Campsmount Technology College

The focus of the Teaching Collaborative meeting on Tuesday 17th January was the launch of Campsmount’s Professional Enquiry Groups. The presentation is shown below. Discussions centred around the question: ‘What is a professional learning community and how would you recognise one?’. JPO also highlighted the role of participants and co-facilitators within the enquiry groups. A draft of the School Improvement Plan was also distributed in order to make links to our whole school T&L priorities.

Slide 11 shows the different groups accompanied with the enquiry question. A quick Google form has been sent to colleagues in order to choose their 1st and 2nd group preferences.

A BIG THANK YOU: The attendance of just over 30 teachers (in such a busy week!) is indicative of the commitment of Campsmount’s teachers in continually seeking to further develop their expertise – Thanks to those who also wished to attend but gave their apologies.

Dear Parents / Legal Guardians

C magazine is an internal publication created by our staff, for our staff. We believe in sharing each other’s expertise and ideas across our college in order to provide the best possible learning experiences for our students. Click in the middle of the magazine for full page view or click on the link to download:
C Magazine 4 with no student names

Other issues are available here.

Click on the link for the power point that accompanies Clare Ord’s article in C-Magazine 4 on ‘All Most Some’.

All Most Some Definitions

Here are a couple of examples of how we’ve used Jing to create instructional videos for our students to use as a resource to recap on skills they’ve been taught. Not quite TV presenter standard yet but ‘practice makes perfect!”

Embedding Video into RWeb

Banner Creation

* CM, AL, GAH, CLO could not present due to ill health and child care issues.

RFZ demonstrated an AfL gallery exercise that was recently observed by JPO in a lesson that was graded as Outstanding. RFZ stuck pieces of work on the classroom wall that ranged from G to C grades. Teachers acted as students by walking around the different examples, and highlighting in yellow effective techniques, and pink for ineffective techniques. RFZ explained that a discussion followed that would encourage students to think about creating a ‘C Grade Checklist’ based upon the peer and self assessment. RFZ went onto explain that it is important for students to go through a process that encouraged them to think about success criteria, instead of simply telling them. (Presentation linked to RFZ’s presentation below)

AK presented 7 minutes on the use of QR codes in the classroom via another active session where participants used 11 iPod touches to scan the codes that were placed around the classroom. AK explained what QR codes are (Quick Response) and gave examples of how they could be used for educational purposes. His blog post on the T&L blog provides many further examples. This was a very thought provoking session that made colleagues think about the possibilities for when we move to the new Campsmount build as it will have Wifi access for students and teachers throughout. (See blog post below or click here)

AG focused on tools for our Interactive White Boards (IWB). As a tool that is generally under utilised across school, AG showed how easily it is to make engaging resources that create excitement and enjoyment in class. AG showcased several IWB activities that he uses in Maths and explained how the dept. shares them by storing them in the Maths area in Frog. AG will be facilitating a training session on how to use the smartboard software in a more interactive way on Thursday 20th October at 3.15 pm in B1.

DH showcased how she has been using Realsmart with her KS5 students in Science. After being shown how to use the software by ENE, DH explained how it helped her to give effective feedback to students in her classes. She showed examples of how the RAfL aspect of Realsmart gave students the guidance that they needed to improve their understanding, and how it asks students to provide evidence of their learning.

Click here for links to Realsmart tutorial videos and case studies

JPO did a presentation on: ‘7 key findings from observing over 250 lessons and 150 teachers (…ish)’. This highlighted some of the key aspects of what he had learned from observing lessons in a variety of contexts and schools. See the presentation below.

Teachmeet 2 will take place 06.12.11 – Thanks to all those who attended and presented. Jamie

* As presented at Teachmeet 11.10.100

(The text above was taken from - Ramsden, A., 2008. The use of QR codes in Education: A getting started guide for academics. Working Paper. University of Bath)

Generate your QR code here

Useful Links

Using QR codes to enhance learning

Dummies guide to QR codes

Using QR codes to create educational posters

Periodic table of QR codes

10 ways to use QR codes in a history classroom

QR code treasure hunt generator

After visiting Cramlington last academic year I have tried some of the great stuff I saw there in the classroom. I especially liked the idea of students LOVING their work and LIVING through their work in order to LEARN.

I took part in a session looking at some of the work done at Sand Diego’s High Tech High and what the students did there. 

• Students to take pride in their work, love it, and this was done in the form of displays and even galleries for others in school to view.
•  They took part in projects that took inspiration from many subject areas including their own lives, live it.
• They produce some simply outstanding work and most importantly learn it.

I have been trying some of this in the classroom at Campsmount with student in all year groups and have had some great sucess. With students displaying their work in class they take pride and want to do the best possible as it will be on show for others to see, they “love” their work. They use skills from other lessons and their lives, they “live” with their work. This extra energy used and the fact that they enjoy tasks more has had a positive impact on learning and students have indeed got more out of the lessons and they has also had fun whilst learning.

Every child no matter what their ability has produced some great work with me and it has been great to see the enthusiasm of all in the classroom to produce some fantastic work. It may extend tasks and they do take a little longer to complete but the quality of the work and the level of learning has certainly increased.

I have put some pictures below of some Year 7 work and a picture from Year 11.

Here is a quick 2 min video showing a practical use of the visualiser in a lesson.

The lesson is a Year 8 Design and Technology lesson and the students have just been looking at one of the components that are going to be used in their circuit and the health and safety issues around soldering. The class is given a brief demo on how to create a high quality soldered joint before they have a go on their own soldering in their first component, a transistor.

There is a good deal of glare on the board but this was only picked up by the camera on my iPhone but the pupils said they hardly noticed it.

All the students were able to do the task with a high degree of success with only a couple needing encouragement to get over nerves.

Mr McKie introduced the visualiser to me and I was instantly astounded at what an aid it would be to teaching and learning in DT, especially when doing demos on very small areas such as soldering.

As an added thought. The pupils filmed this and it is good that you can hear comments that you do not pick up on from students near them. Maybe this is something else to look into?!

Of course i would be more than happy to help / show other staff how to use this equipment.

SHu.

Using the Visualiser in DT. from Simon Huntridge on Vimeo.

The images above are from the Developing Leaders residential that took place on the evening of Friday 4th March and the morning of Saturday 5th March. Nine of our teachers voluntarily attended sessions facilitated by Hywel Roberts (an independent educational consultant from Wakefield). The list bellows highlight the topics that were explored. A special thank you to all that attended. JPO

• Importance of reflection

• Moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset

• ‘Learning to swim whilst learning to let go of the side’

• The generic features of effective leadership

• Leadership and moral purpose

• Leadership styles

• Positive self-talk

• Developing high performing teams

• Personal and professional visioning

• Learning fit for the context of the 21st century

• High energy meetings

• School foci for ‘Developing Leaders’ programme

• Statements of intent (next steps)

This is a great resource for exploring some of the fantastic ICT applications that are freely available on the internet. Mark Anderson – @ICTEvangelist on Twitter – produced it for an INSET at his school in Somerset. It explains how different websites can be used for teaching and learning purposes. Check out his brilliant ICT blog here and directly download the resource here.

Little Book of Superb Sites