracota colour with blank bits where it looked like ikea-esk chunky shelves had been. I could have wept however when I saw the size the original huge wooden fireplace had been – it must have been beautiful.

Soapboxes, Itchy Coo and a new baby….

Today the Headteacher from another school in the Learning Community held our first Primary 3 rich task meeting. The primary 3 teachers across the schools in our Learning Community will be developing this over the next couple of months, they were all keen to get started. Next week is our first meeting about theP6/7 rich task. We’re going to link this  in to Malawi and our link school there and are hoping that as this goes forward we can fundraise as a learning community for Mary’s Kitchens in Malawi. Apparently it cost £6000 to set up a kitchen which provides daily porridge cooked by the Mums. As a school we’d get nowhere near that total but as a learning community it might be feasible.

We’re hoping to get the children really going for it with blogs during this rich task so they can link in with each other whilst carrying out the work. Full of good ideas – we’ll see how it goes and I’ll write more about this when we get started.

A new baby arrived the other day in school…. Our Apodo for enterpise pod baby arrived so it’s snuggled in a corner in P6 until we get time to do some development work and investigation of it. The children have been poking it a bit and are excited to see what’s inside! Also snuggled in the same room is a soapbox which appeared from the Southbank Centre in London. It’s part of a big art project. Inside was a golden envelope which the children opened. They are to make a presentation/film/sculpture something which can answer the question in some way. And the question is…..what makes us human? Now that’s a rich task!!

In the meantime I’ve been stuck to my laptop this evening word processing materials for our new reading books in P2/3. Last session we started using decodeable readers in P1, so this is our next development into P2/3. It may be elderly but we’ve gone for ORT as a follow on, cos we just like it! The P3 teacher and myself have been typing fast as we’re starting these next week! So far this term the infants have been working on class Scots Language book studies with books from Itchy Coo, but its now time to get the ORT moving. So we’re all a bit puggled! We set the attainment targets for P4 today, it was a long meeting with the class teacher, but worthwhile as we now know where we expect the children to get to by the end of the session.

And in the the middle of this we had other goodies going on – the Active Schools Co-ordinator was in working with the children and a team of art workers were working with P7. The children have been making these fab giant 3D models of areas of East Kilbride. They are on hilly bits of polystyrene about 15 cm deep and a metre across. I’m really impressed with them – they have little wooden houses, swing parks, roads etc