Black Isle Wildlife Park

A return from last year, mainly for the zebras. It is hot though, so the animals are seeking shade, much like we should if we weren’t quite so insane.

First though, we are forced to discuss the meaning of the word “maximum” with the woman behind the desk. She won’t sell us a family ticket (2 adults and a maximum of 3 children) because we only have to pay for two! I’ve looked up the dictionary, she says, VisitScotland have been here and they’re fine with it, you must have 3! Her attitude is patronising and annoying and momentarily distracts us from doing the arithmetic. Once we figure out that we’ll save money by NOT buying the family ticket, we cut the conversation, smile sweetly and hand over our money, but the jobsworth attitude rankles.

The kids love the place, especially feeding the animals, but it could do with a tidy (and that’s me saying that!) The zebras were hidden away inside a shed, with a sign explaining that the zebas need to stand about on concrete every so often to prevent hoof overgrowth. There’s a more scientific site outlining better methodology than a concrete-floored shed here.

Day 1 – Cars and beaches

The car (more like a van with seats and windows that the parents have hired turns out to have two bald tyres, which have to be replaced. So instead of leaving at 10ish, it was closer to one o’clock before we got on the road. We had been considering travelling up the Great Glen, but the internet warns of umpteen roadworks. We take the A9, with little time for stopping. Frustrating.

First real stop is Drumochter Pass, where we all pile out and admire the stunning scenery, and grab some photos. Hey we’re on holiday! When we get to the hill outside Inverness and we can see the Kessock Bridge and the firth sparkling away ahead of us, I find myself with lump in throat and tear in eye: not helpful when I’m driving, but it is great to be back.

When we get to the house, the cars are emptied and soon as possible everyone heads for the beach. The kids are ecstatic, and we’re making plans for a campfire the following night.

Black Isle 2009

I have been looking forward to returning to the Black Isle so much. I’ve been looking at ideas for days out, places to revisit, suggestions from contacts about what we missed last time. And now it’s done, and I’m totally exhausted, to the extent that there’s been a beautiful summer’s day going on outside and I haven’t been in it at all. Still, with 1800 photos to go through, I reckon my Flickr account has enough to cope with.

The whole week is already fading into memory, while at the same time I can’t believe we’ve actually been. The children have already started planning for next year, and I’m weighing up all the things we did and all the things we didn’t.

Wimbledon

I’m watching the Men’s Singles Final in disbelief. I don’t always watch even though I was quite interested when I was wee. Today though, I am weary from holidays and have got caught up on the drama over the last few hours while playing about on the internet.

Federer is now only two points away from victory, but I don’t doubt Roddick can pull it back again. Both of them have played amazing shots when it looks as if the other is going to get the upper hand. Yup, it’s even again.

18:27 Matchpoint to Federer. Even Sampras is looking a bit stunned. A few seconds later and Federer is Champion but I feel for Roddick so much. He looks shattered in body and soul. Within five minutes, Federer’s name has been added to the winners’ table in gold letters.

Roddick is close to tears. Two points in just the wrong place. Roddick is put through the agony of the aftermatch interview, and shows his spirit in cracking a joke. Gaun yersel, son.

18:36 I think I need Twitter.

Final score:5-7 7-6 7-6 6-3 16-14!!!!!

Watching the final handclasp in slo-mo, the body language says it all. Federer goes for the hug, Roddick is looking into the middle distance. “What might have been” now has to go back to “what might be…”

Community Walk

I found a fabulous website today called Community Walk. The idea is simple: take a local area, take photos of the places of interest within your chosen area, link them all to a map and share the information with the world.

It’s a bit like being taken for a wander by a friend who knows their area well and wants to show it off, but you get to say when enough is enough. Brilliant and fascinating.

Blackness Castle Pier

Spotted this on Flickr. I think it’s a sculpture. If it is, then it’s a great sculpture. If it’s not then it’s still a great sculpture.

Blackness Castle Pier

Originally uploaded by Ken J. Fitzpatrick

Sensory Garden: worse damage to the haikus! Emergency! Help!

Bad weather has pretty much destroyed all of the haikus that had already been attached to the fence.

So, either we go with the A4 idea and tie them top and bottom to the fence (which I’d rather not do, since I made such a big deal about it to the pupils, and they worked so hard to achieve it) or we have to find another way to tie them on, preferably one which doesn’t rip through laminate.

Either way, they will need reprinted and relaminated and I’ll need to retrieve tham all from their individual owners’ network spaces.

The joys!

Reading inventions

Last year, I happened to mention to a class that one benefit of getting the bus home was that I could read, and that I could often read a book overnight.  I expressed disappointment that I couldn’t do the same in the car.

While most pupils expressed incredulity (or horror) at reading so much, one boy actually continued to consider the idea and a few months later presented me with an outline for a jetpack that could carry me home, but allow me to read at the same time.

Well, the 1st year classes have completed the Reading Trail, and need something to do so I asked them to consider

• if they liked reading, when was it impossible or difficult to do so
• if they didn’t like reading, what put them off?

and all the usual culprits made an appearance: lack of concentration, distractions, vocabulary, lack of a good story etc

So far so good. Then I asked them to solve one of those problems by inventing a machine, or an item of clothing, or a piece of furniture, anything at all really, that would remove the problem.

And boy, did they get into it. To begin with, we had simple iPod like devices that could read you a story. I pointed out that they existed already and asked what else their version could do.

Their solutions ranged from the elegant to the frankly insane. Some of my favourites were

•  cars that drove themselves while you were reading
•  ipods that read stories complete with sound effects, just by plugging into the book itself
• book bubbles to block out the rest of the world
• automatic dictionaries that fed meanings straight to your brain

I was surprised how many groups went for an auditory experiences. Perhaps I should read more to them? I certainly need to consider how to make the stories come alive for them more easily?

Visual thinking

Had a meeting with my three partners in crime from the English department today to work out an outline for our debating.

EM has got really into the whole idea, and is off and running with it. I’ve already mentioned the maths as an example of visible thinking that she used with her class. Well today she showed me the Disinformation website from the British Library. (Something wrong here – it usually works t’other way about).

Anyway, EM spoke about how her class had got on and brought the class’s work along for us to view. This is a small group of pupils who have greater issues with learning, school, getting involved, behaviour … you get the picture.

EM had gone through the “thinking” vocabulary with them, and they had worked well. She had then moved swiftly on to questions surrounding compulsory PE, and again, the pupils had thoght of all kinds of comments. She commented that her class’s concentration span was much shorter, so she had moved them onto the second lesson more rapidly than I had with SM’s class on Friday. However, I am also pondering changes to the first lesson, so her experiences were very useful.

SM then spoke about how she felt Friday’s lesson had gone. She and I had agreed that her class would work on the PE comments yesterday in class (the LRC was already booked at S3 English time). SM also brought along the pupils’ work for us to see, and I was very impressed with both classes’ perspective and insight.

We then came up with an outline for the remainder of the exercise. :

1. Use the thinking vocabulary exercise as an introduction. Groups of pupils brainstorm (there’s another one!) their thinking words, and write them on post-its, laying them randomly on a sheet of paper. Each group then moves round to another table, where they organise the post-its into whatever categories they think appropriate.
2. Introduce the topic (Compulsory PE). Class write up their own questions. I’m thinking that the class could write the questions on A4 and add them to the wall, but I need to think about how to avoid duplication, while still covering all of their queries. Maybe get the class to whittle down their questions, nominating the best five? Again, I’ve got the work of three classes to be pulled together here. In future, classroom walls could maybe be used, but I want this to be seen by a lot of people, including the pupils.
3. Use the British Library website to examine the concept of Disinformation. I was concerned that we manouevre the project back towards its primary focus: to demonstrate visible thinking through debating. We decided that the website was a great way of keeping up momentum through introducing the concept of lying. This will hopefully help them with the analysis in Claim-Support-Question, but also in the formal debating.
4. Use the Project Zero routine Claim – Support – Question to analyse a variety of newspaper articles. This will be the ONLY reading we give them. I’ve already got a collection of useful information together (compulsory Body Mass Index analysis for toddlers?) at a suitable reading level although I would still like to find some numeric data to go along with it. We were all keen to prove to the classes that everyone has a valid opinion, and that being published didn’t make a person into an expert.
5. Write up questionnaires for use with staff and to use at home with relatives. Initially we had asked the staff in the faculty of Lifestyle Development if they would mind being interviewed, but SM and RH pointed out that everyone had a role to play: parents, grandparents, sons, daughters, adults, children, taxpayers etc. It also expands on our previous assertion about valid opinions.
6. Complete questionnaires and start collecting opinions as evidence. The English staff have far more experience here of how long this will take, so I bow to their combined agreement that two periods would be necessary. We also need to look at how the pupils will get their information. Can we to allow them out of class? Should we ask people to come to them? This requires a higher authority than ours, especially to approach the rest of the staff, so I need to talk to the Headteacher and get permission.
7. Continue collecting evidence
8. Collate and analyse all their research. I’m pondering the benefits of using Claim-Support-Question again versus an alternative routine. I’m inclined to stick with the former, to really give the pupils a chance to get to grips with it.
9. Continue collation and analysis
10. Classroom debate. After the last discussion with S3, I had been thinking about the Native American Talking Sticks, used to indicate the ONE person allowed to talk at any time. The English teachers all immediately compared it with the use of the conch in Lord of the Flies. Maybe we should use a trainer? Myself, RM and SM were keen to have an informal discussion that could involve everyone. EM wanted a proper formal debate that could perhaps spark interest in formal debating, perhaps by getting S3 to debate for S1? The majority opinion was that an informal discussion would allow EVERYONE to speak (in fact we could insist upon it) whereas a formal debate only allowed four speakers in total. We eventually decided to do both. RH commented that the class debate would also allow the class to select their preferred speakers for the debate.
11. Preparation for interclass debate. It was agreed that RH and SM’s classes would take pro and con, but all three classes would watch, and take part in the floor debate in the LRC. EM was very sure that her class would not want to “perform” in front of their year group.
12. Debate on!

It was important for me that we all worked on this. Firstly I wanted their experience and insight: was I missing out something important? was I pushing too much? Then it was vital that everyone knew what should happen when, because the LRC timetable is just not allowing me the access to S3 English that I would prefer. Another result of timetabling issues is that the three teachers would be leading their classes for at least two periods out of three. They needed to know what was involved and I needed to know which lessons would take place in the LRC.

Thinking, cogitating, pondering, dreaming…eureka!

First class in today for the Visible Thinking project. The plan is to get them to think about “thinking” by asking them to come up with as many words as they can that involve thinking.

They sat in groups, and I passed out sheets of paper and post-its, explained the work and away they went. To begin with, they were very confused about what was required, so myself and the class teacher, SM, wandered around starting to give them ideas about situations when they might have to use their brain e.g. what went through your mind on the day of your English exam?

I then asked all the groups to put their post-its on the board, with the intention of letting them organise them under different headings. Unfortunately, there were far too many of them, and they were far too big for this to work. Only about a third of the class were able to even see the board. It also took ages because of the number of words they had come up with, and the post-its kept falling off

To try to move on, the class teacher and I removed the juvenile comments on the post-its and then I  removed a few of the clumps off the board and read them out, asking the class for their opinions about whether the words belonged together or not and this did have some success. Examples of their discussions included:

• Could words to do with readng be included e.g. skimming, scanning. They decided against the idea
• Is Eureka! a thinking word?  This remained an open discussion

In addition, with such a big class, it was difficult to let everyone speak who wanted to, and easy to miss those who were being rather quieter. Even using cooperative learning techniques to have one person report back per group, there were still too many wanting to share. It was fantastic to see them so enthusiastic, but I need to find an alternative methodology.

At the end of the lesson, I explained that the next stage of this exercise was to start them thinking about a topic for debate, and that the topic was Compulsory PE. There was an immediate reaction to this, with pupils keen to share their opinions, but I asked them to think about the idea for the next class.

I also explained that if time allowed, we would actually have the debate and have a debate between the classes and that really got the enthusiasm flowing. I was delighted by their response: they were already coming up with ideas, things they had heard from people, asking if they could talk to the PE department. It was fantastic.

So overall, I think it was a valuable exercise, although I have reservations about some elements of the lesson, mostly due to my inexperience with this, and I need to re-evaluate how they work:

• how to get everyone involved in the analysis of the topics, allowing for numbers, heights, and juvenile behaviour
• how on earth I’m going to have time to write up all these thinking words, never mind pin them up, and this is from just one class!