I am MisterJim

Every classroom I've been in has rules. Some are phrased as a positive statement "we are good listeners", others are more clear cut, "Don't rock on your chair". Teachers view these are the backbone of the classroom. Their proverbial rod of iron, so to speak. In one class I went into, they had a full display board of rules. 15 of them. In my opinion that's way too many. As an NQT my main focus was to be a good teacher by ensuring my teaching happened. I needed rules that allow me to teach the lessons I'd planned. Nothing  unusual about that. But the interesting thing was, one year, I didn't put up my class rules display (I had 7 rules on my display and I think it's probably lurking on TES resources or primary resources or somewhere) and the strangest thing happened... The class did as I expected them to do without the big list of things they had to do. Instead, I invested in them. I created private spaces in class that they owned, tha...

Today, a group of Year 9 students from Hodgson Academy, came in to run a 90 minute session with my Year 5 class. They were self-penned "Leaders of Learning". I like that. A lot of schools, mine included, have digital leaders or similar, but in a way, it restricts the good work they can do to one educational avenue - digital/technological based stuff. I think I'm going to steal the Leaders of Learning thing. I like the multi faceted nature of the title, implying that their role is to be a broad and informed tier of leaders - much like schools are trying to implement with management structures. Why not make use of children's abilities in a much more efficient way? I think digital leaders just expanded for me.

So, another TeachMeet has been and gone in the blink of an eye. This one was particularly good for a few reasons: 1. There were teachers there from both primary & secondary education. 2. There were new presenters 3. It reinforced a lot of common ground that we all have. Oh, the presentations were pretty good too. Ben Gristlewood @mr_g_ict  kicked off proceedings talking about how he uses Twitter to engage his Year 12 pupils. It was a real insight into tackling the misnomer of social media in secondary schools and it'll be interesting to see how it develops over the next few months too. His blog is  http://mrgristwood.edublogs.org/ Next up we had Jasmine Renold @JRenold  who talked about how using Google Docs - specifically Google Forms had eased workload at her school tremendously and how it had helped to develop better relationships with parents. After that, David Mitchell @deputymitchell took to the stage to talk about his favourite two web tools. 1 wa...

This evening on #ukedchat, the discussion was about 'independent learning' or 'IL' and it's importance in the curriculum. In my opinion IL is an umbrella title, one so multi-faceted that we probably need to invest a lot of time determining the rationale behind it. One point that came across was from Miles Berry that Independent Learning is something innate, present from birth as a survival mechanism so teaching it is contradictory. This is something that I agree with and yet we are in a system that has institutionalised our lives to the point where children are taught out of this. They become so reliant on being told what, when and how to do things, that they forget what they are genetically programmed to do. And there's my mistake. I'm talking about these children in the third person. The point is that we have all fallen into the habit of providing knowledge as teachers. There is no blame associated with this, we are as caught up in the status quo as...

I was looking for inspiration for my class blog. One of the children had written a story and I posted on twitter. Richard, a boy in my class who was 'allergic' to writing in detail, had posted a story off his own back and was developing his own style. I wanted to share this - for him. He isn't the most confident of children and I knew that if he felt that he was valued as an author, it would encourage him to write more. I didn't expect 13 comments. The response was overwhelming and it got me thinking. We should do this more as a class, but I only know a few blogs made by other schools. So I tweeted again, using a hashtag of #classlinkup to encourage other teachers to share their blog addresses and therefore provide a comprehensive list of blogging schools for everyone to use. This was taken up by a lot of people, who added their own class blogs to the list. Evolution. Then a chance comment by Oliver Quinlan @oliverquinlan  got me thinking. I...

Beginnings I’ve always liked using the web to find tools that help my class to learn – even if at first the learning takes a back seat to the playing! I first discovered BrainPOP at BETT in 2010; where a fellow teacher, Tom Sale, was exalting its merits on their stand as a BrainPOPer. If I’m honest, there was a lot I didn’t understand or chose to ignore at first. I spoke to Chris & Eylan, two fanastically enthusiastic people, who convinced me to go home and trial it. I left BETT that day dazzled by the array of talented teachers that BrainPOP had invited onto their stand to simply talk about the impact it had had on their respective classes. With their testimonials & Chris’ sales pitch, I vowed to use it straight away. I went back to my school, walked into the finance manager’s office to find there was no budget left until April (the school was in the final phase of rolling out laptops across all classes & with a school of 570 kids, there wasn’t much left). I also had th...

Before I go into detail of the event itself, I'd like to thank everyone that turned up - physically or virtually. It was really great to see you all. Tom and I had such a blast in January that we thought it'd be a good idea to run another TeachMeet. Well, that was the beginning of a whole horde of silly ideas we had. But do you know what? They were the best type of silly ideas. They were silly ideas that worked. Last Wednesday, just shy of 140 teachers descended on our school. They came both locally, nationally & internationally. In fact, one teacher from Germany was so impressed that he's gone back already plotting his own take on it. I'll admit now, I don't really remember much about the event, which is why it's taken me so long to actually post on it - I've had to read other people's blogs and go, "oh yeah, that was good." or "I presented...really?" This post isn't going to be a generic recap of the event, however. I'...

I've been reading various posts about the proposed future of TeachMeet & its events and I worry that the very act of regulating it, will cause people to shy away from a movement that I have got a tremendous amount of information, ideas & enjoyment out of. I came across TeachMeets last year, and since then have been to 4, organised 2 & caught up on more than 3 others online. I have used ideas and implemented them into my teaching - and shared them with colleagues who have subsequently implemented them themselves! I can't pretend to know the origins of TMs, but I know what I perceive them to be  now . I perceive TeachMeets to be a refreshing alternative to formal CPD. We live and work in an increasingly informal environment, where we take learning opportunities when they arrive, rather than following prescribed textbook activities - at least most of us, anyway. Over the last few years, CPD has changed for teachers in schools in the UK. With the inclusion...

Every so often, you start to think about things in more detail. With me it is not a regular occurance. I have what my wife calls selective ignorance syndrome (my apologies if this actually exists - as far as I know she made it up). All the more reason why this particular wave of fresh thinking has perturbed me. Over the last few years, I have been amending my teaching based on the needs of the children I taught and my own desire to better myself and become the teacher I wanted to be. No harm in that, but I was looking inwards, seeing myself as the only one who needed my help. Selfish. In a way, yes. What I perceived was that by furthering myself as a teacher, I would be better able to meet the needs of the learners in my care. If I had been a deeper thinker, or a more humble person, I might have considered how I could help my colleagues by looking outwards. Be that as it may, I have reached a point in my career where I feel that a strong, well-rounded collective is far more beneficial...

Photostory + children = chaos A few weeks ago at TeachMeet Yorks & Humber 2010, I presented on how effective Photostory had been when used by Key Stage 2 children (7-11yrs). Ever the optimist, I decided that I would attempt to use photostory with my class (5-6yrs old). On top of this, I thought, I know, let’s link up with a year 1 class in a different school, switch children so we’ve got half each. Design, plan build and watch the photostories – all in 50 minutes. The work was aimed to fit in with our literacy unit of information texts, and hit various other curriculum areas such as PHSE (teamwork & collaboration), Geography (locations), Speaking & Listening and others besides. Children were to organise pictures of their school into a storyboard, looking at including either key words, a phrase or a sentence for each one. Children worked in groups of 3 to collaboratively create a photostory. The theory behind this was to incorporate discussion & compromise into the act...

I was on twitter a few weeks ago and I saw a tweet, I can't remember who by, highlighting someone else's blog. @chrisguillebeau 's to be exact.  You can find it  here . The article itself was ok and had some salient points, but there was a quote on it from Hafiz, a 14th century Persian poet, that mesmerised me, in fact it made me think very deeply about my teachers and me as a teacher. It described, in far less words than I could possibly manage, the type of person I am and, more importantly, the type of person I strive to be. I guess that everyone has a moment that makes them evaluate what they're doing with their lives. Are things turning out the way they planned? Are they serving themselves, or others? What is the purpose that drives them to succeed? Big questions. All of which were prompted by this poem. I looked first at the opening line, ' The small man ' and thought, is this me? Have I, as a teacher, ever done this? Have I limited children's exp...

Educo (v)–  to draw out, to lead, to raise up, to praise, to rear Online Dictionary (University of Notre Dame) While writing this, the main thought buzzing around my head was: it is my job to create tomorrow’s teacher? If this was so, the focus then became what impact we have on the creation of the next generation of teachers. Tomorrow’s Teacher will be the same as the teacher of today. It will require the same empathic nature that makes us able to communicate with others. It will require determination to push those who need pushing; the composure to restrict those who must be restricted; the compassion to comfort those who hope for comfort; the passion to inspire those who dream of greater things; the skills to influence those without direction; the knowledge to develop those who must be developed. In short, these things will always need doing; it is the nature of the job. What we must ask ourselves is what setting will these actions take place in? How will these skill...

Educo (v)–  to draw out, to lead, to raise up, to praise, to rear Online Dictionary (University of Notre Dame) While writing this, the main thought buzzing around my head was: it is my job to create tomorrow’s teacher? If this was so, the focus then became what impact we have on the creation of the next generation of teachers. Tomorrow’s Teacher will be the same as the teacher of today. It will require the same empathic nature that makes us able to communicate with others. It will require determination to push those who need pushing; the composure to restrict those who must be restricted; the compassion to comfort those who hope for comfort; the passion to inspire those who dream of greater things; the skills to influence those without direction; the knowledge to develop those who must be developed. In short, these things will always need doing; it is the nature of the job. What we must ask ourselves is what setting will these actions take place in? How will these skill...