My Stuff

So what have I been up to over the last few weeks? Basically, teaching! I have been trying to get on to Glow and look at the pilot but I managed to lock myself out - entirely my fault as I use the wrong password the magic three times in a row before I looked at my old-fashioned piece of paper in my diary where I have written it down!! I have managed to reset this, but I have not been able to explore this as much as I would have liked due to covering staff absence. What I have looked at very briefly seems to me to need more time to inspect, play about with, understand… comments, please!

I am really interested in how other authorities are planning to take this forward at “chalkface” level. How are they going to get staff onboard with all these new tools? Are they going to cascade it at a cluster level, area, etc? I fully expect there to be a number of staff who see the potential and will dive in and experiment right away (thank goodness!) but what about the other who need a bit more hand holding before they get on board. How are you going to support them? It is definitely an exciting time!

I have neglected my own blog over the past week mainly because I have been so busy pushing on with all my great inspirational ideas from SETT. Our school website is beginning to take shape with lots of great suggestions from the staff about how to give the children ownership of their class pages. I spent another productive afternoon with Susan working on our school blogs and on Thursday morning my Primary 5s were so excited to find they had 36 comments! Their enthusiasm was fantastic to see and I was particularly impressed to find some had gone home and got big brothers/sisters who are now at High School or in P6/7 to leave a comment. It really gave them an audience and they were so motivated. They couldn’t wait to go and leave comments on Kirklandneuk’s blog. The standard of their written French after only 7 weeks is just staggering! They insisted that I showed them how to add the accents because “it wasn’t right to miss them out, French people wouldn’t!” and they posted really full comments. What a motivator!
I have also begun gathering photos and information from each class for our first edition of Inchinnan Newscast which we will be filming, editing and, fingers crossed, posting on Wednesday, 25th October. This should be a great challenge for the children and I hope they will get loads out of it. I will post details when it is complete.
Enjoy your holidays all those teachers out there!