Blog posts from my first blog, entitled ‘The Masterplan’ it was an Oasis reference rather than a precocious claim to knowing it all. Approx 2007-2008.
Many thanks to all those who commented on my rant last month with regards to Internet filtering etc within school, I know it’s something a lot of us come up against each and every day. I thought I’d quickly update those who were interested on my progress. I put together a list of exemplars of…
As I have just ranted about on Tom Barrett’s blog post about using Google Docs for online reporting to parents, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to use the Internet both myself and with pupils at school. It is to all intents and purposes blocked and Web 2.0 seems to be considered a security…
Ed Balls has, well, sorry, had the balls to ditch SATs for 14 year olds in England. I can’t quite describe how elated I am! Ignoring last years fiasco, these tests have narrowed the curriculum, the teaching opportunities and pupils enthusiasm for the subject for years. The league tables that accompanied them often narrowed a…
Inspired by my former colleague Mr Hill, I have decided to approach my time with 9X1 a little differently this year. To cater for the range of ability and learning styles in this class I am going to offer them a platter of resources to learn from and a clear checklist of objectives for each…
Ofsted in their infinite wisdom have deemed that half of Maths teaching in England is not up to scratch. The focus appears to be ‘teaching to the test’, now who’d of thought schools might reort to such a thing when the other option is to be labled as failing? I hope that this is a…
Richard Taylor from www.tutpup.com passed his new site on to me in a recent comment on the blog: We have just beta released a new free maths games website which is starting to get quite a bit of traction in the UK. It’s free, has no ads, and allows kids to compete head to head…
The new KS3 Framework has a renewed focus on using and applying Maths along with developing the Personal, learning and thinking skills and the Cross-curricular dimensions introduced with the new National Curriculum. On reflection the content which we need to deliver has changed little and so with some tweaking our previous scheme of work will…
I have finally started one of my classes blogging. I decided to use a wiki from the excellent Wikispaces for this purpose rather than a blog. I took inspiration from Kristian Still’s excellent wiki at his previous school (which seems to have dissapeared now Kristian has moved schools?). I also made the choice as I’m…
The £60m 2-year DCSF project has kicked off at our school. For the uninitiated this is a government funded scheme to put laptops into some of the most disadvantaged homes in the country. To quote: Computers for Pupils Computers for Pupils is a £60 million, two-year programme (2006–2008) aimed at helping some of the most…
eeePCs come pre-installed with the wonderful Firefox browser. The 7-inch screen means that screen real-estate is at a premium so I have listed below some Firefox add-ons that I recommend. Get rid of those pesky adverts: Adblock Plus – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 Adblock Updater – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136 Shrink the menus: Compact Menus 2 – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4550 Hide all the…