Bulletin - 24th January

Hi all,

First of all, a massive thank you for the work that you've put in this year - having someone in observing (as on Friday) always prompts reflection on how things are going, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are brilliant!

Year 11 Parents Evening / Issues
- Exam feedback - please take the opportunity to ensure that parents are clear about the students' exam performance and what they need to improve. We will provide exam breakdown sheets for each student to be given out on Thursday.

- Please ensure that year 11s are being set regular homework and that this is being completed. I know that this is easier said than done; parents' evening is therefore a good opportunity to let parents know what is being set. A really good homework with limited marking demands is to ask students to watch the videos on the departmetn website, and particularly to target those areas of the exam in which they performed poorly. A good approach is to use Watch - Write - Watch - Check: students watch a video, write down what they've learnt, watch it again, check what they've learnt.

- Blogs - to help with homework setting and communication with students and parents, I've set up a blog for each year 11 class. Can I ask that year 11 teachers give serious consideration to using this to set homework - they are very very simple to use, and really take only slightly more time as a homework setting tool than writing the work on the board. The main advantages are that parents can be informed about homework and deadlines in real time, there is absolute clarity about what has been setand therefore greater accountability for students. Among the many other pros are the ability to link to resources, embed video, the capacity for students and parents to comment and ask questions etc.

Here's my year 11 blog as an example: http://www.cheneyenglish10x4.blogspot.com/ - I've only done 4 posts this year, but parents have really appreciated it. Here's an example from another school of a blog being used in a very time-efficient way: http://mrsryear11.blogspot.com/

The blogs are all set up and ready to go - you should have received an email inviting you to contribute. You will need to set up a Blogger / Google account if you don't have one; it's a simple process - ask me / Jamie / Nicky for a 30 second tutorial if you get stuck!

- Website: please use the parents' evening to plug the department website: www.wix.com/cheneyenglish/gcse - if you haven't yet shown this to the students please let them know about it. I've embedded a sample video from the website here so you get the idea - very useful for use in lessons also I think.

- Could we also use this as an opportunity to plug Poetry Live ... I'll get some letters printed and have somewhere for parents to be able to hand money and slips in on the night.

Books
- please let me know any other books you think we should get - I'll send the list around of what has been selected so far, but please do add any ideas that you think of.

Thanks everyone and have a great week,
Tom

Bulletin - 10th January

This week

- Tues: College Meetings after school
- Weds: TBo absent (funeral)

Poetry Live
- Please continue to push Poetry Live with students and get them to bring their money in! If you need spare letters, let me know.

Classroom redesign
I've emailed around a proposal for the redesign of C5. I know that it's very difficult to find space to think about anything other than the day to day at the moment, but do have a look if you get a chance, as the idea is that we create a space that the whole department will benefit from and have ample opportunity to use. Liz and I will be off to IKEA in the near future, so if you, or students in your class, have any thoughts about what we could include in the room, do let me know. Basically, let me know your thoughts if you want to and if you get a chance!
UPDATE: after writing this, I have adapted a creative thinking lesson which I did the other day, which gets them to use the 6 thinking hats idea to think about the redesign. Had great fun doing this with mine, and it's a really nice easy and fun lesson if you need a breather at KS3! Do have a go, and send the students' plans through to me!



Careers Event - Year 11
I've been informed that year 11 will be out of school periods 4 and 5 on January 26th, thereby missing two English lessons (11Y). It is likely that C/D borderline students will be kept in school for intensive, small group revision - watch this space for further details.

YouTube
Just a heads up that YouTube is now unblocked for students (but isn't yet working on the department netbooks - trying to get that sorted). This gives access to an incredibly powerful resource and tool for self-directed learning, so please do explore.

GCSE Mocks
Results from the mocks look encouraging - thanks to everyone for their hard work. Do let me know when you want to do the feedback lesson, although I'm intending to sort out the ppts on Monday anyway - I'll save them back into the shared area.

Thanks everyone and have a great week.
Tom

HAPPY NEW YEAR BULLETIN!

Hello everyone, and welcome back! Hope you all had a fab break and are ready for the brand new year... and if you are the former but not the latter, one out of two ain't bad. It feels like we are about to set off down the ski jump towards the exam season again, with lift off for English Language GCSE a frighteningly early Monday 16th May.

So, to get us started:

Poetry Live!
We have currently got 20 students going on Poetry Live! on 8th February at the Kings Centre in Oxford, but have 30 tickets remaning. Can we please encourage year 11 Literature students to come on what is a really useful day. See Toni if you need more letters, but basically the cost is £17, and they need to bring money and a slip in to the school shop.

GCSE Mocks

Thanks to year 11 teachers for the effort that has gone into marking the year 11 mocks. Please follow guidance from JKy regarding formative approaches to feeding back on these mocks - the most important thing is that the students are working hard and engaging with the process, and that the work we put in is matched by the students!

Next steps for year 11 will be a work scrutiny of a variety of mock papers in order to analyse current performance a little more closely, so please don't let mock papers go home.

Progress Booklets KS3

Just a reminder to keep using these - well done Paul for spotting the second deliberate mistake, which is in the Poetry Unit of year 9. The Success Criteria are correct, but the 'We are learning to...' bit at the top identifies the wrong skills - please just go with the success criteria if tackling this unit. But other than that, please do ask students to have their documents out in lessons regularly and be filling in targets and spellings as we go. I'll also send round the lesson on encouraging effective reflection on learning again for use as units come to an end.

Sharing Practice

I hope you all received the Agile Teaching sharing practice doc - there is some really good stuff in here, gleaned from some very high quality observed lessons. Do have a look if you get a chance, and I'll be in touch regarding a round of observations for terms 3 and 4 in the near future.

Of Mice and Men

Found some fab resources on OMAM at the increasingly impressive TES site here:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6055716

Media GCSE

Some great resources for GCSE Media here: http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/media_studies/119/index.html . Jamie and Nicky, let me know if you are available for a planning meeting on Thurs - no worries if not as we can rearrange.

Have a great week, term and year!

Tom