The end of the school year comes with rituals. Prize-giving, leavers dinners, writing reports and end of year tests. Even though I know that standardised tests aren't completely accurate at measuring students learning growth, there's something reassuring - dare I say gratifying - in seeing those numbers going up. It backs up your judgements and... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection – Gone Quiet
It's been almost a month between posts. Over the last few weeks of term school production gradually took over my life. By the end of term I could barely think much less write something resembling a coherent blog post. This is not to say that production was all bad. I enjoyed teaching dance, finally got... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: Minecraft, MLEs and Quadblogging! Oh my!
I've become a huge quadblogging fan. For those not in the know quadblogging is when a group of four classes take turns to read and comment on individual blogs. The quad can be international or national. After a few false starts, the quad I've been involved in this year has been nothing short of awesome.  I... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: Sucking it up
Earlier this week a blog post came through my twitter feed from a teacher who walked away from the profession. I recommend you read the post first. Don't worry, I'll still be ranting when you get back. The raw emotion in that post struck a chord, the ugly side of our profession that we don't talk about... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: Shall we dance?
Phew. Just under 4 weeks until production and the scene I'm in charge of is... 1950s rock and roll dancing. I'm one of those clumsy sorts who is forever falling over and dropping things. For that reason my dancing strictly to the gym to limit the chances of doing damage to myself and others. Yet here... Continue Reading →
When students start modifying assessment…
I'll freely admit that when using google docs for the formal writing assessment my primary purpose was actually to make my job a teacher a whole lot easier. I loathe marking paper tests with the fire of a thousand suns. No matter how hard I try, I end up swimming in a sea of paper and... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: The value of connections
Over the last few days I've seen a few pleas for help about the value of being a connected educator. I define a connected educator as one who uses social media to connect with other educators in their field. The platform for connections is actually relatively unimportant. blogs, twitter, pintrest, facebook, ning, google+, bulletin boards,... Continue Reading →
Doctopus + goobric making google apps for education more awesome
I love Google Apps for Education. However managing workflow can be an absolute nightmare with students sharing new docs and not naming the correctly which can make it hard to find work. Moreover keeping an eye on your data can be even more cumbersome. But what if there was a system that easily shared documents... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: Take a walk with me
Over the last three weeks my class has been participating in learn to swim lessons put on by our local swimming pool. As with many things like this. It is easy to gripe about disruptions to the classroom programmes in the middle of a busy term. However after the first session realised these three weeks... Continue Reading →
Weekly Reflection: Creating classroom calm – meditation in classroom
During the summer holidays I had the pleasure of visiting the amazing learning space of @sherratsam and his colleague Chad. If you ever get the chance to visit either of these educators, please do. However for those whose PD budget doesn't quite stretch to a visit to international classroom visits, you can visit their blog Time Space... Continue Reading →
Teaching the Teacher 