From hospital to toilets
Angus MacRury
Thursday 01 December 2005
Today I am trying to get a lot of bits and pieces finished. I cannot really get my teeth into anything as I have a hospital Appointment at 11’o’clock and I will be out of school for a couple of hours. After kidneys scan, a bladder scan and three x-rays I am back to school. This afternoon I have meeting with Liz Surrige who is the NQT co-ordinator for East Lothian Council. As a former PGCE Graduate myself I appreciate that my first couple of years of teaching were full of mistakes and poor judgement. I would have benefited greatly from the current in post training and support the current probationer system promotes. Having 0.3 out of class would have been wonderful as I would have had time to prepare lessons, reflect of the past week, observe colleagues, visit other establishments and so on. Read the article by KEVIN SCHOFIELD in The Scotsman 30th November, "Tomorrow's teachers face the hardest lesson". After school The children are working on filming a murder Movie with Kate Spencer and Marjorie as part of the Whoosh programme. There are 15 pupils after school that is almost the entire P5/6/7. We must be doing something right. I set the targets using all the available data in school for the next 2 years Our Tree year Average comes out at 84% for Reading, 73.4% for Writing, and 73% for Maths.
Tuesday
I am in class today working with P5/6/7. We are now on to planning and writing our poems. The children are writing really well and we will continue tomorrow. WE then go on to problem solving. The whole class are really enjoying this. We are beginning to see the confidence and approach to the problems being more systematic. The class do not want to stop, they are really enjoying today’s problems. We then spend some time before lunch continuing our Internet Safety theme. The internet fails as it tends to when you want to do something on line, so I wing it and do a lesson on saving documents into your own folder on the fileserver. This is successful with all pupils able to do it. We are getting somewhere. In the Afternoon Ann Marie takes the class for Art and the children create Items for our School Christmas Fair. The art work and ideas are super. After Art I try the Internet Safety Site again and this time it works. After School I take the ICT club till 4:45pm The 18 children at the club are really enthusiastic about ICT. Today we had primary 4 pupils recording on the I-pod and uploading their interviews to I-tunes This little machine has huge potential for developing Listening and talking skills in pupils as well as giving them a focus for active questioning. At the same time six primary six pupils are filming a scripted scene on the school digital video camera and editing it in Imovie. The club is buzzing with innovation and creativity, all of it pupil generated. A core group at the Ict club are working on online games and the challenges they have been facing are incredible,. As Marc Prensky stated at SETT maybe this is the way education is going.
Wednesday
This morning I am with P5/6/7 language group. Today we continue our Poems which are beginning to emerge as very strong pieces of writing cross Levels C, D and E.
After being in class I completes Evaluation Visit Return before Ruth Munro visits next week. The school is changing and for the better. When you see all the changes in a year in front of you on paper you wonder how the staff have been able to take it on board. The focus is very much now on the children and with this we cannot go wrong.
After this is emailed I start an application to the Young People’s Fund to try to secure funding for the Trip to York. I email Marie Prior to give me some pointers for the application and we agree to meet.
I then contact Margaret MacPhail at LTScotland about a training day for changing our school website on 14th of December in Glasgow. I look through the material, Creating and Managing a School Website and e-mail Richard at East Linton to see if he is going to this too.
After I do this I update the school website which I neglect every now and again. I want to get the pupils more involved and hopefully this new website will allow this to happen.
I pop into the hall to check on rehearsals for the school play on the 15th December. The singing is super the acting is of Coronation Street standard.
Christine and myself collate the latest school Newsletter. This one is huge as there are so many things going on in the school.
I contact Liz MacLean about various outstanding issues with the fabric of the building especially the pupil toilets which are now reaching the end of their life. I enquire again about storage in the school.
I head home to music from Crowded House. Tonight I am making a beef and green pepper stir fry for dinner and cannot wait to eat it.
Marion is on Maternity leave from today and Euan starts 5days in West Barns Nursery tomorrow.
Thursday
Today I catch up with various things such as distributing to staff the 360 degrees Competency Assessment Materials. They think this is wonderful and the word revenge is mentioned a few times (in jest I hope.) I am looking forward to seeing the results from this. I work with a P7 pupil on her Level C writing re-assessment. I hope this is successful as the pupils has shown huge leaps in learning in the past year and deserves to do well. The test itself is nonsense “Food Journey”. This must rate as one of the worst assessments I have ever seen for a Level B/C. But who am I?
I phone David Hughes from ELIS regarding a pupil and we agree to meet later in the day.
I then update any errors in the school parent handbook. I pass them to Christine to alter.
I e-mail Penny at Dunbar Primary and Gavin at Dunbar Grammar about pupils being put forward to the Authority Moderation Panel. I enquire whether it would be good to meet or observe the pupils prior to the meeting so I can add additional supporting information.
I contact Paul at Dunbar Grammar about whether the science department want us to deliver the first two lessons from CASE for Primary Seven pupils. This was raised at the last Cluster Heads Meeting and I need to know as staff Development are chasing me to confirm attendance at training. Paul. replies informing me that this has been passed to the Science department.
I receive a positive reply from Liz MacLean who agree to come down next week to look over my concerns. Thank you for a speedy reply Liz.
Tonight we have after school Sports which Fiona our PE specialist takes till 4:30pm.
This week 48 pupils will have stayed on at school for after school activities.