The Name Game #AHS

New Tech: The tablet that turns itself lumpy.

Pretty cool!

BBC News: The tablet that turns itself lumpy..

Wildern AfG Blog is coming..

This year's Wildern Apps for Good Blog is coming... It still needs tweaking!

It will be used to share resources with pupils as well as provide a platform for pupils to reflect on their progress so far.

Numeracy SIG Update - Business Exam Questions

Looking through the Business Studies finance exam papers, I found several numeracy topics that appear regularly.

These are:

• General arithmetic (summing costs/sales)
• Reading values off Break Even charts (finding where the revenue and costs lines meet and being able to take figures from it)
• Profit margins (Ratios and percentages)

As well as this we encourage pupils to calculate their total marks and percentage scores. We also get them to work out timings per question based on the marks available.

In the Year 9 Induction we also look at currency exchange as well as budget setting and costs in producing a product.

Each subject shared the numeracy terminology we used and the equivalent used in Maths lessons will be given to us next time so that terminology can become consistent across the curriculum.

We were also asked to write down how we explain some of the numeracy methods to see if we just give pupils formulae and get them to memorise them or if we go through how the formulae are formed and why we use them.

MatthewKnight.co.uk: 15 Sites for Learning how to Program or Code

Some very useful links including Code Monster for teaching pupils how to code - 

MatthewKnight.co.uk: 15 Sites for Learning how to Program or Code: There is no denying the popularity of computers and technology in schools.  More and more students are integrating technology into their eve...

Creativity CPD

So in ICT we were given a Wheelbarrow and told to come up with a teaching strategy or high impact lesson that involved this and role play..

"What the hell?" you may be thinking.. We certainly were. We started off thinking of using  the wheel burrow as a store of knowledge and that knowledge would be dispersed amongst pupils some how. We then thought about different objects representing characters which would be handed out and pupils would have to respond to questions as their character.

It was then suggested, we turn the wheel burrow upside down. A pivotal moment in our day.

This is when inspiration hit us! We would develop The Wheelbarrow of Fortune!
Much to my embarrassment, we then had to act out the show in front of the panel, made up of members of SLT. I played a contestant whilst our visiting GTP played the ever so slightly cheesy host. (Welcome to Wildern!)

The start of the game consisted of picking a recall style questions from the side of the wheelbarrow. This had to be answered for a point. I the had to pick a bonus word. 
The wheel was covered in Higher Order questions and spun in order to pick one. If I could include the bonus word in to my answer to the higher order question, I would get double points.

Although incredibly embarrassing to perform in front of your boss and colleagues, it was actually fun and something a lot of pupils would enjoy.
Would I have a wheelbarrow in my classroom from now on - probably not, but the idea can be adapted using computerised spinners instead. 

For a CPD day, it was rather fun.

Wildern School - Outstanding Ofsted 2012

I can finally reveal that we, at Wildern, received an Outstanding grading for our Ofsted inspection in November.

Their focus seemed to be on data and our SEN pupils. We received an outstanding grade for each aspect of the report.

Well done all!

Wildern School Ofsted Report 2012 - Oustanding