Bringing in Popular Culture: Thematic Contexts in KS1
By glancing at some of my previous blog posts I think it is hard to glean the fact that I am actually an Early Years/KS1 educator who has been teaching Year 2 for nearly five years. A lot of my blog posts have reflected theory and practice in terms of ‘education’ and not ‘classroom.’ My [...]
How do you inspire writers?
I’ve been asked to run a workshop about how to inspire writers and help raise writing attainment across the primary-phase as part of a PD day at my school in a couple of weeks. I obviously have my own ideas, views and ways of doing so but I’m really interested to hear what others think. Particularly in [...]
Education cuts and the future of CPD
The recent education cuts by the UK Government are well documented with the cuts appearing to be getting deeper, particularly in relation to higher education. But what does this mean for schools? Organisations such as Becta and Creative Partnerships have already been axed, the Primary National Strategies have been disbanded, Local Authorities are being massacred and school budgets have [...]
Growing Greener Futures
Friday 22nd October 2010 – I slept in, my bag strap broke, my MacBook wouldn’t work, I misplaced my iPad four times, Google Maps wouldn’t work (when I was running a session on it) and I forgot to print out the information sheet for speakers. In terms of conference day problems that isn’t too bad [...]
Why ‘Growing Greener Futures’ is important
I recently took up a new role in my school as creative learning coordinator, which includes coordinating our School of Creativity programme with Creative Partnerships. Over the past three years we have been engaged in work based on outdoor learning, living with the land and digital technologies. This has included redeveloping areas of our school [...]
No fate but what we make…
In recent months there has been a lot of concern and ambiguity over the current educational context, particularly in England. The introduction of free schools, academies and abolishment of BECTA have caused debate within the educational sector. We no longer have a new primary curriculum and the Primary National Strategies are practically no longer acknowledged. We are currently in [...]