Introducing the #go2team

Yesterday, I travelled to meet Alan Peat, where I was introduced to other teachers he currently is working with on a number of projects.  Although not a exclusive group, the individuals were chosen as we each offer something different, but all have the same approach similar to Alan's philosophy of improving standards in the classroom with ideas that work!

 I have been working as part of Alan Peat Ltd for nearly a year and the support and guidance both Alan and Julie have given me has been invaluable. I am very grateful to be working for and with them. My input to the #go2team is the training I provide in schools, clusters and conferences focusing on using technology to improve and enhance learning.

On Friday, I had my first conference at the Village hotel in Dudley - "Alan Peat presents USING TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER THE NEW PRIMARY & LITERACY CURRICULUM."

It was an incredible day with a room full of enthusiastic and eager teachers. The feedback I received was fantastic and I want to thank all who attended for their comments.

Of the 36 feedback forms completed, 34 rated the content and delivery of the training as Excellent with the other 2 rating it good. Here are some of the comments from the evaluation forms:

"Probably the best training event I have been on. My only 'criticism' is I want to go back to school and do EVERYTHING!""Fantastic amount of ideas which are easily usable, range of ages, good examples of children's work.""WOW! Amazing. Both awestruck." 
"What a fantastic day! So may ideas to use and take back. Feel so inspired, thank you." 
"Lots of practical advice!" 
"Nice real life examples." 
"Excellent ideas & suggestions." 
"A wonderful day full of relevant content delivered by a fellow classroom teacher not someone who has escaped from school life!" 
"Excellent and engaging." 
"Excellent, engaging speaker!" 
"Explanation given about the learning potential of the apps, modelling was very useful." 
"Very good, lots of useful ideas for resources and activities to use back in school." 
"Really inspiring." 
"Superb! Very useful. Excellent ideas which I will be applying at school." 
"Everything expected - great content, well presented and I have left with loads of ideas to use in the classroom." 
"A really interesting and informative day, thank you!" 
"Excellent course. Met all expectations & has provided us with lots of practical ideas that we can implement/use in school." 
"Fab! Very informative & useful." 
"I have found the ideas & tools discussed really useful and feel that I will have the confidence to try some of these in my classroom. I think it is particularly effective as you are showing your own practical experience. The day has been really inspiring." 
"Loads of ideas to take back into school. Great day!" 
"Excellent course with lots of ideas and tips for the school. Excellent examples of the work done by yourself and your school. Really find your blog useful and I am trying the ideas in school." 
"Practical ideas that I could do in class tomorrow. Great to meet requirements of new lit curriculum. Keep it up, our children are loving school!" 
"Absolutely superb, could not have wanted more! Plenty of practical activities to take back to school." 
"Excellent - very inspiring and engaging speaker."

I will be running similar conferences next term and all the details can be found HERE. 

Another inspiring teacher, who is running his first conference through Alan Peat Ltd next week, is Mat Sullivan aka @inspiredmind5. I have worked with Mat previously and his ideas are phenomenal. His upcoming conference - Improving writing through comics and exciting sentences, is SOLD OUT! It comes at the time that his first solo book - Developing writing through Comics, is released.

This book is an absolute must for any KS2 teacher whether they like comics or not. The ideas and activities suggested in this book will raise standards in the classroom and I have seen it myself when I visited Mat's school recently. Just look at his website - http://www.inspiredminds.eu/

Mat also co-wrote The Second book of Exciting Sentences with Alan and has a wealth of engaging and inspiring ways to make writing meaningful and enjoyable for children.

I was able to have a sneak peek of the book and I was blown away by both the content but also the incredible design and that was down to the very talented Simon Matthews.

Simon aka @SiTheDesignGuy, has been working with Alan Peat Ltd for a number of years and handles all the design on websites, books and other media. His work on the resource "Word Warriors," is fantastic and some of the design for Mat's book is stunning, just look at some of his tweets:


But it is his new project that really excites me! Onesworldwar.com is a new website that will be sharing extracts from a diary of a soldier throughout the First World War. The diary will be turned into a collection of podcasts shared on the website for free. The project also provides a monthly magazine full of information, links and lesson ideas from Alan, Mat and other teachers linked to the diary. The design of the website and magazine is amazing! A school can subscribe to the project - receiving each monthly digital magazine for only £50 a year. I believe there will also be an option to pay monthly. It is well worth a look as a cross curricular topic in class, it will be very useful!

I also met Gareth Metcalfe the creator of The Maths Apprenticeship resource, I am very excited about this as I received a copy of the pack and will be using it over the next couple of weeks, so watch for the blog post to follow. From reading Gareth's blog, the product looks a great way to really challenge higher ability mathematicians - read about it here. Gareth will also be running conferences through Alan Peat Ltd, all details can be found here.

I finally was able to meet Doug Stitcher aka @therenegade78, founder of Angel Applications. He has created the Pocket Curriculum app (left) as well as a range of other useful education apps.

I have been in contact with Doug for a while now as he is working his socks off creating an app for me. I am pleased to see it is in its final stages and should be available in the next month or so. Details to follow on that one!

He has also been coding the new range of apps from Alan, both of which are great resources for teachers.

Alan's first app is an interactive guide to his Exciting Sentences approach in writing. I have been using the exciting sentences in my teaching for nearly 4/5 years and can say they have had a phenomenal impact on writing standards. Through using them as a whole school we have gone through two OUTSTANDING Ofsted reports, with strengths in Literacy with Alan's approach being a key part to the winning formula. For only £1.49 this app is such good value for money considering the impact it will have on writing in your class.

The next app, which was released today, and currently heading towards the top of the Education App charts on iTunes. Again it is another fantastic resource for teachers looking for useful ways to teach punctuation. For only £1.99 it covers every punctuation mark with an array of different ways to embed the use of each one in children's writing. As a reference guide for teachers it is another useful app to add to the collection.

I felt very fortunate to be in such great company and thank Alan for the opportunity. From the first training session I attended, led by Alan it had a massive impact on my approach to teaching. As I head towards the end of an incredible year of my career, I am thankful for the opportunity both him and Julie have given me. With some very exciting projects in the pipeline, including a joint conference and ebook between both Alan and I as well as other apps he is working on the #go2team will be something to keep a very close eye on... stay tuned.


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 t...
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...
Keep reading