Neil Goodfellow

A new term and a new job.  I’ve now moved to Dunbar, part-time, and will also be working at Dalkeith High a day a week. This will give me an interesting insight into different ways of doing things, and hopefully help me to develop my practise.  With one week gone all is going well.  It takes a little time to get back into the flow of things after the extended break. One of those things is blogging.  It’s taken me a while to get round to doing this post.  Hopefully now its out of the way I can begin to post a little more regularly.  I’ve been reading loads of blogs on a regular basis, and have come across some brilliant bits and pieces.  Now I’ve done my NQT year I feel very excited about trying lots of different things out.  I’ve saved a lot of ideas up, and hopefully through the year I can start to develop some of these in the classroom. 

I have been listening to a few podcasts recently.  The most interesting one I came across is Booruch.  The most recent podcast has a very interesting interview withe fellow East Lothian porbationer Dave Cain.  The discussion was very interesting.  Dave talked about probationers who start blogs and don’t keep them up to date (guilty there I’m afraid).  In this time of interview and stress for all probationers, as Dave discussed, a reflective blog could be an excellent resource for helping to complete your application forms.  No flicking through folders or dredging the depths of your memory to remember the exciting and varied activities you’ve developed over the year.  Just look up your blog….if its well maintained!  I can only speak from personal experience but I have felt that my blog has slipped down my to-do list as the year has progressed.  I still read and learn from many many blogs.  I was asked at a recent interview “what my main development aim would be for next session”.  Blogging, both reflective and class based will be up there. 

I read this great article yesterday about blooks (blogs that get turned into books).  Blogs like Frank Warren’s Post Secret which gets people to post their own homemade secret confessional postcards which are both funny and heart warming and very popular. One for all geographers out there…..

The most interesting part of the article was the part about “flicktion” (stories inspired by pictures on photo sharing sites such as flickr).  The Doorbells of Florence is a collection of photographs of Florentine doorbells, each accompanied by a story about the people or things that are inside.  Thses stories are fantasticlly creative.  I love the one about the alaphbetical names. 

Writing about photos is something I have tried with pupils, but this adds a whole new dimension.  I could see some great applications in English especially.  Some geographical images may inspire interesting responses.  This is something i’m going to explore.  Possibly an opportunity for some cross-curricualr work.

I’ve been challenged, as part of a whole school push, to develop international links within the department.  As part of this push the school are running an international week in May when specific projects will take place.  My plan is to involve my S1 in some local fieldwork and try and arrange an excahnge of findings with another school.  A sort of sharing of perspectives.  Having posted about the is on the SLN forum I got a lot of great suggestions and was pointed in the direction of the Global Classroom website.  There is a lot of good information here which I will be trying to follow up in the next few days.  

Installing the visitor map (it took me a while to figure that one out - I’m still struggling to install flickr, del.icio.us etc buttons, if anyone can offer some advise?!?) got me thinking if there is anybody out there reading this who might be interested in my little project.  If so please get in touch

I was reminded today, by an email, about the wonderful resource that is SCRAN.  It’s an amazing library of images, a lot copyright cleared, that’s free to use in schools. There are some amazing scenic photographs, a sample of which I’ve put here. 

It’s been a while since I’ve had an urge to post.  February felt like a bit of a slog, but things feel like there on the up.  Maybe its the weather or more likely the thought of my upcoming 2 weeks on the golf course thats cheering me up.

The blog has taken a back seat over the last couple of months.  I’ve just about had the time to keep up to date with my Google Reader feeds and have read some interesting and exciting things.  I know its been a debate on many blogs i’ve read about the merits or otherwise of ‘lurking’, but sometimes I wonder “why is it that I can’t think of any good ideas to post on this thread”, then as soon as someone else mentions something, you think “of course!!!”?!?!

Anyway this week I’ve had the “urge” to post.  I spent an excellent day at Law Primary on Wednesday.  Some of the teaching and learning I observed was very inspirational.  I was with the P7 in the morning and was very impressed with the use of formative assesment that I saw.  The school are really pushing AiFL and it seems to be producning some grat results.  The topic based work, much of which had a Geographical bent, was great.  The children had studied areas such as Volcanoes, Edinburgh transport and homelessness, some of which we study in S1 and 2.  It really made me thiink about what happens to the kids when the make the transistion from primary to secondary.  Undoubtably they have more opportunity in primary to explore topics in a wholistic way, something the secondary struggles to do becasuse of the departmental splits.  Taking these topics and incorporating them into areas like creative writing gave the kids some great material to really get stuck into.  Some of their similies and metaphors were fantastic.   

The way they were taking to formative assesment was also very interesting.  The whole class discussed and agreed the success criteria, usually 6 or 7 things, before they began a piece of work.  These were then stuck up on the wall for all to see.  When the work was marked it was assessed against these criteria and the teacher wrote comments accordingly using 2 stars and a wish.  It was great to see formative assesment in practise on such a scale.  When I employ these methods it’s usually on a much smaller scale.  One strategy with one class, something else with another.  It’s given a great impetus to my practise and I came back yesterday and really pushed a lot of things with my classes.  I had a really good lesson with S4 doing exam style questions, getting into what was being looked for in the question.  When I shared the marking instructions with them we had a long discussion about how limited they were, especially when they say things like “or any other relevant points” at the end of an answer.  Hopefully when their revising they won’t look up the answers before they do the question!!

What a day, originally uploaded by Amazing Geography.

Wow. What an amazing day. Weather is perfect. Fresh snow fell last night. Even managing to link turns. All is good.

Day 2, originally uploaded by Amazing Geography.

Day 2. Much moore snow!

What a view, originally uploaded by Amazing Geography.

What a view. Mont blanc at its finest!

I’m heading of on the school ski trip to Courmayeur in the Italian alps.  As a geographer, the highlight of the trip will obviously be the glaciated landscape and not the skiing…..or maybe not.  Hopefully a few moblogs should appear here from the trip.  I made a GoogleEarth tour that i’ve been showing to the kids, showing the area, and our route through France and the Alps.  The mountains look great with the terrain exageration turned up full and the angle tilted right down.