Cassie’s Laws

Well, I’ve managed to include a new title in the same Cassie’s Law theme thanks to an idea started by Iain Hallahan last year. He also made the mistake of commenting that I wouldn’t be able to continue with such titles so I intend to give it my best shot!

Anyway, back to business! I had my first experience of games-based learning today and I was really pleased with the level of engagement from the class.

We were lucky enough to buy Nintendo DSi consoles and Big Brain Academy for the school. Each child has to sign their DSi in and out (this was a lesson in itself!) I feel this encourages responsibility and will hopefully ensure they take even more care of the consoles than the care I’m sure they would have taken anyway.

We used the games for the first time today. The first thing I noticed was that it was a great way for one group to work independently allowing me to spend time with the other groups. I could have had every child using them at the same time but I decided to allow one group at a time to use them and they had fifteen minutes to play with them. This seemed to be a good time as no one was bored and also, they didn’t moan too much about putting them back!

The first thing everyone did today was to complete a test. This gave them each a score to carry on with and aim to beat. Due to never having played the game before each child scored between a D+ and an F. Although these are quite poor scores I think they will rise quickly at first when they get the hang of each of the games, and don’t have to waste time working out what to do. I was worried that low scores would demotivate the children but in fact it did the opposite. With one exception it motivated the class to practise and improve.

We are going to make line graphs in our maths jotters to track our result and I look forward to evaluating the progress they make!

Well, although not strictly Cassie’s Law and more like Primary 6/7’s law, I think I would have to agree. Perhaps I should explain the conversation/ lesson that surrounds the above statement.

Today I tried storytelling for the first time. For all the ins and outs on our process check our class blog. The children made up their stories whilst working in groups of 3. These were arranged by me and were of mixed ability. Basically the children were given cards detailing certain things they had to include in their stories and the rest was up to them. The pointers that I gave them included things like quests, characters, gifts, evil doers etc. These were there more for guidance than anything else as this was our first time telling stories rather than writing them.

The idea is that after a few weeks of telling stories the children will eventually make up and tell their own story in their trio with the intention of writing it down. The class are aware of this and the above statement was in relation to the excellent planning and superb, imaginative ideas that were  coming from the children. They felt that they got on better without the pressure of writing their ideas down as they had more time to think and reflect on the process of making up a story, rather than the technical aspects of writing it down. Today we had two rules: 1. You must include the information on the cards and 2. You are not allowed to write anything down.

I have to admit I was slightly sceptical about story telling as it’s not something I feel particularly confident about. I have no training in the area and felt like I was ‘winging it’ for lack of a better phrase! However, the results I witnessed today spoke for themselves. The children were happy, enthusiastic and enjoyed the whole lesson. We started today with the idea that we would have a ‘draft’ in place to tell the rest of the class that we will then improve on tomorrow. The drafts were great and we gave two stars and a wish to each groups.

Our stars were mainly related to the great content, the clear presentation and the novel use of props. Our wishes were the same for each group and this brings me onto the point I will consider when doing this again. Each group made the mistake of assuming their audience could fill in the blanks. Some of the stories got a bit confusing and the audience felt like they couldn’t follow it all at times. I think this is a minor point and after discussing how to rectify it tomorrow we will be able to iron it out and we can begin recording our stories.

I intend to post videos of our stories on our class blog and also to continue reflecting on my own practice now that I have adventures to reflect on again!

Tonight I started to play around with primaryblogger. My original intention was to find out if I would be able to export the girl’s blogs onto primaryblogger without having to ‘re-train’ them in a new blog format. Simple answer to this one – no.

Primaryblogger, from what I can see anyway and in the words of Rich, “seems faster and doesn’t crash” which to be fair is a big improvement on Edublogs.

The main issues I have with Edublogs are slowness, crashing and spam.

Slow – edublogs can be incredibly slow and at first I assumed it was the school computers until I noticed the same problems at home.

Crashing – this is something that drove both myself and my class nuts! Quite often edublogs is totally down and you can’t get onto it at all. This can be irritating in itself. However, possibly more irritating is when you have put a lot of time and effort into a post for it to crash when you click publish. To be fair this hasn’t happened for a while but it was happening a lot at one point. This was really demotivating for the kids and quite often they did not want to write their posts again and therefore not feeling the benefit of posting their thoughts.

Spam - Edublogs has definitely served its purpose and was a necessary move from learnerblogs last year but the problems Margaret had with learnerblogs are appearing in edublogs. Margret got an alarming comment from one of her girls, Monica, saying that she had an inappropriate comment on her blog. The next day we changed all the blogs over to Edublogs and since then no problems. Until a couple of weeks ago. As all the comments come to my email I am usually able to see them before the kids do. All in one afternoon there were 6 inappropraite comments referring to sex and other things that would not please parents! I paniced when I read these and was able to sort it out before any parents or children saw them. This is one of the main reasons I am considering moving host. However, will this happen again with a new host, that’s two now that have ended in the same way?

However, Edublogs is not all bad, it has accepted everything that I have wanted to embed both in posts and in the tool bar. Primaryblogger is definitely getting there and any problems Margaret has discovered have been fixed quickly and efficently so no complaints there! I guess this is something that takes time to perfect and the creases are definitely being ironed out. Whilst playing about with it myself and Rich have also noticed things that primaryblogger does not accept. Nothing major that we can’t live without though.

For the moment I am still deciding what to do. One of the main reasons that puts me off moving is that I don’t know how much the girls will use their blogs next year without me encouraging them. Primaryblogger is a totally different set up from Edublogs and it will require input from me to help them use it for the first few times. This would be no problem if I was still in the school but ofcourse I’m not. Other than this reason I cannot see any reason not to move over as everything the girls would use is accepted on primaryblogger.

Hmmm…maybe this wasn’t the best post to write on an edublogs blog! :0S

Due to recent twitter conversations I decided the new name for my blog should be Cassie’s Laws. Seemed to fit quite well.

Here’s to the next part of the journey!

A while back when I was feeling down and moaning (nothing new there!) about the job situation I got some nice letters from parents. Evelyn (my 0.3 partner and new owner of the CShore blog) told me to keep a hold of them and read them when I felt like losing it. Another piece of great advice from her!

I’ve just read a comment from Jaimey on the class blog - “It was really fun can we start p5 again?” Made me smile and gave me a bit of a boost in the positive thinking department!

Then I started to think, if a comment like that can make such a difference to a 23 year old adult how much difference do the little things we say make to our kids? I always tried to listen to their stories and take an interest in the things that were important to them. Sometimes it’s hard when you’re having a bad day and need some peace but to be fair if that’s how you feel you’re in the wrong job!

I always tried to make comments and praise children for things they were doing well and I usually ignored the silly behaviours that were sent to try me! This technique was not approved by all but I think it worked and I stuck with it.

Jaimey’s comment has just made me think about this more and I’ve realised that it’s the best way to go. Simple comments like hers (and hopefully mine!) can make a big difference to how a person is feeling.

I’ve been having a few problems with spam comments on my children’s individual blogs. They’ve been really inappropriate and they have discussed things that you would not want 9 year olds discussing.

I know that during my placement Margaret had this problem with learnerblogs and this is why we changed everything over to edublogs. Although this was quite straight forward it was time consuming. Problem solved we thought? Until now obviously and the problem is happening again.

The girls’ blogs are all under the CShore blog which is an ‘Edublogs Supporter’ – however, this only promises no ads.

Margaret has moved the class blog over from edublogs to primaryblogger. Primaryblogger promise to help in any way they can and it’s great having someone to discuss issues with, it make a big difference. I think I will move the girl’s blogs over to this as well and then hopefully I’ll be able to sleep easy for a little while longer.

Changing the host means that I can also change the email address and hopefully also the person responsible for them. Again, going back to a previous point, I do have some regrets in giving the children individual blogs as I should have thought about what happened when I left. I think this is one of the reasons eportfolios (thanks Margaret) would be a great idea. I think the logic behind eportfolios, that they move with the child, makes a lot of sense. It would however, involve a lot of staff training!

I was really pleased to see that my girls are still blogging now that it’s the holidays. Befinitedly one of the benefits of not pushing them to blog and allowing them to do it when they wish. They obviously enjoy it.

I was really amazed at Emma who has managed to sign up to PhotoPeach and embed it in her blog with no help at all. I’m trying to ignore the fact that most of the images are from google! :S

I really hope they have the inclination to keep this up next year and continue to refelct on their lives and learning. I think this is a really useful skill that will definitely come in handy later in life. I remember in first year at uni when they first started telling us to reflect on our practice and I didn’t have a clue. I don’t think we give our kids enough opportunities to do this.

I also think that reflection is not something that should be forced and therefore a blog or something similar is ideal as the children can access it when they need to. However, I’m not naive enough to think it will benefit all children as there will always be the children that have to be asked to do something otherwise they won’t do it. So possible a mixture of structured tasks and free reign would tick this box?

Well, that’s me finished. Phew is my initial reaction. It was great and I need a holiday but I’m also now jobless so that’s a bit scary!

The last day of school was very teary, was lovely to get so many lovely cards and letters, made me feel like I must’ve done something right! A few of my girls have posted about it on their blogs as well which was nice!

Currently in limbo just now, can’t find work at all but I know there are lots of other NQTs in my position. I think this is where the induction scheme falls down. The new scheme is great because it gives everyone the chance to get experience in a school but it’s bad because you get a taste of something you love and then you are in danger of losing it. Towards the end of the year I wondered if it would be better to fight for a job at the beginning and then at least you knew you had one usless something went wrong.

I found it really hard leaving CShore (again!) I had a fantastc placement there and an amazing probationary year. Hopefully I’ll be back for the odd day of supply!

Trial for PhotoPeach. Going to find out what the class think of it!

5LW on PhotoPeach

I have loved every single minute of my probation year (well…most of them ) but I think it would have been helpful to have some genuine advice before starting!

Stuart Meldrum’s presentation last night did just that. I wish I had heard the honest version of probation before starting it! Tutors always give the nice version of everything and noone tells you that by Christmas you will feel like a complete Zombie and that your first two terms consist mainly of teaching, eating and sleeping. It’s only after Christmas I think that things begin to fall into place and you get a bit of your life back. Stuart’s post basically says the main points that loads of students would benefit from hearing.

One thing I would add is that, don’t expect too much too soon. Have a small bank of resources (especially if you’re in primary) to keep you going for the first week or so. Anything to do with summer – writing postcards, quizzes, maths puzzles, art activities and basic getting to know you activities.  Noone is expecting you to have your class up and running during the first weeks. Every teacher is coming to terms with their new class at this time.