A conference, aimed at helping to ease the transition between primary and secondary schools has been organised for 25th February in Manchester. The event aims to give practical ideas of how to ease transition, disseminate findings from a three year project and help staff to share experiences.

More details can be found in the PDF embedded below.

For further information, visit www.dep.org.uk.

In 2000, 164 countries committed to achieving Education for All by 2015. As access to education is improving, enrolment figures are rising fast, and developing communities now urgently need qualified teachers to deliver quality education.

VSO, the UK’s leading volunteering charity, are urgently looking for primary teachers to go overseas on placements and deliver ‘in service’ teacher training as soon as possible. You need to be a qualified primary teacher with at least three years’ experience; if that’s you this presents a fantastic opportunity to work in countries like Thailand, Nepal, China and Ghana and to share your teaching skills.

VSO volunteers work by serving teachers in a cluster of primary schools, introducing them to a more participatory, child centred methodology. You’ll be observing teachers and feeding back and also helping them to develop materials using local resources, and working with teachers to improve education programmes by increasing the quality of education and teaching methods. Roles are generally longer term, ranging from one to two years, and we also have occasional short term assignments for up to six months.

In return, VSO offer comprehensive financial, personal and professional support. Volunteers are provided with extensive training before their placement, and VSO’s financial package includes a living allowance, return flights, accommodation, insurance and more. When you return to your home country, VSO helps you to resettle and many returned volunteers stay involved with the organisation long after their placement ends.

Now is the best time to volunteer. The Government has made funds available for members of public service pension schemes, including teachers, to volunteer for up to two years with their pension paid. This new scheme will benefit you, your career and the UK education system.

There’s a great video about a primary teaching placement below that really shows what you can gain from volunteering.

Triangle is an independent organisation, working directly with children and families, giving expert opinions to the courts and teaching / advising parents and professionals.

They have recently produced a DVD called Three Way Street which shows how to get communication going with a child in the presence of another adult, using their skills and knowledge when you need to. It also teaches a range of practical strategies and a model of three way communication in which the child is central. Find out more…

How do you keep yourself organised in the classroom?

I’ve been using the site Toodledo for a number of years now. It allows you to keep lists of your ‘to do’s online which can then be accessed anywhere with an Internet connection (or via their iPhone application). The site is extremely flexible and you can organise your lists into different categories / folders and add start / due dates etc.

A similar online tool is Remember the Milk which I know many teachers also use. I’ve recently been testing some software called Omnifocus which does a similar job… but I still end up making paper lists occasionally (although I usually lose the paper at some point!).

How do you remember all of the things that need to be done? Do you keep lists on paper or do you use technology to stay organised? Share your tips in the comments…

Image – January First

As a school leader you have four main roles; to plan and make decisions, communicate to others, build relationships and manage the performance of your team/school which in my opinion can be the most challenging of them all.

The style of management you choose to use in any given situation is governed by two things, your willingness to support and your willingness to challenge.

You may find yourself needing to offer a high level of support and play the role of counsellor in a situation where it’s not about a persons’ capability but about their confidence.  In this instance your job is to listen, encourage and reassure.

And, when you get the feeling that people are wasting your time or deliberately trying to create a smoke screen or confusion then a high level of challenge is required.  In this situation you become a task master who is assertively laying down the rules and boundaries.

Coaching is the ideal style of management because it requires both a high level of support and a high level of challenge and even if it feels like a massive investment in time, the payback is far greater than any other management style.

A willingness to support is about …

• Being able to listen carefully to others’ opinions, ideas, information and concerns
• Checking to test for understanding and clarity
• Offering guidance, help and reassurance as necessary
• Empowering others to act with backup if required
• Considering other’s needs when offering support

A willingness to challenge is about…

• Expressing your views as clearly and assertively as possible
• Setting high expectations
• Stating the actions or results you want
• Pointing out the positive or negative consequences of not meeting expectations
• Offering alternative views and ideas

The secret is in the balance and often as managers we lean one way or the other and get it wrong by offering support when challenge is required or visa versa.  For those who hate conflict they believe the softly, softly support approach is the right one, but not always.

And for those who like to take a harder line sometimes challenging too much as act as a de-motivator and have the opposite affect.

Dot Struthers specialises in leadership and management development for teachers.  If you would like some free resources and a monthly CPD newsletter register at www.merechats.co.uk

Image: ‘after view of my classroom‘

It’s ICT week on Teachers’ TV and there are a number of interesting new videos which will be useful for any teachers who have to use ICT as part of their teaching.

One new series of videos is called ‘Better Learning with ICT‘. There are currently five videos in the series and many of them feature some of the amazing educators who use Twitter to share ideas and support each other. The videos include:

• Video in the Classroom - A geography teacher uses video to enhance learning in class.
• Improving Your Presentations - A primary teacher uses ICT to aid her presentation skills (with some great tips from @joedale)
• Online Communities in the Classroom - A teacher learns the benefits of using social media in school (@lisibo shares her amazing experience)
• Computer Games in the Classroom - A primary teacher uses computer games to inspire her class (with some fantastic ideas from @dawnhallybone)
• Data Handling in the Classroom - A teacher overcomes her fear of data handling by using ICT (@cthomas18 shares some excellent advice).

Watch the videos online, download them to watch later and follow these incredible educators on Twitter. You’re bound to learn something new… I certainly did when I watched each video!

A Teachmeet is a conference organised for teachers, by teachers. They are much less formal than other conferences that you might have been to, allowing teachers to share (and celebrate) their own classroom experiences with each other.

I’ve never been to a Teachmeet before, so I’m very excited to be attending my first one in a few weeks… on Friday 18th September at The Hop Farm, Paddock Wood. The event is free and takes place from 7pm until 9pm. If you’re involved in education and you’re able to get there, come along!

Find out more (and sign up if you plan to come) on the wiki… and if you’re able to give a presentation, add yourself to the list!

Teachers’ TV are offering CPD training workshops to support schools in making the most of Teachers TV as a resource for CPD. Tailored to the needs of different practitioners, the sessions are free and provide an interactive and informative learning environment.

Download this PDF leaflet to discover more or visit the Teachers TV site to find out how to book a session.

International Development charity VSO has been working through volunteers since 1958. At any one time, there are over 1500 committed individuals working across South America, Africa and Asia to achieve lasting change. Far from the gap year student organisation it once was, the charity is now focused on strategic and long-term development, with one of its core areas being Education.

Primary Teachers play a key role in supporting VSO’s commitment to making the millennium goal of `Education for All’ by 2015 a reality. VSO are providing in-service or pre-service training in teaching methodology and subject content.

Globally, access to education is improving and enrolment figures are rising fast, but there is still much to be done:

• 72 million school children are still out of school
• VSO is working to improve the quality of teaching & learning, improve school management, build capacity; to make education more inclusive for all disadvantaged and excluded children.
• Many of the teachers VSO volunteers work with have no training, so teaching skills are vital to share with them.

Julie Wilson is a VSO volunteer working as a Primary Education Adviser in Nepal. She is working to design a model classroom, which showcases teaching styles and ideas for lessons for other schools in the region to learn from.

Julie is finding that the VSO experience is a reciprocal learning process with local Nepalese colleagues, “I think VSO is not all about changing things but sitting down with other people, tweaking things, improving things, learning from each other”. She goes on to say, The model classroom I helped to develop was one of the best pieces of work I did here and it’s been the most enjoyable. It meant I could roll my sleeves up, get into classrooms and work alongside teachers. I think if I come here and try and change things – improve things and challenge things – I’ve got to understand them, and the only way to do that is to get into the classrooms and try it myself”.

Her work has been so successful there are plans to implement the strategy across the whole of Nepal.

It is incredible the impact the work done by VSO volunteers Deb Jordan and David Spinney has had on education. They both developed the Higher Diploma Programme to improve the skills of all teacher trainers in Ethiopia.  Four years on, 2,500 teacher trainers have undertaken the programme to the ultimate benefit of over one million children.

Now is the best time to volunteer as the Government has made funds available for members of public service pension schemes, including educationalists, to volunteer for up to two years with their pension paid. VSO also gives a comprehensive financial, personal and professional support with training, a small local salary, return flights, accommodation, insurance and visas.

In Scotland, thanks to a brand new Career Break Policy  written by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Teachers’ panel, educationalists with two years continuous service can now take a career break of either between six months and two years and return to their job, or take between two to five years off, and be guaranteed a job within their local authority on their return. This will not only make it easier for experienced teachers to volunteer with VSO, it will also contribute towards Scotland’s evolving International Development framework.

VSO are holding an Education Information Day in London on 25th July 2009 where you can come along and find out more about volunteering overseas.  For more information on this event, please go to http://www.vso.org.uk/event/22948/information-day-london

In Scotland, to find out more about volunteering, VSO will be exhibiting at the Scottish Learning Festival on 23rd and 24th September in Glasgow and running a seminar on “Bringing the world into Scottish classrooms’ at 4pm on 23rd September 2009 at this event http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/slf/chooseseminars/cd25.asp. For those in Scotland you can contact us at vso.Scotland@vso.org.uk for further information.

You can also find more information on volunteering at www.vso.org.uk/primary or call +44 (0)20 8780 7500

I’ve been on part 1 of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) course today run by SAPERE and I’ve loved it.  I started experimenting with P4C last year with my Y6 children and they really enjoyed it.  Some things that I picked up from the course included a lot of evidence to say that P4C has a positive impact on results.  In America out of 20 well researched studies:

• 11 showed improvement in reasoning
• 3 showed improvement in comprehension
• 3 showed improvement in behaviour
• 3 showed improvement in creativity

Studies in Scotland have “provided robust evidence that regular involvement in collaborative enquiry can improve cognitive ability, critical reasoning skills, self esteem and level of participation.”

I think and hope that 1 hour of P4C a week that I’m going to give the children will make a big difference to their literacy and social skills.  I’ll let you know more when I’ve finished the second part of the course and tried out a few more of the ideas in the class.