Bulletin - 4th October 2010

Many thanks to Gary for organising yet another Sixth form Theatre trip! Much appreciated and enjoyed by the students.

Performance Management
The pairings for Performance Management on Friday are as follows:

TBo meeting with JKy and PTo
JKy meeting with CSw and NTu
PTo meeting with GSn
I think that that's the lot, as everyone else is either an NQT or line managed elsewhere... of course if Jamie's baby arrives, we will have to change things around, in which case NTu will meet with me and CSw will go to Pat.
PM meetings will last one hour, so please arrange a time to meet. You will receive your class data in advance of the meeting, but there is also a requirement to gather and bring your review from last year, alongside any evidence you want to provide to show where targets have been met. PW has confirmed that the process will be the same as last year, meaning that there is a requirement to provide comments from colleagues as part of the 360 element. See guidance sent around by PW for further clarification.

Competitions

I'd like to run the following competitions and events prior to Christmas
- A photo competition whereby students enter photographs of themselves reading in unusual locations
- A book-grab, whereby students can bring books they have already read, acquire tokens, then swap their tokens for books brought in by others
- I am also interested in the idea of running a Junior First Story group for KS3 students, which would shadow the Senior group - I'll be in touch with details.
This info will go onto SERCO and also be announced in assembly, but feel free to publicise with your classes

KS5 Attendance
Please can we keep a close eye on the attendance and performance of KS5 pupils, and let me know of any students who are not turning up or not getting work done properly. As a rule, it's a good idea to insist that if a student is to be absent, they email the teacher to let them know before the lesson - this is courteous and makes checking up on attendance more straightforward.

TES Resources
I know that lots of us use Teachit, but recently I've been exploring the TES resources section - if you aren't aware of this already, you just need to register and you get access to some pretty useful stuff - some dross of course, but I found a pretty good OMAM SOW here http://www.tes.co.uk/ResourceDetail.aspx?storyCode=3003921 , and there is loads of other stuff available, so it might be worth a look - for example, this link takes you to all the OMAM resources and there are loads of them! http://www.tes.co.uk/TaxonomySearchResults.aspx?parametrics=46651,47434,47862,48061,48124&event=23&mode=browse

Have a wonderful week!
Tom

Bulletin 20th September

Hi all,
Thanks to all for the hard work that's gone into a smooth and enjoyable first two weeks! Jolie was very complimentary about the level of focus and positive atmosphere in the lessons she visited last week, so hopefully we can keep this going!

Tues: College Meetings 3.15 - 4.15


GCSE Year 10 Update and Issues
I've emailed around a course plan (as agreed last year) for Lang / Lit classes, and have put one together also for English (thoughts please from Pat, Jamie, Nicky about the English one...looks a bit tight but would be good to get everything done in Year 10 perhaps? We'll discuss). Anyway, I'll get a stack photocopied for distribution to the students. It's very clear in putting these together that the timing is very tight and we need to be very careful not to allow units to drag on beyond their allotted time - remember that anything done in year 10 has to be submitted at the end of year 10, so please do start CA's at the agreed times, and chase absence wherever possible.

Controlled Assessment

According to our course plan, Controlled Assessments in English and English Language need to take place soon - probably next week for most classes. Please see the link sent around to access the planning notes pages for this, and bear in mind that the notes pages are to be attached to the work when we send it for moderation, so it's obviously important that we are following guidlines correctly here. The exam board guidance states:

'Candidates may take brief notes into the formal assessment period. These must be checked to ensure they do not include plagiarised text, detailed planning grids or a pre-prepared draft.
Any preliminary drafts produced by the candidate during the assessment period must be submitted with the final draft for assessment and moderation.'

Clearly, it's debatable as to what constitutes a 'detailed planning grid'! I'll send around the rest of the FAQs via email, although they are also available on the shared area. Also, if anyone would like to meet to discuss this, can I suggest that we do this on Wednesday after school in C5? I would appreciate the chance to talk this through - if anyone else does, then I'll see you there.

I'm also aware that the Spoken Language study unit for Lang / Lit classes is due to begin as soon as the Creative Writing is finished, and will endeavour to shape all the guidance we've had about this unit into something approaching a SOW this week.

GCSE Textbooks

We've had a delivery of textbooks aimed at the new GCSE courses. Toni will be processing these this week, but I will leave a selection on the table in C28 for you to have a look at.

Other Stuff!

Video / Macs

We also finally got the new Macs up and running, alongside 6 video cameras. This is good quality kit that actually works, so the prospect of making films with students has become areal possibility, without the technical hassle this has involved in the past. Please let me know if you'd like to have a go - the iMovie software on the Macs is brilliant and dead easy once you get the hang of it!

Registers
Just a plea to make sure registers are completed and submitted for all lessons - as a department we are pretty good on this, but it's a real cause for concern for Val and the attendance team when we forget.

Department Support / Detentions
Please use the dept support timetable produced by Toni - am in the process of filling the gaps, but in the meantime, use myself or Jamie as support for KS3 / 4.

If a student is sent to dept support, they should be detained by the class teacher in the first instance. If there are repeated difficulties, or they don't turn up, please let Toni know and she will arrange a department lunchtime detention.


One-to-One Tuition
If you are interested in taking on students for paid one-to-one tuition this year (£25 per hour, usually one student = one hour per week), please let me know.

Thanks everyone and have a great week,

Tom

Hi all,

Well, after a summer that did seem to fly by somewhat, here we go again for Cheney 2010-2011! Hope everyone has a great start to term.

INSET 2010
Thanks to all for your contributions to the INSET days at the beginning of the year. As usual, I think we worked well as a team, made progress on some important issues. I've summarised here the main action points which came out of the days:
- TBo to review the Success Criteria in order to simplify and clarify the wording
- TBo to put a booklet together to include success criteria for all KS3 assessment, including space for students to record their progress and achievements
- JKy to organise data collection for GCSE coursework from current year 11 in the first instance, followed by similar for current year 10s
- ALL - work on developing Agile Teaching in own practice. All units at KS3 to include a mid-term formative assessment task with resources from this shared electronically
As well as this, I think it would be interesting to share what areas of Agile Teaching we've individually decided to work on through the TLC structure (mine is asking better questions, specifically relating to teaching the novel with year 11). If people don't mind, please send me an email explaining your focus, or just tell me!

Performance Management
Phil has asked me to remind you about the performance management day which is coming up in October. Whilst we will all receive data analysis of our classes prior to the day, there is also the opportunity to collect other data, eg comments from colleagues or student feedback. If you are interested in the latter, please see the class survey below which I am doing with my year 11s (more for the purpose of getting them to reflect on their English last year than for performance management); if you would like to do something similar it is very easy to sort out so just let me know.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2CBH6VF

Blogs
Equally, if you would like to run a blog for your class or classes this year and need any help setting one up, please let me know. Here's an example of mine from last year : http://www.cheneyenglish10x4.blogspot.com/ , and I would have to emphasise the value of doing this in terms of parental and student engagement, alongside student accountability for their work.

One to One
Liz and I both took part in the 1-to-1 summer school and really enjoyed it. If you would like to take some 1-to-1 this year, please let me know - it is paid at £25 per hour, and for subject specialists, will not represent a significant workload in terms of planning and assessment.

Masters
Something that no-doubt will create a significant workload, however, is the Masters programme - see Phil Waters if you are interested in taking this up (the final year in which taking part will be subsidised).

Department Support
I hope to get the department support programme out ASAP - in the meantime, please use:

- Monday -JKy, 4 Pat, 5 Pat
- Tues - 1 Liz, 2 Jamie, 3 Pat, 4 Pat, 5 Nicky

Thanks everyone,
Tom