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I have found myself in a similar situation today, Chris. My seven year old daughter heard on the news this morning (while she was playing with her dinosaur stickers) that thousands of police officers and troops have joined in the manhunt. She came to ask me about it. The most frightening thing for her was that the 12 people at Charlie Hebdo were killed for drawing and for writing, the two things that she like best. It's difficult enough for us, as adults, to make sense of it all.
Educating Charlie
When I was 9 I was scared of Freddy Kruger. I had never seen any of the movies, but I had seen the VHS cover and we all talked about it in school. It gave me nightmares. Tonight my 9 year old son told me he had had a nightmare, about terrorists. I am no expert in terrorism, and only have a tea...
What a fantastic post, Mark. Thank you so much for the kind words and for the call to battle!
Clare
Sunderland Primary Languages Conference & the future of Primary MFL
Just a quick post to say how much I enjoyed being with colleagues at this event yesterday (17th March). Here is the link to all of the resources on the Sunderland Website including my notes to accompany the session I did on using music to support language learning. To understand some of th...
Hear, hear Mark!
Particularly this bit: "If I could change one thing in any school that I think would make the biggest difference to a school's success it would be to urge any SMT to devise a culture of encouraging, rewarding, praising the staff for the work they do. How ironic that schools whose sole purpose is to inspire pupils to grow and learn so often conspire to belittle and beat down the staff they rely on to achieve the former." And I have to say that's a big difference I've noticed between primary and secondary (in my experience, anyway). In my primary school, colleagues will say if they like something and if they can see if the children like it. In secondary it would have been "yes, it's very nice but how does it address x, y and z targets, will it move them from grade x to grade y?"
I've learned more about our noble craft from interacting with colleagues such as yourself "virtually" than I ever have "in real life".
Reflections on why a teacher might want to write a blog
I remember 2 years ago when I first formed this blog. My excitement when I had my first page views was matched by my surprise that anyone found it interesting! 41690 page views later and I thought I would summarise some of the main reasons why any teacher might want to maintain a blog site. Thes...
Top idea, Mark - thanks!
Powerpoint secret messages using motion paths
In the early days of writing this blog, I described how you can imitate the spotlight function of an IW board in powerpoint by using motion paths and the correct colours for the highlight box, text and slide background. These posts are here and here. As a follow up to this, and with the annual N...
Some excellent ideas here, Mark. I am wanting to do more singing with my classes this year and this has given me some more ideas of how to achieve that aim.
Clare
Backing Tracks to introduce or practise language
In the last few weeks I seem to have been on creative overdrive. I have been running a Singing and MFL project in a Derbyshire Primary school, working with all yr 3/4/5/6 groups over a 4 week period. With their class teacher, TAs and their French teacher present in the lessons we have been looki...
The responders in the early replies to the original post on the TES appeared to subscribe to the "Target Language 100% of the time" school of MFL teaching. So yes, with limited language there is only so far you can go. As soon as I started finding out about Thinking Skills and Bloom I realised that valuable language learning can take place via English just as much as it can in the TL, and gradually abandoned the 100% TL method in which I had been trained.
In my experience pupils achieve a much higher understanding and appreciation of language and how it works if they get the change to analyse it by way of thinking skills activities and to discuss it in English. When they discuss, say, French, in English, they often use the TL words anyway to illustrate their points.
Of all my 14 years in the secondary classroom, the lesson I remember best is Y9 Spanish when I tested out my "Sophie's best friend" activity, and one group of 4 girls had a stand-up argument in the classroom about what the answer was. They were constantly quoting from the texts and justifying their opinions. It was amazing, and a huge learning experience for the whole class.
You can't do that in language teaching...
My dear friend @joedale sent me a link to a TES discussion board about how to use Bloom's/Anderson's revised Taxonomy in the languages classroom. I was amazed by the negative nature of some of the responses that were posted claiming that our language learners could only ever get up to applyin...
I don't think many of our blogs would exist if it were not for your blog, Joe. Happy Birthday!
May the 4th be with you!
I began this blog 4 years ago today. How my life has changed since then! Thanks for stopping by and showing support along the way. It is much appreciated.
Absolutely! When I start evangelising about Twitter and my PLN, the uninitiated tend to glaze over, but you're exactly right !
I enjoyed reading this post.
Clare
Why I love the web
I gave a CPD session on using Web 2.0 to the staff at my school last night - my first one ever! It was great to be able to pass on information about the many inspirational and useful web apps that are out there for teachers to use, but I was struck by the fact that almost no-one attending the se...
I think your presentation works well as a Prezi. Thank you for teaching me that you can upload more than just ppts to slideshare !
Clare
CPD session: Using Web 2.0 in the classroom (in a funky way)
using ICT in the classroom (in a funky way) on Prezi Using ICT in the classroom (in a funky way) View more documents from simonhowells.
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