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Building Blocks – a planning process
During the pupil-free days at the start of the year we explored the building blocks of behaviour management as constructed by Chris Sweeney. His formula of behavioural foundation blocks, supporting...
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Why People Lie
Recently, I received an email from Allison Morris in response to my (slightly belligerent) post on lying. Allison forwarded me an infographic she helped to create which summarises various pieces of...
View ArticleGuest Post: Middle Years Laughter
I have blogged about the value of laughter and humour a couple of times. Today, I am delighted to add to this discussion with this guest post by my colleague, David Cameron. There are few things I...
View ArticleSingle Gender Class Groups
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the need for male teachers in the educational lives of our young people. Another vital gender-element within school is the issue of single gender class groups. This...
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Understanding Bullying… from the inside
As educators, we all know the significance of bullying and the degree that it can be endemic in our school despite our best efforts to stamp it out. Middle Years kids are just as hurt – maybe more so...
View ArticleSpaghetti brain verses Highway brain
I commented recently about the fact that I am teaching English with two separate-gender classes. Having taught this way for a while, it has become quite fascinating to see the differences in the way...
View ArticleCareers Ed in Middle Years
I had an interesting conversation with our Careers advisor recently, looking at what sort of careers information, or advice, or exposure, we should provide to our Middle Years students. The reality...
View ArticleYoung Hearts; Old Heads
I had a conversation recently with a valued colleague and friend about the degree to which we understand ourself and how that self awareness impacts our teaching. We came to the agreement that the...
View ArticleValue Young Adolescents – AMLE’s Characteristic 1
The Association for Middle Level Education is considered by many to be a peak body for Middle Level education in the world. For me, their This We Believe statement, encompassing the 16...
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Easter
I trust you are having a well deserved break over this Easter. As teachers, we give and invest much of ourself into our teaching – Middle Years teachers do this , perhaps, more than most. We...
View ArticleActive & Purposeful Learning – AMLE characteristic 2
The Association for Middle Level Education is considered by many to be a peak body for Middle Level education in the world. For me, their This We Believe statement, encompassing the 16...
View Article“Do you remember me?”
I have written before about the wonderful opportunities we have, as teachers, to enter into the lives of our students. Today I want to share just one experience that happened during the recent...
View ArticlePrac teacher in the room…
I don’t tend to have too many prac teachers visit my class now that I do not have a full teaching load but I have started this term with a second year Secondary English student teacher and it is...
View ArticleDestroying a novel
As you may be aware, am teaching English this year. We have just finished studying a new novel, Fog a Dox and I’m seriously wondering what damage I have done to the good work of the author. It is a...
View ArticleChallenging, exploratory, integrative, and relevant curriculum – AMLE...
The Association for Middle Level Education is considered by many to be a peak body for Middle Level education in the world. For me, their This We Believe statement, encompassing the 16 characteristics...
View ArticleA testing time…
It is NAPLAN* week here in Australia where every student in year 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit national tests. To say these are disliked by the students would be a gross understatement. To say the tests are seen...
View ArticleSocial Constructivism and the Flipped Classroom (family-guest post)
I’ve been blogging for almost a year now and always appreciate the feedback and/or comments people leave on my blog (just as I like leaving comments on others’ blog posts). So it was with a mix of...
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Discovering padlet
I’ve just discovered padlet – a simple little website that could potentially have some interesting classroom / learning benefits. In many ways it is like an electronic pin board where people (you and...
View ArticleMYSA Conference
I’m heading off to the Middle Years of School Association (MYSA) conference at the end of this week and I am so looking forward to it. For the first time in many years we have more than one teacher...
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Post Conference Post
The MYSA conference finished this afternoon and I feel like I have had two days of stuffing information into my brain. I love attending conferences like this but it seems to take many days of...
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