Author Visit - Sam Tearle

Author visit’s this half term.

Our first visitor, Michelle Paver, regaled us with tales of ice wolves and historic journeys of her characters. She shared her experience of writing, and most specifically drafting pieces of work over and over and over again; until she felt it was perfect.

Her most recent chapter is finally perfect after the 37th draft. Paver – most kindly- shared a page with her annotations and editing scrawled all over so that we can share this with our young people. This will be so powerful in proving editing takes place and that great writers are rarely satisfied before they have edited, drafted, and then often edited and drafted once more. What a great message for Mayfield students who maybe think editing is pointless: after all “we’ve finished!”

Our second visitor, the author Jeff Norton, shared his tales of a zombie character- a misfit with OCD – and how creating him was like making a new best friend. He truly cared about this ‘boy’ and wanted to hear how his OCD made being a flesh eating monster interesting. Vegetarian zombies…unlikely, but true!

Jeff Norton shared a powerful message with our young people: he struggled to read at school. As a reluctant reader, he switched off and disengaged in his learning, until one day his librarian shared a ‘Quest Book’ with him. He was instantly hooked- reading until late. Mum: turned off the light, eventually confiscating his torch when he snuck under the covers; never realising that he kept a back-up.

Norton vowed that he wanted to write THAT book. The book that we are so engrossed in; enjoying so much, that we won’t put it down: even when mum says. He shared with our Year 7s that he wanted everybody to keep picking up books- until they found the one that made them want to read. Not just glance at a cover when forced to – but actually read for enjoyment and pleasure. I thank Mr Norton as he has inspired me to ask teachers what was that book for them… hopefully we can use discussion about our favourite book to truly inspire reading via Resilience and AR sessions.

Thank you to both our visitors- they have made such an impact on our young people this half term, and I believe will have a lasting legacy on teaching and learning for the future!

Maths CPD Course - Faye Axelson

I have been on a subject knowledge and enhancement course- for teaching maths.

The course was held at the Bognor site for Chichester University. There are lots of candidates from the primary sector and only a handful from the secondary sector, which is fab as we got to have a very in depth session as secondary teachers and to address specific issues, also the course is being tailored to fit our needs.

The course is taught in phases, but we carry out some activities together as a cohort in order to see the progression of a concept and development of teaching ideas.

Today we looked the impact of the curriculum changes and began discussing how to address them.

We spent time looking at how we teach specific topics and how this can be adapted to fit with the new requirements.

I know I was concerned to see how literacy heavy and complex the new style exam will be, especially as this will be in effect for our current year 9.

One of the 1st questions on the foundation paper was …

“The sum of two consecutive integers is 48, what could the integers be ?”

This really made me think about the language I use- as I wouldn’t naturally throw the word consecutive at bottom set pupils, yet this is on the start of a sample foundation paper!

We looked at assigning values to base 10 as a numerical system, and looked at how this can be taught by looking at unrelated systems, and I learned why we have 60 second in a minute, and 60 seconds in an hour ( and that this system has been around for 3500 years)!

Amongst other things , we looked at how to teach multiplication and the new approved “single” methods which are expected as the preferred exam method, and how this will affect the year 7s coming up to us.

I have come back full of ideas, concerned about how best to prep my classes for what is a very different examination system, and with a head so full of stuff it feels about to explode (probably because we had to have a go at some mathematics tasks too!).

Next session we are looking at specific topics and practical applications for use in class and in assessment. I am really looking forwards to it, even the algebra!

Perhaps the best bit of the day  was,  I have learned that ducks can count.. to 4!

Faye

The Hunger Games: A Cross-Curricular Project

Since being involved in resilience I hear many varied excerpts of books aimed at our pupils. One of the things that surprised me about this was just how few of these popular books I had read. Last Easter I decided to read The Hunger Games, as I had seen a trailer for the first film and my interest was piqued. Throughout the novel I kept making references to real world situations and couldn't escape some of the geographical themes that were explored in the book.

I decided to investigate the possibility of a cross-curricular project and was pleased when colleagues in the English Department shared my enthusiasm. Following several planning meetings with Amy Dare, we had roughed out areas that each subject could cover and identified themes that complimented both the Geography and English curriculums.

The dystopian style of the novel was a particular point of interest as so much of the geography that pupils pick up from current affairs is focussed on natural disaster and conflict. During the lessons pupils were able to draw on references to Syria, the Ukraine and Hurricane Katrina. It was pleasing to see that both the boys and girls were keen to read more about the story behind our scheme of work, a number of the Year Eight pupils even showed me their copies of the book they had selected for reading in resilience sessions.

The assessment element of this scheme of work was significant in proving, learning linked to popular fiction is an excellent way to make the geography relevant to pupils. In the lead up to the assessment we had studied natural and built environments that felt "dystopian" as places had been abandoned or ravaged by natural disasters. Pupils understood that dystopian novels combined difficult elements such as political problems and a lack or resources. To make the assessment as accessible as possible I decided to give pupils the choice between writing their assessment or debating it. Year Eight pupils have experience of using "talk" as a vehicle for assessment as the Geography department uses this in Year Seven and Year Eight topics the pupils had already studied. Many pupils chose to talk, whilst a smaller proportion were seated at the edge of the classroom at tables with paper. I am always impressed at the mature approach pupils adopt when debating. Very few behaviour sanctions were needed as pupils were engaged in listening to one another and looking for their opportunity to add to the debate.

For colleagues interested in trialling a talk assessment, I would recommend creating a tick column criteria sheet as this helps with recording how well the pupils perform and is essential to provide individual written feedback. I have generated a few short hand codes, that used along with some key words helps me to assess and level the pupils. Finally, if you are considering this type of activity but are uncertain of how pupils will respond, I would say that so long as pupils are given preparation time to script their ideas, on the whole each of my classes thoroughly enjoyed this change of activity.

Precise, descriptive language

Precise, descriptive language

I recently saw an excellent resource that was being shared by teachers on Twitter, to encourage the use of more precise language and to broaden the vocabulary of pupils. Geoff Barton has published his list of 100 words to sharpen your expression, this got me thinking as to how it could be used within Geography. 

I decided to work on some creative writing with Year 8 who are coming to the end of a topic on coasts and coral reefs. Pupils were introduced to 3 "Webber's Wonder Words" (thanks to Geoff's list). Pupils were given examples of poems available online and read them to unpick ways the author had made the poem appealing, including sentence length, rhyme and rythym. We then snowballed words that could make it into our poems including colours, sounds and feelings. Once pupils had a bank of words to choose from they were introduced to the words arcane, lurid and iridescent. One pupil was inspired to add translucent as he felt that would better describe the look of jelly fish (now they were really getting it about being precise with language)!

The results were a mixture of visually and linguistically interesting poems. Some pupils chose to echo the sea through their sentence length and layout of this work. 

Almost all of the pupils could confidently put these words into a sentence and they left being able to spell and define the selected words. Next time I plan to use a wider variety and encourage debate about the precise meanings of these words, maybe throw in a few red herrings and dictionary work to support their skills at questioning and defining words.

Lucy Webber - Head of Geography