Last year I produced a DVD entitled, "My Life is in My Country..." for English teachers to use with their year 10 or 11 students. As Refugee week is approaching in June, I have put the teachers' notes and lesson plan on the web to allow teachers to use it with their Interactive Whiteboards. Copies of the DVD are available from Sandy Betlem at NEAD. www.nead.org.uk

To view resources click here: Lesson Plan: Refugee Week GCSE

I'm in a training session for ASTs in Norfolk and am learning how to upload my resources and share lesson plans and ideas. If all goes well I will be able to post the Weaving Words teaching resources that accompany the DVD and my Much Ado About Nothing lessons, which I posted in a previous blog.

Here goes...

It is Fairtrade Fortnight and I have devised a couple of lessons to be used in KS3 and 4. The lesson plans and downloadable resources are available on the internet:  http://www.fairtrade-in-norfolk.org.uk/resources/lessons.html

At the same time as teaching students about Fairtrade you can also meet objectives laid out in the KS 3 Year 8 framework and give students in Year 10 the opportunity to enter into productive group discussions, prepare individual oral presentations and complete a piece of writing in which the Analyse, Review and Comment on Fairtrade.

ASTs and NEAD

In a bid to raise awareness of ‘Global Issues’ across the curriculum, three ASTs, Jean Kiekopf (English/Literacy) Joc Mack (Drama) and Alex Savage (ICT) have been working closely with NEAD to devise strategies and materials to be used in the classroom. These resources not only address issues such as Black History Month, Refugees and Fairtrade, but also help teachers meet subject specific criteria in key stage 3 and 4.  

My  experiences. 

Refugee Week July 2006

One of the most exciting projects I have worked on is a DVD of a press conference with my year 10 students and a refugee from the Congo, Gervais Kouloungou Mambs, ‘My Life is in my country…’  This resource has been designed to specifically raise awareness of the plight of refugees and to clarify some of the myths that surround asylum seekers, by using a first hand account of an asylum seeker who lives in Norwich. It culminates in KS4 students producing a magazine article to inform, explain, describe. The DVD was reproduced by NEAD and distributed at the English Leaders’ Conference in September 2006.

 Fairtrade Fortnight. (6-19 March 2006)In March I created resources for teaching and raising awareness about Fairtrade issues, for KS3 and GCSE classes in English. The KS4 scheme of work enables teachers to cover group and individual Speaking and Listening criteria and a written task to Analyse, Review, Comment on Fairtrade issues. In KS3 they analyse a Fairtrade leaflet and make their own leaflet for young people their age. NEAD website: http://www.fairtrade-in-norfolk.org.uk/teaching.html. 

Black History Month

In September/October 2005 I had the opportunity to produce and trial Year 9 resources for teaching poems by Caribbean poet Maggie Harris, for Norfolk Black History Month. It was an exciting project as my students were able to write directly to Maggie and ask her questions about her poems and personal background. She (very kindly) wrote a postcard back, to each student individually, answering their questions. We put up an impressive display at Framingham Earl High School and at the PDC showing off the approach used to unlock the poem ‘Warrior’ and the letters that students had written to Maggie. To view the lesson plans along with some of the photographs go to http://www.norfolkblackhistorymonth.org,.uk/ -Teaching and Learning Resources. -Free teaching materials. On this site you will also be able to access a Year 7 Research and Biography Project, produced by Joc Mack, (AST Framingham Earl High School) which I also trialled with my year 7 and put on display at the PDC. The year 7s loved this project as they discovered influential black people in British history. 

What else is happening?

 Global Voices
If your school is in or around Norwich you can request a visit from an international student from UEA.  We currently have students from Brazil, Germany, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Thailand and Tanzania. They will give a presentation on their country or their area of research.  This invaluable service is free.  All you have to do is visit the Global Voices website http://volunteers.uea.ac.uk/projects/globalvoices/profiles.php and send an email to Ed Paxton ated.paxton@uea.ac.uk <mailto:ated.paxton@uea.ac.uk>

Global MessageWould you like a free monthly newsletter on putting the global dimension into your subject?  If so email Alex on asavage@notredamehigh.norfolk.sch.uk 

Check us out!

The display of NEAD / AST project work is in the corridor on your left as you walk into the PDC. If you wish to download any of the teaching resources, log onto www.nead.org.uk I am also available to assist English subject teachers in the delivery of the lessons and can be contacted at jean.kiekopf@framinghamearl.net  

Join Us!

Talking Traditions and Weaving Words Innovative Project

Botswana Link 2006 Innovative Project work: Initial Report on the visit and plans for development of innovative global dimensions project:

 In May 2006 TIPD provided funding for me to take 3 other teachers from Framingham Earl High School to visit our link school, Morula School, in Botswana. 

One week before we departed for Botswana a local film company agreed to fund their own participation in the project and joined us for the duration of our visit. Anglia television also agreed to edit the footage collected (on our return) so that we can produce high quality resources to be used in our school and other schools in Norfolk / England. 

The visit surpassed my wildest dreams in terms of the standard of materials collected and input by the students in Botswana; they were enthusiastic and excited about the challenges the project brought them. Having a film crew with us for the duration of the visit meant that we were able to record our own teaching and the students’ work. We also used the camera to assist in focussing our attention, as writers, onto specific people and scenes, to concentrate our description and to ensure detail. Students rose to the challenge of writing about their own environment and culture for their counterparts in England. 

Having an animator with us also enhanced the project as we were able to analyse the stories and material collected and work with the students to bring these to life as animations. This gave focus to a sense of plot and effective unfolding of the narrative storyline. 

The storytelling research was extremely successful. The students engaged in research to elicit the stories from the older people in the community and we were able to observe patterns in the stories told: creation myths; fables; local legends. The same characters came up in many different scenarios and we were able to identify the role of each. 

The descriptive writing work undertaken with form 4 students (final year of IGCSE) produced some excellent written and video material. Their messages and requests to our students in Norfolk are inspiring and give a real audience for our students to respond to. They have written outstanding descriptions and sent video messages to our students to ask for descriptions of the snow, seaside and our market in Norwich.     

Educational Outcomes.

1. Storytelling and Traditional Life (KS 3)   “TalkingTradition"  Creation Myths.   Fables.   Local Legends 
2. Descriptive writing (KS 4)    “Weaving Words.”  
3.  Writing a story: “Telling Tales”  (KS 4) And a resource book containing worksheets and lesson plans to assist students in their descriptive and narrative work, whilst learning about another culture. The students in Norfolk are currently working on their part of the resource so that both schools gain an understanding of each other’s culture through their storytelling and descriptive writing. The final resource will contain work and video footage from both schools in the link. Students in both KS 3 and 4 will have the chance to develop their own writing, with a real purpose in mind. It will make them more aware of both their own surroundings and stories, and those of another culture. The project can be used as a model for other schools and will offer some tried and tested approaches to successful storytelling and descriptive writing. 

Dissemination:

As we have two ASTs on the team, one English and one drama. Dissemination will take place through the subject leaders’ meetings. We shall work hand in hand with the literacy advisors to tailor the resource to meet regional needs and to develop skills needed for KS 3 and 4 framework objectives and syllabus requirements to be met. 

Future Plans / Projects:

I anticipate this project will take a year to be complete: editing the 13 hours of footage into three thirty minute lesson stimuli, creating the written support materials, trialling these and disseminating, will all take time. Once these are complete we would like to work on a resource developing informative writing, in which the students teach each other about their own countries and cultures and a study of poetry where students can unlock the poems from their own cultures for each other.