Simple Current Affairs Game for Children
The following seems to be going down well with my class. They are both enjoying it and seem to be learning more about current affairs at the same time. What it is Once a week when the children (who are 10 or 11 years old) come into class for morning registration, I’ll have something like […]
Reasonable Doubt
I like this story to explain reasonable doubt. (From Sam Leith’s wonderful “You talkin to me?“) “A man is in the dock, accused of murdering his wife. Although the body was never recovered, all the evidence points to the defendant: his car boot was filled with baling twine, bloodstained hammers, torn items of his...
Couple of School Projects
There are a couple of mini-projects I thought I’d share. FPS Zoo The first is the FPS Zoo. Most of our Year 6 have finished exams so this is an experiment to tie in various cross-curricular themes in (hopefully) a fun way. The idea is to make a zoo full of made-up animals. Science will […]
Packaged Opinion
There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume...
Character building at school #pshe
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Pericles, or Why the Ancient Greeks deserve study
Yesterday, I had another one of those conversations about classics. Anyone who studied Latin, Greek or both to any level will have had something similar. “Really, ancient Greek? Wow. What’s the point of that? I mean, I’m sure it’s interesting but why bother? What jobs does it set you up for?” Everyone who...
The Indiana Jones of Solar Power
Aidan Dwyer – at 13 years old – has made a solar power breakthrough by looking at the way trees are shaped. That’s pretty darn impressive – a little bit like the Blackawton primary school science class and their academic paper on bees. What I love, though, is his explanation of the process of his […]
Wittgenstein, Popper and Education
A little bit of history goes a long way – and certainly puts some of the 21st Century Learning rhetoric in perspective. “The Pedagogic Institute had been established to further the Austrian educational reform program. This attempted to steer education away from a ‘drill school’ approach, in which schoolchildren...
Too much “Tuck that shirt in”
Interesting article in the Independent called The Politics of the School Uniform. While there are no legal requirements to have uniforms, a 2007 report by the Department for Education found that almost 98 per cent of schools chose to have one. Compared with much of the rest of Europe, where uniforms are relatively rare, we […]
Workspace, Learnspace, Brainspace
I’ve just been watching Channel 4’s The Secret Life of Buildings. The presenter’s an acquired taste but there are some fascinating bits to it. The main take-aways for me are : buildings and spaces actually change the way the human brain works. (more complex, interactive spaces make for more engaged brains. Fred...