Mr P's ICT blog - Tech to raise standards!

For over 4 years I have been the league secretary for the Urmston and District Primary School Football league. Since taking over the role, I have restructured the league so that 13 local schools complete all their fixtures which has seen a massive increase in participation and seen more children and schools playing football. The way the league now works is that a host school welcomes two other schools and plays 3 games of 20 minutes. It has meant that schools without a pitch can still fulfill all their games which didn't previously happen due to limiting facilities of some schools. All the dates are given at the beginning of year so schools can make sure they do not clash with any other events. We also have a league cup tournament and a girls cup tournament. As the league has been successfully running in this way for 3 seasons, I wanted to try and use it to inspire more of the reluctant boy writers to become more motivated to write. On our school blog , I have included a p...

Since beginning our blogging journey, I am constantly trying to show the children the potential it can have on improving their writing. Giving the children an audience provides a purpose for their writing. They carefully consider their writing which provides them with a more focused approach which has a knock on effect to improve their writing. It is sometimes hard for children to see how global their work can spread. Throwing numbers around doesn't always enthuse the children to carry on blogging. Over the past week I have tried a little experiment to try and give the children a visual picture of the global audience available through sharing work online. Just over a week ago, two classes from my school made their own versions of the latest internet meme -  Harlem Shake . Here was our effort: As much as the children loved making the video, there was a real purpose to it.  Youtube  provides in depth analysis of all the views the video recieves, from the demo...

This was a post I was asked to write for Rising Stars  - click here for their published article. Around a year ago the Head Teacher approached me and suggested I came out of the classroom to cover PPA. I have undertaken the role of ICT co-ordinator since my NQT year and ICT was my specialism for my university course. He wanted me to use my expertise of teaching ICT to work across the whole school and see how well I could embed core ICT skills within the curriculum. Initially I wasn’t overwhelmed by the idea, the ICT suite although big enough for a full class, was starting to feel outdated and was often temperamental. To take on this role I needed something new, fresh and exciting to really impact on teaching and learning. That was when I started to look at iPads as a tool in the classroom. A couple of websites I stumbled across really opened my eyes to the possibilities that iPads could provide –  http://www.ipadineducation.co.uk  and http://mrandrewsonline.blogspot.c...

Possibly one of the best apps on the iPad to ignite the children's imagination and creativity is Epic Citadel.  The app is basically the setting for the computer game, Infinity Blade. A medieval kingdom, where the children can explore every inch of this fantasy world. There are no characters, stories or plots which leaves it up to the children to create their own characters and stories. This is what I love, the children being able to interpret the kingdom in whatever way they feel. As a school, we have recently had a big focus on using picture books as a stimulus in Literacy to encourage the children to use their imagination and build on their own interpretations. Epic Citadel is a very similar idea except rather than a book, it is a computer generated kingdom. From the first moment the children explored the app they were completely enthralled by the game like structure and many felt they were playing a game despite there being no direction or story. Before I started planning t...

In the six years of teaching at my current school I have put on a production each year. Each Year group puts on a play throughout the year as a way of providing opportunities for the children to showcase talents and interests that aren't always covered in the classroom. The facilities are amazing with a fully functional stage with a hall that can hold up to 150 people. Each year group performs a production throughout the year - Year 3 do Harvest (October), Year 4 - Christmas, Year 5 - Easter and Year 6 do a leaving show at the end of the year. I taught for four years in Year 5 therefore had to find four different ways of retelling the Easter story. We like to keep it traditional as we feel it is important that children learn the story behind the holidays we have, so each one had to tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. To keep the idea fresh I had to find creative and new ways to retell the story. The first year as an NQT I kept it quite safe performing GOOD NEWS...

After stumbling across the brilliant  @deputymitchell 's   Punctuation points , I felt obliged to share a similar approach I have used with my classes for the past couple of years. After a year or so of using Big Writing, I started to think about the whole writing process . It was advised that the next Big Writing session children should be given time to read back on their work, look at the comments and as a class decide on some “goal scorers.” This is a good way of revising but I felt it wasn't enough, also if it was a whole week or two later, the activity is long forgotten by the children. I am sure if you ask any author they will always say that the revising and editing part of writing is possibly the most important. But how can we teach this and instill a reflective approach in children? Timed writing sessions don’t provide this quality time to reflect on your writing. It led me to make a resource which I have found invaluable ever since. I in...

READ MORE RECENT BLOG POSTS ABOUT AUGMENTED REALITY HERE! Since beginning the iPad journey in our school, I have been dying to use some of the Augmented Reality apps available on the iPad. I didn't want to dive in and use it with no substance I wanted to make sure there was real potential to enhance the learning in the classroom.  For those people who are not familiar with the term "Augmented Reality," here is a web definition: " Augmented reality  (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by  computer-generated   sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or  GPS  data. It is related to a more general concept called  mediated reality , in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality." If that is a little too technical, Augm...