Victor Borge Phonetic Pronunciation

Bulletin - 21st March

Hi all,

Very quick this week as we have a meeting on Tuesday.

Department Meeting
Agenda:
1) Supporting exam classes - the last few weeks!
2) Homework
3) AOB

Otherwise, please do keep directing kids to Takeaway Teacher - we are up to 20 uploaded videos now and going strong, so hopeful it will continue to grow into a useful resource.

Thanks everyone,
Tom

Bulletin - Monday 14th March

Hi all,

Firstly, thanks to all for your professionalism at work during what was an extraordinary and very difficult week.

Thanks to Felicity, for taking on the challenge of being Liz for two weeks, and to Pat and the sixth form team for yet another successful theatre trip. We also had some exceptional AS level results from the January resits, which is good news for the students and our exam figures, but certainly leaves us with a depleted sense of trust in the exam board I'm afraid, having had the some students receive a U in the summer, and now achieving top A. Hmm.

GCSE Moderation / Planning
Jamie and I moderated a sample of folders on Thursday - many thanks to GCSE teachers for sorting them out - and it was clear that we were marking accurately and consistently. We also scrutinised some exam papers, and the following actions were decided on:

1) Run an intervention day for C/D borderliners on the first Tuesday of next term. Rather than going to Hill End, we are going to work in school, using IT to provide a personalised approach. The way that students have been responding to video learning in mentoring sessions has been very positive, so we are going to try to organise a day using this, where students self-direct themselves through a programme of revision.
2) We discussed the view that our students are currently getting so much information and advice that it seems that, particularly at the C/D borderline, there is an element of overload. This comes through in mentoring sessions, where students are frequently unable to articulate their personal targets for improvement, despite the fact that teachers have clearly worked hard to communicate this to students. Alongside this was the fact that scrutiny of exam papers at the C/D borderline often revealed only one or two key areas that students were missing in their work; for example students were writing imaginatively but not in paragraphs, or writing in paragraphs but not in sentences. We are therefore planning an approach whereby all students aiming for a C are given one key target for reading, and one key target for writing, which can be given out to students at an assembly or similar event. We'll be in touch with the details about this, and to ask for teachers to select key targets for year 11 - obviously this is not intended to be at the expense of giving more precise advice and guidance in lessons, but is hoped to raise the profile of a few key areas which seem to be holding our students back.

Takeaway Teacher
Jamie and I have added some resources to the Takeaway Teacher bank - it is early days with this but we are learning and refining as we go. Here are a couple of samples (note in particular puppy-dog Kirkaldy's raised eyebrow, imploring students to achieve the C!); the main channel is located here http://www.youtube.com/user/CheneyTakeaway :





Please do direct students to these resources - best way to access is to search 'Takeaway Teacher' on YouTube - avoid going via this blog please.

Thanks everyone and have a good week,

Tom