Gut feeling often correct

Just read this report
http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/Sutton_Trust_Home_Education_Support.pdf
Evidence of educational support outside of school
and surprise surprise "The key overall messages are quite clear, namely that parental education is closely linked to the amount of reading children do, as well as their attitudes to homework."

It often seems the case that research just confirms one's gut instinctive response to a hypothesis.

What we do about it is the harder question to answer.

Apostrophes, when and where

Thanks to "Cliotech" for this link
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe
Must remember to share with teachers after the holidays

To blog or not to blog

I do find this whole blogging thing difficult to maintain, or even to know what to write about. Do I use the blog just as a diary, or should I use it to tell others about sites and things that I come across. I really cannot bring myself to be too open certainly not in the way I would with a written diary.

However listening to Buffy Hamilton's voicethread I do think that I ought to be contributing more and not just lurking and grabbing. That behaviour is just what I used to moan about teachers doing in the library, that is rushing into the library and grabbing a box of books and running back to the classroom.

Today I caught up with last week's TES and was fascinated by an article about a school in New York where computer games form the basis of the education system.

I need to take a further look at

http://www.instituteofplay.com/

http://www.q2l.org/node/17

Can't see how anyone at my school would even consider anything so radical.

I often think that schools where there are either low results or disengaged students it is easier to do something radical. While in an achieving school it is often easy to continuing doing what you have always done as it seems to work.

I was also struck by Helen Mathieson's comment

"I don't ask pupils; "What do you want to be?" I ask them "How do you want to live?" They need to think about what skills they will need and how they will adapt to jobs throughout their lives."

(Headteacher Treviglas Business and Enterprise College in Newquay.)

We are due to lead some career lessons with Year 9 in January as they start to choose their options for GCSE and I think I might tweek our lesson plan to include this idea.