Could this be the best advert ever?

Awesome!

Pip Davenport on Facebook

After his 'guest appearance' on the English writing SATs last week, it seems that Pip Davenport is working hard on creating a bit of publicity for himself!

The 19th century fairground ride inventor was the subject of the biography the Year Six children were asked to write in the long writing paper. Now, somebody has created a Facebook page for him! Ironically, he has joined the "It's Time to Stop SATs" group!

His first friend was a certain Citronella Garnet, whose name is made up of two characters from the SATs reading paper!

Very funny!

Maths Test B

So that's it - all over!

I thought that Maths Test B was slightly easier than Test A. The questions were all do-able. I didn't like the way that the Peaches question was asked. The number of times I read this out to children was incredible. It was a shame that 'perpendicular' turned up. This is a word you tend to use just a few times over the year, but it was worth 1 mark in the SATs. Rotational symmetry appeared for the second year in a row. But no ratio, and no co-ordinates - this is rare!

Anyhow, now it's time to get on with all those things we've put off for a few months!

Maths Test A & Mental Arithmetic Test

I thought that Test A was quite fair really, with a range of questions on many different topics. It gets clearer each year that the test goes in order from Level 3 questions, then Level 4 and then Level 5. The children's exam technique has definitely improved by doing their best questions first (but isn't it sad that 11-year-olds can do this). It's a shame that my maths class this year are one of my weakest.

The mental arithmetic test was not too bad at all, in my opinion. How my children agreed!

Reading Test

After our delight with the choice of writing for yesterday's tests, we were brought right back down to earth today with what I thought was a difficult paper. Some very tricky questions

Reading Test

After our delight with the choice of writing for yesterday's tests, we were brought right back down to earth today with what I thought was a difficult paper. Some very tricky questions and a not very interesting topic. How dull was that story?! I felt sorry for our pupils who used an enlarged paper - it was in black and white!

Writing Tests

I was really pleased with these tests!
The Long Writing test was a biography - Pip Davenport! Blimey, isn't this one of the first times ever that the task is actually a genre of writing that is actually studied in Year Six?! After picking genres that no one could ever guess at - finally we get one that we've studied this year! Speaking to colleagues from other schools, it would appear that some children were concerned about historical accuracies - e.g. worrying about things like Pip using a mobile phone or something similar. However, I feel this should be outweighed by their understanding of skills from our study of this style of writing.

The Short Writing test was to write a page from a book for Year Six memories! Blimey - if the children didn't have something to write about for this then they never will!! However, I'm curious to know if, when the results are published, the markers will publish the children's thoughts about their most challenging moment - the SATs!

The spellings today didn't seem too bad. I'm sure we've had a few of these before.

Topicbox

Topicbox is a fabulous website run by teachers where all the web links have been sorted by topic. You can find online activities and resources for every curriculum subject and every aspect of that subject.

Moving House Part 4

Well, this morning we had our first viewing of the house. Hopefully we should hear soon whether they are interested in buying! I hope so!

Top tune of 2006

Well, after a month long survey of the musical tastes of the visitors to this site, it can finally be revealled that... There is a tie!

After a massive... wait for it... 8 votes(!!) the top tunes are:
Joint 4th: Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Hears My Song
Joint 4th: The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger
Joint 1st: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Joint 1st: Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
Joint 1st: Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancing

All deserved winners, I'm sure you will agree.

I thought I'd go for a more teacher-like poll for February, but I don't really want to. I wondered whether this might increase the votes (and the number of comments!)

Which subject do you least like teaching?

Amalgamation

The amalgamation of our school with the infants took another step forwards today. I, our Head, the Infants' ICT Co-ordinator and the Infants' Head met with people from the County's ICT department to discuss ICT implications for the amalgamation.

It sounds like there will need to be some work to be done, and it all seems fairly straightforward. Not much can be done, however, until we know who the new Head will be, where the admin offices will be and what the name of the new school will be. Very complicated!

One thing that was agreed was that we will continue to use a company called Red Top IT for our ICT support and maintenance. I defy anyone to come up with a better, more friendly, more flexible service that the one that they provide.

School Newspaper

Something I've been really keen on starting in our school was a school newspaper. Today we issued our second edition! It looks really impressive and the children have worked hard.

Our Literacy subject leader and I have spent a lot of time with the children and it has been rather complicated keeping all the children together. I was wondering if anyone else ran a school newspaper and if they had any tips as to how we could organise it in a more manageable way for the children and ourselves!!

MMU Ofsted

My fellow Trainee mentor and I met up with an OFSTED inspector this morning to discuss how our school prepares trainees. We were awarded Professional Development status from MMU in July and so they wanted us to meet up with the inspector as an example of good practice!!

The inspector was really nice and very interested in all the things we had to say! Good luck MMU!

Moving House Part 3

Well it's done! We are officially on the market!

We are on Right Move and we have a huge For Sale sign right next to our front window. Now we've got to keep the house tidy in case we have any visitors!! Doh!

Moving House Part 2

Well - we've done it! We've had our house valued and have placed it on the market for £117500!! In a mortgage meeting, the adviser told us we could get up to £236000!! No way are we going to do that - it would cost about £2000 for the mortgage each month! No thanks - we want to have a life at the same time as owning the house!!

We are going to look up to £160000 and we've seen details of some stunning houses. We aren't going to jinx things by going to view any just yet! We will wait to see if we get an offer!

Micro-organisms

We have concluded our look at this topic today. I have really enjoyed teaching this, this year. It's hard to believe how much we crammed in, and yet there's a lot more that we could add. The children took a tour of our school kitchen to look at food safety and had a visit from a GP to talk about bacteria, viruses and fungus. The children designed posters to show good food safety and to show what they learned about useful micro-organisms. They grew yeast and investigated the best conditions to grow mould. The children studied various website.

Here are some of the sites we used:
Foodlink
BBC Science Clips
Microbe Zoo
Bug Investigators
What are bacteria?
Composting
Food Standards Agency
Cells Alive!

Next year we plan to set up our own compost. The one thing big missing this year is a good video about micro-organisms. Does anyone know of one?

Lost T-Shirt: The Numbers

I have treated myself to a Lost t-shirt - well I need something to keep me going until Feb 11th! It has the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 on it. All real fans need to get one of these! I bought mine at Yak's Shack Ebay store.

I am NOT nearly 30!!

It's my 28th birthday tomorrow. I have been reliably informed by the children today that I look older when I am dressed smartly, but look younger when dressed casually. I argued with them, that I am not nearly 30!! A couple of children made me a card saying 'Now you're nearly 65, you need to get your bus pass!' Cheers kids!!