My Holiday Reads!


I have just returned from a lovely week away, where I had chance to really sit back relax! It meant I was able to read and I really took advantage of this opportunity! I thought it might be a good idea to share what I read and hopefully inspire others with a book to read over summer or even blog and share what they have read.

The first book I read was @HywelRobert's 'Oops! Helping Children Learn Accidently,'

This was recommended by @missrobinson82, who thought the approach is very similar to some of the projects I have shared through the blog and training. I have to agree, I thought it is a superb book and something I fully support and try to use. An example would be the Blackfish project, something that started from nothing but eventually grew beyond anything we could have hoped!

The book is written with a humorous tone and has some fantastic ideas. I haven't met Hywel but have heard great things about the training he provides and I hope to attend one in the future.



The next book was 'Death at Seaworld,' by David Kirby. I have wanted to read this for a while since watching the film Blackfish to read more about this issue that really interests me. If you were inspired by the film, I would highly recommend this book.

It delves into issues that the film didn't get chance to discuss and demonstrates further the reasons why we shouldn't keep these highly intelligent, social animals in captivity.

The film Blackfish, inspired one of the best class projects I had the pleasure of being involved in. You can read more about what we did with this issue here.







I also managed to finish both autobiographies of one of my lifelong heroes - Sir Alex Ferguson.

'Managing my life,' and 'Alex Ferguson: My autobiography,' chronicles Sir Alex's life from childhood up to his retirement after 25+ years as the manager of Manchester United.

Both books were fascinating! As an avid United fan, I got a real insight into the wonderful mind of one of the most successful managers in football history!



The last book I read was Shooters by Ben Black. This book looks at the gang culture that ravaged Manchester in the early 00s. This seems to pick up where another book - Gang War by Peter Walsh - finished. I read Gang war on my previous holiday and this was another insightful book on Manchester gang culture. For someone who has lived in Manchester all my life, it interests me to know about the criminal underground within the city.

So the question now is what have you read and what would you recommend?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Lovely Poem for Your Leavers Assembly

Image
I am always asked to put a little video together for our Year 6 show and end of year assembly. Each year, I always include a special poem that I finish the end of year video with. It is called Leaving School by Jade Hughes and it is beautiful: We've now left school, It's how the story ends, Tears of happiness is what we recommend,   It's what we say, But there's always a little pain, Because once you've left, It's not the same,   You could walk through school and you would see, Your friends who have grown up incredibly, But now you've gone, It's not the same, As you may never see them again,   Your friends who have grown up right beside you, Who have helped you through your daily strife, Will go ahead and leave behind them, You who wants the same old life,   But you can not live your life in the past, Hoping that the same memories will last, You have to move on and just be glad, That leaving has made you so sad, As this just shows that
Keep reading

Using Disney Films for Geography!

Image
Last week I came across a tweet sharing this picture: I thought it would be a brilliant way for children to learn about the location of different countries around the world.  Before we looked at the map, I asked the class to list as many animated Disney films (excluding Pixar) as they could think of. We shared some of our ideas and discussed the origins of some of these stories. Some were books, others fairy tales, legends or folk tales.  This gave us a link with Literacy to discuss different types of stories, how most films are derived from written texts and also looking at some famous authors. We also talked about whether they could remember where in the world the film was set.  I then shared the map with the children and gave them time to look and see whether they knew any of the countries themselves. They had to make estimated guesses as to where they thought each film was set. After they had had a go at trying the name all the countries, they then were able
Keep reading

Teaching Direct Speech Punctuation using the iPhone text messaging!

Image
Teaching direct speech is always a tricky aspect, there is so much to remember and very few useful visual pictures that clearly help children know what and how to use speech punctuation properly. Lets look at some of the tips to remember: The words that are spoken have to go within the speech marks. Any punctuation needs to also go inside the speech marks. A reporting clause, who and how they said it can go before, middle or end. A comma follows the reporting clause at the beginning. You need to start a new line when a new character speaks.  I think that is most of them?? I have heard of endless different ways to try and get children to remember these tips - keeping the sheeps in the pen  or speech mark sandwich  which are a couple of examples however they do not have any visual help for tips such as starting on a new line, which is something some of my children find hardest to remember.  I decided to use a different approach, to help cover the aspects of correct
Keep reading