Oh my gosh, I'm listening to Spurs - Arsenal on the radio and being completely distracted from the acres of lesson planning I need to mow through. It's 1-1 now, dramatastic! Wish I could be in the pub watching instead of at my desk...
So today I got into school at 11:00am. A bit of a shocker since usually I am there at 7:50am, whoopsie daisy. I'd like to blame it entirely on my early start yesterday and nothing at all to do with pissing about in the pub back in London. Heehee, lucky me though, it turns out all the Senior Leadership Team were on an away-day today, so managed to escape trouble. School was wonderfully calm and jovial in the absence of scary SLT, and with the sun shining and all, it was a pretty nice day in school. That said though, some cheeky Year 9 monster called me "Miss Shilpa" today. How rude! When we told him off for it, he said he thought that was my name. Grrr, another reason I don't like Big Brother.
In other news, the Telford school trip yesterday was fantastic, a real eye-opener on teaching and learning in a school that doesn't have a trillion issues. It's the 2nd ranked comprehensive school in the country, 99% of pupils get 5 A*s - C grades at GCSEs. Other weird points of note:
Puja, lovely to have you back, and a million congratulations on the training contract! Well done you! You did miss a Fruli-frenzy, but sounds like you managed to enjoy yourself without us! How was India? Like the blue?
Mouche, what's happened to your blog?! I am disappointed with the lack of writing, about the tube or otherwise. Write something!
And finally, how hot is Daniel Radcliffe in Equus?! It's so wrong cos he's a wizard and he's only 17, but still!
So today I got into school at 11:00am. A bit of a shocker since usually I am there at 7:50am, whoopsie daisy. I'd like to blame it entirely on my early start yesterday and nothing at all to do with pissing about in the pub back in London. Heehee, lucky me though, it turns out all the Senior Leadership Team were on an away-day today, so managed to escape trouble. School was wonderfully calm and jovial in the absence of scary SLT, and with the sun shining and all, it was a pretty nice day in school. That said though, some cheeky Year 9 monster called me "Miss Shilpa" today. How rude! When we told him off for it, he said he thought that was my name. Grrr, another reason I don't like Big Brother.
In other news, the Telford school trip yesterday was fantastic, a real eye-opener on teaching and learning in a school that doesn't have a trillion issues. It's the 2nd ranked comprehensive school in the country, 99% of pupils get 5 A*s - C grades at GCSEs. Other weird points of note:
- City Technology College with no specific catchment area
- 175 places a year; 1500 applicants!
- Vertical personal tutor groups (kinda like the house system rather than year-based forms)
- "Learning bases" rather than classrooms (insane...there are no walls between classrooms, just screens, and you can just walk in between them and hear and see everything that's going on in the learning base)
- Everyone takes SATS in Year 8 (usually they're taken in Year 9)3 hour long lessons! (even more insane...there's only 2 "sessions" a day, morning and afternoon, and then an optional session 3 of extra-curricular activities)
- Breakfast breaks in the middle of the morning and tutor time in the middle of the day, plus staggered lunch-times
- Expected attendance from 11-18 rather than just to 16 (in built VIth forms are pretty rare up North)
- Reports home every 2 weeks
- No bells, but special phones in every "classroom"
- The weekly "curriculum broadcast" whereby all the exciting stuff taking place in school each week is filmed and edited into a 10 minute TV program, which is shown across the school on a Monday
- Wonderful facilities including an astro-turf, a swimming pool, and independent study areas with state of the art ICT facilities
Puja, lovely to have you back, and a million congratulations on the training contract! Well done you! You did miss a Fruli-frenzy, but sounds like you managed to enjoy yourself without us! How was India? Like the blue?
Mouche, what's happened to your blog?! I am disappointed with the lack of writing, about the tube or otherwise. Write something!
And finally, how hot is Daniel Radcliffe in Equus?! It's so wrong cos he's a wizard and he's only 17, but still!
