A day in the worklife: period 6: missing

A class should be here, but they’re not, so I end up helping more pupils with their personal statements.
The personal statement is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Talking about yourself and why you’re a good addition to a team is tough enough when you have life experience. Most pupils find it practically impossible. And yet, when you point things [...]

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A day in the worklife: period 5: slavery again

The wiki continues. Oh dear.
I have no doubt that one day this will work out, but not yet. There’s still too much to learn on both sides. From a class of 28, I have maybe four or five groups who have started to create their pages, after three hours work. I’ve been constantly firefighting, catching [...]

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A day in the worklife: period 4: SCRAN and slavery

Another slavery class but we’re trying a different tack. SCRAN allows users to create all kinds of worksheets and posters, so we’ve asked the class to research slavery prior to making an abolition poster using the SCRAN images.
Except, the technology is letting us down again. On this occasion I can’t be sure if the problem is our [...]

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A day in the worklife: lunch: CfE meeting

Busy lunchtime, with kids reorganising the books on the shelves and a CfE meeting. My new LRC helpers are exactly that, very helpful, but when I asked them to swap the books on to the next shelves, I neglected to point out that the spines are usually read from left to right. It really didn”t occur to me [...]

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A day in the worklife: period 3: Romans

Got a chance to relax at interval, with coffee morning for St Andrew’s Day. The kids were practically crawling all over each other to see the piper!
My favourite Ninth Legion investigation next. This time, despite giving each pair the opportunity to really read their instructions, I still end up chasing pupils who have lost a [...]

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A day in the worklife: period 2: the free period!

I was getting the new Creative Suite software loaded onto the computers the first two periods (hurray!) but unfortunately that meant the 6th years had to be ejected from the ICT. Instead I was kept busy (and happily so) providing assistance with personal statements and debate research rather than making sure the website was showing the [...]

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A day in the worklife: period 1: mindmapping

Sometimes the most innocuous comment gives you a gentle nudge to look again at your most familiar work.  Like, mindmaps. I love mindmaps. They match my grasshopper brain and help keep its output under some kind of control. Lots of people don’t love mindmaps. And yet, when I show pupils how to put a mindmap together, very few seem [...]

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Catching up

The LRC was shut for three days so allow the 1st years to do a test. At the time it was booked, I was smilingly informed that those three days would give me time to “catch up”.
Yeah right.
What I actually accomplished was clearing about ten shelves worth of returned books. Not reshelved them, you understand, just organised [...]

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The Single Shelf Inspection

Tried out an idea with a couple of classes this week, following on from the previous Random Books idea. A common problem in the library is to actually persuade pupils to look at a book in some depth.
So, to introduce the Single Shelf Inspection, I first mimed a person in the library: tilt head to one side; slow walk [...]

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The Truth about the KLQ

Following on from comments below about why more pupils hadn’t volunteered for the KLQ. I took the opportunity to ask. Their answers were enlightening:

don’t read literature, I just read books
hadn’t read enough to know answers
wasn’t paying attention when it was announced
didn’t have enough information to decide
forgot
for geeks
never told about it
wasn’t here

The first reply, I think, [...]

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