State of the Union

I felt it was about time for an update, well I finished up my probation year and after a weird summer holiday/unemployment managed to secure a maternity contract teaching business education until Christmas and so have been very busy learning not one but 2 new subjects (Administration and Business Management) and on the whole I'd have to say it's been a good experience so far.

I get to see school life from a different point of view and I have been lucky enough to still keep up with any developments in the computing field by attending the CPD sessions within the council.

So far in my current post I have applied many of the skills I brought to my computing classes last year and again work with varied success.

For admin I have been focusing on key skills involving Word Processors, Spreadsheets and will now shortly be looking at effective uses of the internet with the S3 pupils.

The S4 as I speak are revising for the final of their prelims and on their return will be heading towards their SQA practical projects of which I’m confident they will do well in.

In my NQT year I was well aware that I would have to leave the classes I’d worked with behind however I also knew I had a full year to work with them and to present them for their exams, this year I know I’m handing these classes over at Christmas and moving onto a new challenge and a new school starting in January and have mixed feelings about this on one hand I’m looking forward to teaching my subject again but at the same time never like leaving a job half done (Although in the case of doing dishes I’m more than happy to walk away from them!).

I’ll update again when I can think of something else to write.

Later!

Well it's the end of a very quick teaching year, I've seen 2 higher / Int 2 classes through to their exam and one 4th year class.

I now feel I understand the phrase "two term dash".

over the last few weeks I have been looking at graphics with the new S3 Standard Grade pupils and to do this I created a small investigation where they created a new school logo. to do this they used a drawing package and from here they transferred it into a paint package. The investigation then began incorporating computer systems by looking at file sizes and backing storage devices. This seems to have worked well however may have been a bit early to bring in bits and bytes.

Over the last few weeks we've been letting the pupils use Scratch, an excellent games programming language from MIT. Pupils from 3rd through to 6th year have been using it and seem to have taken to it well. It's definately more fun than visual basic.

I had been using a class blog with the higher and Int2 pupils which worked well, however I will set up an online drop box for pupils to send me their homework electronically when I make use of it in future classes.

S1 parents evening tonight so if you'll excuse me, I'm away to warm up my voice.

Well after years of resisting I've finally bought something from ebay, actually 3 things so far. 

It really is quite addictive and even if you don't win, those last few moments of an auction where you drive the price right up make loosing ok.

whoever won it isn't getting as much of a bargain as they thought they would and you've not lost any money.

Today is the final day of the holiday and so it's back to school tomorrow. This term it's time to finish the core units and set about the courseworks. This should be fun!