Why Bother

Things are a bit weird at the moment. I feel like I'm just killing time (and I'm sure some of the kids feel the same way). It's a bit like around the same point in the term before christmas so I have no doubt that a large factor is sheer tiredness. Still, a lot of lessons I've delivered have left me seriously unhappy.

In addition, I'm having to rush soooo much. Int2 still have Unit 4 to finish, assess, then resit their Unit 1 NAB, all in 4 weeks, with some attempt at final exam revision in there too. Int1s have finished the course, most are all up to date with NABs and LO3s, but are so hard to revise with. They seem to be much happier scrapping/swearing/whatever else. My first years are slowly... turning... into... monsters. Which scares me a bit - am I having some contribution to this phenomenon? Conversations with other teachers seem to suggest probably not, but it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth after our lessons. Finally, my 3rd years are seriously behind. I've only really managed to do one and a half topics this whole year. I could make up some excuses about sounding things out, teaching to more depth etc, but on the whole I think I've just let things happen a bit too loosely. At least I still feel I can try more interesting teaching methods with the two younger classes.

However, I also wanted to talk about a few of things that I thought have been successes recently.

• Mario Kart Mechanics - I only keep calling it this because it rolls off the tongue better than the other games I chose. Both classes I tried it on got very engaged with it, even though it was only one person playing at a time in time trials. It's pretty clear that they're more interested in playing than calculating, but with a bit more structure I think the activity could work pretty well as an introduction to speed at lower levels.
• Radioactivity simulation - using an activity I adapted from my time at MH with Bob Kibble with 100 dice used to simulate radioactive decay. My typically obtuse 5th years all got very excited and were grabbing for dice and counting left right and centre even though there was about ten of them crowded around one tray. Definately a winner. I hit upon the possibility of doing some sort of bets with the class - didn't take it up as I was in a temp classroom with no board space to write on but something to think about for next time.
• A revision activity provided by my friend in Edinburgh which while apparently simple seemed to really work - I will be finishing it up next week and see whether it worked.
• Taking my first years out to the front of school to plant the bulbs that they'd potted a few months ago. The pots were taking up space and the plants were starting to get too big for them anyway and it was a nice chance to get outside with the class. Typically though, some took it as an opportunity for a mess about.

Looking ahead, I've just bought a flip camera. The plan (or one of them, anyway) is to get the kids to video themselves doing their SG investigations, maybe give a talk explaining what it's about. There are, I'm sure, lots of other exciting things that I could try, but I can't think of any just at the moment!

A While

Once again, I've been pretty bad at this. Nothing really to say, I guess.

I did think I'd better jot down some notes on my latest project though, if only for posterity's sake.

So, here goes:

Mario Kart Mechanics

The premise, simple: use a driving game to engage pupils with speed, distance and time calculations.

Why?

Well, my Int2 class are still struggling with the mechanics section. In particular most are still not getting full marks in tests when they have to do speed calculations, even though they've all done either Int1 or SG physics. The class is also hard to motivate, and most would much rather be doing something else.

How?

I decided on Mario Kart as I've used the Wii and Mario Kart in particular as an end of term reward and it went down really well. Plus it's easy to play and anyone can join in.

Unfortunately Mario Kart lacks any real data in the game. It has lap times, like all other racing games. But no information about distance.

This isn't really a problem - we could easily bring in a whole new lesson about estimation. Take Mario as an average human, for example, or guess the length of a Kart. So I decided that it was a step to far for my class. I might try it with another, but the time being it went back to the drawing board.

I did a bit of research on more realistic racing games, focussing on original XBox games, as I'd picked one of these up cheap a few years ago, and managed to find Forza Motorsport for £2 online.

Once it arrived, I had a quick look over. The game has track lengths and also an ingame speedometer, so on to a winner, I thought.

After setup, it went down pretty well. I only have one controller so they did time trials against each other and had to work out their average speed over each lap after they'd finished. Most seemed happy to do it, and there was a real sense of competition. There were a few problems with units, but this could easily be made into a teaching point - the track was measured in km, the time in min:secs, so there was lots of converting going on.

The engagement tailed off towards the end, but it was the end of a triple period and it was a subject we'd covered many times before. I think it would work better as an introduction to speed, maybe, or a better way of doing the repetitive practise questions needed to cement the algebra in pupil's minds. As a short pilot, I think it was a success.

The problems:
With a large class I think it wouldn't work as the sole activity - I only had about 8 and they were all happy to sit and watch while the others had a go. With a class of 20 this might be different. A multiplayer game would be more suited and would allow more pupils to get a go in lesson time.

Forza is HARD. I suck at it. A couple of pupils were "hardcore" driving gamers and did so much better than everyone else that it pretty much took out any competition. Something like Mario Kart, which is easier to play and more "fun" would work better in my opinion. The only problem being lack of data.

More scaffolding - I had to help the kids who struggled with the unit conversions individually as the game was projected on the board and I don't have any other space to write. This wasn't a massive concern, but it would be good to have a group of pupils playing then coming away into some kind of 'mini-tutorial' on working out their speeds.

One of the pupils asked if we could have another game of bomberman (the other end of term award game we played). I said if he could write a note on how it would teach them physics I'd be happy to. I'll let you know if I get anything back.

Sometimes

I don't know why it is, but in the last couple of weeks everything seems to have just clicked into place. I'm still teaching some fairly average lessons and there's still annoyances left, right and centre, but overall they don't seem to matter as much. I've settled into what I think is a good routine with all my classes and am finally, finally, beginning to make some progress with my seniors.

The sudden collapse of possibilities with my future might have something to do with it, I suppose. Now I know what I'm doing it gives me a bit of freedom. Relief of other pressures in my life is probably helping as well. Plus I'm really, really excited about space again, and I'm trying to pass this on to my standard grade class.

Life, and work is good. I'm looking forward to stuff. I'm still doing the things I want to be doing (mostly) but need to try harder with some of them. Oh, and I need to start thinking about a holiday. Yessss.

Speak, See, Remember

The week-
Well, a mixture of good and bad. Nothing amazing from my end, but nothing terrible either. My examination classes continue to vex me, although the test my Int2s did seemed to show a little progress which bodes better for the upcoming prelims. First years were scrappy as ever, although they responded well to working quietly on Monday. The lessons that my SG class prepared weren't exactly world shattering, but they showed promise and I'm sure we can build on them later on.

Currently hoping to prepare a standalone unit for the Space topic on rockets, using my new Rokits, some fizz poppers and the free motion tracking software I was shown at SSERC. So, keep your fingers crossed for good weather.

The online presence of my OU course has beefed up this week, with the course forum, website and tutor groups going live. It looks like an interesting mix of people and the first assignments appear to be just about right in terms of challenge vs. time requirement. I've already started the first couple, even though the first one isn't due in until April. Too keen?

Progress with my job application as well. Kevin has been writing my reference (I hope), but they asked some very specific questions (e.g. how would X respond to working in a foreign capital) so I'm not sure how the generico references I'm sure to get at this stage in my career will work. I can only hope they accept me for interview so that I can WOW them with my witty banter. Have been doing a little research into the school. Thought I'd found a snag when I noticed mention of a certain High Level Member of the Hussein Regime, but it turns out it's a different Tariq Aziz! What japes.

And finally, I now have uncorrected-better-than-20:20 vision! Or hopefully. A large number of checkups still remain, but the process so far has been fairly hassle free! Plus it meant I got to go shopping in Inverness and buy a wok. Yay.

Catch Me Up

I won't go into horrendous detail about school so far, but basically the first term has been great. There have, of course, been ups and downs but on the whole I'm having a wonderful time in my probationary year.

Everyone at school is very supportive and my department is great. I have some amazing classes and no downright horrible ones. The school has many problems, but I firmly believe that the first step towards solving anything is a pleasant working atmosphere, something that is definately in evidence.

I'm enjoying myself and I've had the opportunity to try some ideas of my own - some of which have even worked! I seem to be getting into my stride with the whole 'teaching' thing and even though I have bad (baaaaad) lessons, I think now is the time to be pushing the envelope and challenging myself to use more of my own and others' ideas to improve the quality of the learning in my classroom. Oh, and I received a 'satisfactory' for the first term on my GTCS profile, so I'm well on the way to registration.

I don't want to make a huge retrospective about term 1 (even though this blog is meant to be about reflection) because I reckon it'd be much more useful to look forward. For now, then, I'll stop the teaching chat and fill you in on the rest of what's happening in the land of Wick.

Mostly, I've been good and actually kept to some of my promises. Unfortunately the airport no longer does flying lessons, so that hasn't happened (yet!) but I have signed up for an Open University course, carried on with my driving lessons, applied for my Master's, am trying to do a weekly piano practice and have dived headlong into a couple of sports things. I haven't managed to get back into painting exactly, but a notice in school about a writing competition spurred me back to the pan so I've now got a notebook that's gradually filling as something to fulfil my creative urges.

I have started studying for the OU Course, even though it's not meant to start until the beginning of February. I figure that being ahead of the curve can't hurt. So far it's looking really interesting. From the overview it seems to have a bit of everything - physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy - which is perfect for me. The course is mainly just for my own interest, but I think I should be able to use some of the things I'm going to be learning to at least make the Space topic in Standard Grade more interesting, or possibly hang more of the entire course on some interesting contexts (teaching buoyancy by volcanic processes, anyone?).

Anyway, I think that's enough of a catch up. From now on I'll hopefully be doing some decent bitesize posts, with a mixture of personal and professional ideas! Let's see how long it lasts!

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

So, yeah. A lot has happened in the mean time. We finally got internet access in the flat (although this actually happened a while ago) and life has finally calmed down enough to let me spend some time on the ol' Web 2.0 stuff that I promised myself I would keep up through this year. I'm not on twitter so you can follow my inane ramblings to your hearts content, should you so wish. I'm following a lot of educational and news blogs thanks to Google Reader, which I discovered today. A lot of this was done because I was meant to be getting an iPhone fairly soon, which would be an ideal place to do all this kind of thing from, but I've decided that since there's absolutely no 3G access up here and Apple decided not to release a 32GB version, I will hold my horses and wait.

But enough of that, I think. Perhaps I should fill you in on what has happened in the 7 months since I started this damn thing.

I spent the summer doing... well, not much. Reading a lot, sorting out some of my old stuff to sell, painting. The time seemed to disappear very very fast.

Before I knew it, then, the time came to move North. I packed a couple of bags and made decided on a car load of possessions that would follow me up the road after a few weeks. Catching up with a few friends on the way up, I slowly made my way to Caithness, by train and coach. I had a couple of weeks on my own in our new flat, which I spent exploring the area and finding out as much as I could. Then my parents made the drive up with all my stuff and stayed for a few days to help me explore (the highlight being a trip to Orkney in gorgeous sunshine). After that, my new flatmate Lee arrived and we began preparing for school.

But for now, I think I'll leave you with that and fill in the rest of our first term in another post, as I have to go and make some bolognase now.

Isolation

So, I got my next letter through. I've been placed at Wick High School. Yes, that's right, that little red bit right at the top of Scotland. Or here, if you prefer.

I'm not sure how to feel about this, really. I've started doing a bit of research but it hasn't really helped. Most of all I think I'm going to have to be a little imaginative with how I spend my free time (if I get any).

My research has uncovered that you can do flying lessons from Wick airport, so I think this might be on the cards. I'm definately going to take up painting again, both models and try and do some sketches and landscapes if I can get out. I guess I'll have to do a lot of walking as well!