Christmas has finally arrived in Class 1 with the creation of my "famous" Christmas Fairy Writing tent! Wet playtimes have never been looked forward to quite so much! With the aid of glitter voile, staples, fairy lights and special pens/paper the children have now somewhere very special to write within the classroom. It is amazing how excited the children become about writing when they are given a real reason to put pen to paper. The "Christmas Fairy" replies to these letters by hiding letters around the classroom ready for the children to find. These letters respond to the class as a group and spur even more writing! The youngest children are able to use emergent writing and older children are confident in the fact that their writing will not be marked. The boys love it too...there is always a queue of children waiting to enter the tent. At this time of year when so much of our time is taken up with rehearsals etc it is good to see the wonderful impact of independent writing. Long may the "Fairy" keep writing! 

To begin at the beginning . . .

It's probably worth thinking about how active membership of the Norfolk ASTs Learning Community might enhance the work of ASTs.  Seb Gasse has written a blog here in which he reports on the presentation he gave to ASTs introducing blogging.  He has put his PPt presentation in his File Storage.  But I think it might be worth putting a bit of flesh on the bone.  In the AST Network File Storage (use the link on the right of this page or click here: E Networking ) is the PowerPoint presentation that I gave to delegates to the Norfolk E-Learning launch in early November.  It's quite theoretical, but you might be interested. If you're not, ignore it by all means.  After all, one of the beauties of this technology is that you don't have to follow the links!  On the other hand, if following up some background reading about social constructivism is appealing, you might like to look at my del.icio.us links here.

 The point is that this really is a Learning Network.  The active participant should learn more effectively as a result of using the network.  And by active participant I really mean someone who not only reads and comments on other peoples' postings, but who posts themselves.  We're probably all familiar with the teachers' truism that you never really understand something until you've taught it.  Well I think it's the same in this context: you never really undertand what you're doing until you've blogged it!

 More musings to follow.

Having just recovered from an unknown virus, thank you Class 1!, I staggered back into school today to complete paperwork for my PGCE students and to pick up the pieces before the weekend. At the end of the afternoon we had circle time- the children love this opportunity to share thoughts, views and things they have made at home. Finally it was Nicholas' turn in the limelight. He proudly showed us the book he had written at home including pictures and sentences...pretty good for a Reception. We duly listened..."My name is Nicholas...I am 5...I like school...I have lots of friends." We nodded approval..."My teacher is old"...shriekes of hysteria!

I am now going to take myself off for a long, hot bath with cucumber, moisteriser and a stiff gin!...Maybe I'll look better by Monday!

I took the first qualifcation for Forest Schools this year and have begun to develop areas for outdoor play for Foundation and Key Stage 1 Children. Our school is situated in a rural location in 'The Broads' and beacuse of this we are developing wider links within the community.

My school is envolved in the creation of an innovative curriculum where all subjects are integrated. This is a new exciting and challenging area which I have implemented in my teaching during the Autumn Term 2006.

I never imagined that I would ever enjoy a whole morning learning about ICT related things.However...I have just spent a really valuable and exciting day learning about my blog etc. 3 of us inexperienced primary AST Bloggers got together with an experienced high school blogger and "got online". We had a great time and ,with huge thanks to Yvonne, managed to set up our bloggs. Working with Yvonne was great for many reasons: she's used to working with children...!, realises that most of us are self taught in ICT ( therefore know very little!) and was happy to repeat everything at least 3 times!

Coffee breaks were also spent in very constructive discussion. It is good to listen to the experiences of others and to reassure each other that we are all trying, sometimes against the odds, to do a good job. As I spend all day with very short children it was good to share time with adults and to bounce ideas around the table.

It would be really good to spend more time with colleagues from other phases as we can all learn from eachother as today has proved.

Hi everyone! As this is my first time on this I was VERY tempted to describe myself as a "vir...blogger "! However, I don't want to get myself banned quite yet! Will write something of intelligence later.

This is the very first time that I have done this! With support of friends I will learn alot.

As I am new to this blogging lark, I decided I needed a friend so I clicked on the picture of a former colleague and fellow AST Cyril. As I clicked on the add him as a friend I got the response "are you sure you want to add this person to your list of friends?" (or words to that effect). Well after brief consideration - yes, Cyril , I do!

I was getting rather fed up with the fact that my Y10 & Y11 classes didn't seem to be learning enough. I tried all my usual tricks of reinforcing vocabulary through games and flashy powerpoint activities and ok, it was fun but.... So somewhat depressed and worn out after hours inventing new games and worksheets i returned to the traditional "talk and chalk" method of teaching grammar including words like "nominative and accusative case" and subject, verb, direct object. At the end of the lesson I asked for feedback on the method and how much they felt they had learnt. 96% of students said they prefered the approach and felt they understood more. Of course only time will tell, but one thing i did notice was that an intelligent but extremely lazy boy, who never usually puts pen to paper, wrote everything down and actually did more than anyone else! So my conclusion... Don't forget the old ways. Use both approaches. We assume powerpoint and games appeal to the boys - well they do - but they also like the good old stand and at the front and shout at them approach.