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Hay Festival 2013: Don’t sign up to Gove’s insulting curriculum, Schama urges

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Hay

I’d like to have been in the audience to hear this…

Speaking at the Telegraph Hay Festival, Prof Schama — who acknowledged his own contribution to the plans — said that the syllabus was like “1066 and All That, but without the jokes”.
“This is a document written by people who have never sat and taught 12-year-olds in a classroom,” he told an audience of teachers. “None of you should sign up to it until we trap Michael Gove in a classroom and tell him to get on with it.
“You want to say to him, ‘Let’s go into a class of nine-year-olds and do the kingdom of Mercia with them. I would love to see how you would do that’.”

via Hay Festival 2013: Don’t sign up to Gove’s insulting curriculum, Schama urges – Telegraph.

Writer attacks falling literacy standards in Welsh schools

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A leading Welsh author has warned that a literacy crisis among TV-obsessed school pupils is threatening the future of children who are leaving primary education without the ability to write a legible sentence.

Award winning writer and former literary critic Jennifer Sullivan has described the alarming 20-year decline in standards as “depressing and upsetting.”

wales

Dr Sullivan has also called for more home involvement from parents, citing late night TV as a threat to literacy.

She said: “In one school I was asked if I had children, and where they lived.

“I said, three grown-up daughters, living in London, Essex and Northern Ireland.

“One small girl shrieked with excitement: ‘Oh, Miss, the one what do live in Essex (sic)? Is she famous? Is she on Towie (The Only Way Is Essex)? Oh, I want to be an Essex girl when I grow up!’

“I asked how come a nine-year-old was allowed to stay up to watch The Only Way Is Essex.

“‘I got a telly in my bedroom, Miss.’

“I asked how many other children had TVs in their bedrooms.

“Those children who did not have TVs or computer games consoles  in their rooms could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

“I asked them what time they actually went to sleep. Not one confessed to turning out the light before 10pm at the earliest and staff confirmed that children often dozed off in class.”

She added: “This battle for literacy must start with parents.

“Parents should be begged, as a first step – for the sake of their children’s immediate health and their future success – to remove televisions and games consoles from their children’s bedrooms.”

via Writer attacks falling literacy standards in Wales’ schools – Wales Online.

Sats girl takes Michael Gove, the comma chameleon, to task

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Y6 Pupil Complains About Missing Commas

Guardian

For the test, sat across England on Tuesday, pupils had to insert a correctly spelled word missing from a sentence. Question 6 read: "If there is not [blank] rainfall this month there will be a drought." Question 16 read: "As he was the [blank] of the tribe the final decision was his." The pupils protested that a comma was required after "month" in Q6 and "tribe" in Q16.

The result is mild embarrassment for the education department in the first year that the "Spag" (spelling, punctuation and grammar) tests for year 6 pupils have been conducted. The wording of the tests was approved by the Standards and Testing Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Education. A department spokesperson said: "The commas here are a matter of choice: they can be used to mark out clauses that appear at the beginning or the end of a sentence, but they are not necessary. We decided to use commas sometimes and not at others to make the tests more like real life where people will have their own styles." (My emphasis)

via Sats girl takes Michael Gove, the comma chameleon, to task | Politics | The Guardian.

8 iPads in the classroom | #8iPads

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1. Saving work to the Documents apps and using share to iTunes to make a copy from Digital Roadtrip on Vimeo.

8ipads

Printing student’s work in Progress from iPads to a folder on your laptop.

If your students are not writing into a virtual space from their iPads, for example a blog, wiki or shared app like Evernote, you will struggle to monitor their progress. So here is an awesomely nifty way of capturing evidence of “work in progress”.

The joy of this is that all the files neatly arrive in one folder on computer. If the learners label the files as you have them named in your mark book, you will have an instant overview of who has handed work in.

via 8 iPads in the classroom | #8iPads.

Jacqueline Wilson: ‘Spelling is not something that seems to be taught at schools’

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jacqueline wilson

The best-selling author, who receives hundreds of fan letters each week, told The Independent that children from Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal all had better spelling and grammar than British children.

“They’re writing in English, and apologising for their English, yet these letters will be more grammatical and spelt more properly than [those from] our own children. It’s quite extraordinary.” Around 90 per cent of children who write to her cannot even spell Jacqueline correctly, she said, adding that standards had slipped in the two decades that children had regularly written to her.

via Jacqueline Wilson: ‘Spelling is not something that seems to be taught at schools’ – Education News – Education – The Independent.

Danish government steps in to end teacher lock-out

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This month-long teachers’ strike in Denmark – over pay and conditions – has been very under-reported in the UK. This comes via the French news agency AFP.

Denmark’s government on Thursday moved to end a bitter month-long dispute with teachers over working hours that has left 800,000 pupils out of classes.

"We have reached a point at which the government finds it necessary to intervene," Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt told reporters at a news conference.

via Danish government steps in to end teacher lock-out.

Michael Gove calls for longer school days and shorter holidays

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UK Education secretary Michael Gove calls for longer days, shorter holidays:

Mr Gove said he wanted to see schools introduce a longer day for pupils, suggesting that some are already “recognising that we need to change the structure of the school term and in particular that it is poorer children that lose out from longer holidays.”

“If we look at the length of the school day in England, the length of the summer holiday and we compare it to the extra tuition and support children are receiving elsewhere then we are fighting, or running, in this global race in a way which ensures we already start with a significant handicap,” he said.

“It is also the case that some of the best schools in the country are moving to a longer school day as well.”

via Michael Gove calls for longer school days and shorter holidays – UK Politics – UK – The Independent.

Channel 4 Education and Chunk let teens turn their sleep into a game with new app | The Drum

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Channel 4 Education and Chunk have today launched a new app, which lets teenagers record their sleep patterns, which is then used to build a ‘track’ for a game.

Called Zeds, the tracks created by the apps reflect the pattern of the sleep, changing features as you move from light to deep, and aims to show teenagers the effects of poor quality of sleep.

via Channel 4 Education and Chunk let teens turn their sleep into a game with new app | The Drum.