Support Your School is a new recycling scheme whereby schools across the UK can raise funds for their school by recycling used inkjet cartridges and unwanted mobile phones. The scheme is completely free for schools to join and participate in, and at a time of under funding for lots of organisations, gives schools a new, ethical way to fundraise.

www.supportyourschool.co.uk

The scheme also helps teachers and schools supporters with a fully integrated website where you can download support materials and manage your accounts in as easy and transparent way as possible. They have a special platform for 6-11 year olds called the RecyKids Area, where young people can learn about recycling and take part in activities that help educate them about the importance of being eco friendly.

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.

oceps.co.uk is a ENORMOUS collection of links for primary schools to use. There are links for teachers, teaching assistants, management, governors, caretakers and parents. The links are organised clearly using the bar along the top… just find your job role and then browse through the site.

Down the left side of the page, there are also links related to particular curriculum areas with a large number of wonderful resources for educators to try.

The BBC is today reporting on the results of the Cambridge Primary Review. One of the suggestions of the report is that children should not start formal learning until they are six. At the moment, most children in England start school aged four.

Our ‘Early Years Foundation Stage’ is a play-based curriculum including some early literacy and numeracy goals. The report suggests continuing this informal but structured learning for a year or so, bringing education in England in line with many European countries, where school starts at six or even seven, and standards are often higher.

What do you think? Should our children start formal learning later? How will it have an impact on the children and their learning?

Image – Extra Credit

The Art Classroom is a wonderful blog about art and design in secondary schools. It is run by David Dunlop and shows the day to day workings of an art classroom.

There are lots of examples of student work, as well as unit plans and ideas for other schools to try. Take a look and leave some comments about the work that is shared.

According to this article from Guardian Education, David Tennant (actor and current star of BBC Show Doctor Who) is the ideal headteacher.

Image from www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho

Primary school children were asked to vote for the person they would most like to be in charge of their school. Some of the other choices included Barrack Obama, JK Rowling, David Beckham and Cheryl Cole. Lots of celebrities were chosen by the children ’because they were fun’.

The survey also indicated that most children felt that their own headteachers made them feel happy at school. 88% of children also believed that their headteacher wanted the best for their school. Read more results in the article.

Who would be YOUR dream headteacher? Let us know in the comments…

Many people use the ‘Bookmarks’ or ‘Favorites’ feature of their web browser to save links to their favourite sites. Did you know that you can also save your bookmarks online, using sites like Delicious?

This has a number of benefits:

• You can access your bookmarks online, from any computer that has an internet connection. So, you can save bookmarks from a home computer and access them at school, and vice versa.
• You can save huge numbers of bookmarks… adding lots of bookmarks to your browser’s collection can mean that things get cluttered and disorganised. Online bookmarking sites usually use ‘tags’ to help you sort and search through your bookmarks, meaning that you can save hundreds / thousands of them without things getting jumbled.
• Online bookmarking allows you to share new and useful sites. For me, this is the biggest benefit. By connecting with other teachers, I can see the sites that they are bookmarking, and they can see my bookmarks too. I often browse through the bookmarks of people in my ‘network’ and discover lots of interesting web sites.

If you’re not using it already, sign up with Delicious and follow my bookmarks… you can find them at www.delicious.com/markjwarner. We also have a delicious account for our school’s bookmarks, which allow us to share useful sites with staff, children and parents. Have you tried online bookmarking yet?