I say it often, but I truly am A LUCKY MAN.
I visited Baytree Special school, in Weston-super-Mare, again today for a sensory session with a large group of children across the age range that the school caters for.

The aim was to use a computer generated landscape as the foundation for a sensory experience. After a meeting with the teaching staff, a few weeks ago, we decided to take the students on a “virtual beach trip”

I didn’t know quite what to expect from the session and confess to feeling something I don’t feel very often: nervous.

I shouldn’t have been. The staff at Baytree are an incredible bunch. They all made a massive effort to give the children an immersive experience in the environment that we visited.

We had every kind of beach-y, nautical, holiday article imaginable. Shells, sand sea-weed (some green, some a deep, rich, sink-into-it brown, the most gorgeous colour I know!) sun hats, water, driftwood, stuffed dolphins, crabs, turtles, towels… you name it, we had it! Fans and hair driers did a great job of impersonating warm, dry coastal breezes. Rocks and pebbles provided some amazing contrasting textures.

What surprised me was the genuine progression and change that occurred between the beginning and the end of the session.

One lad surprised us by using some quite developed vocabulary when he doesn’t normally communicate so readily. For example, we were making sand castles and after Tricia, his key worker had tapped one out of the bucket he said “I am going to make another, bigger one” Tricia and I were quite startled how expressive he had become.

He was also very perceptive about what was generating the images on the whiteboard and the sound effects of wind and waves within the room. When he had discovered my laptop, we spent a little time exploring “up” and “down” and how the arrows on the keyboard were having an effect on whether we looking at the sand or into the sky. His responses, and the way that he manipulated the image showed real, bright thought. A delight to share. That mum was happily surprised at his use of language was also very pleasing.

All of the children, and there were quite a lot of them in the session, seemed to show real delight in the experience, from pouring sand from different heights (and even describing the feeling of it running through you fingers, “cool” and “watery”) through to stroking the gorgeous shining sea-weed.

Thank you to all of the staff: Shelley, Caroline, Ann, Maria, Stephanie, Andrea, Tricia, Laura, Angela, Barbara, Angie and Evelyn for making the session go … swimmingly!
Well done to Adam, Millie, Jack, Maisie, Jamie, Jake, Mollie, Ethan, Ciaran, Lewis, and Liam. It was great to spend time with you in the sunshine.

There were smiles galore through the whole session, one of the biggest being on my face! That smile was wiped off when it came down to clearing up the mess though!

Thanks to all and see you tomorrow for some more.

If you want to see how ICT and sensory stories can be mixed to great effect and with rich humour, visit the master of such things, the wonderful Pete Wells. Pete, another BECTA Award Winner, has been described as the Johnny Vegas of education. This belittles the man’s skills at inspiring children of all abilities but does portray some of his wit behind the wisdom. Visit Pete’s site HERE

Oh and HAPPY HALLOW’EEN… I hope you had as much fun as E had!

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Really good fun with some children coming up with short poetic phrases to express the feelings of excitement, fear and elation before, during and after a “virtual” rollercoaster ride.
We had a go at listing some descriptive words collected from their memories of rollercoaster rides.
Next, I took them on a ride from Myst III:Exile. We waited at the top and recorded our feelings of anticipation. Deep breath and we were off, screaming our way to the bottom. Got the feelings down in pithy combinations of, sometimes contrasting words. Personification, poetry, punchy, personal and powerful! The difference was quite remarkable. Now, their ideas really caught the sensations of such an adrenaline rush.
We then recorded, at pace, into GarageBand alongside the film.
The ride is a place I often use, with children and adults, to stimulate musical sound effects or soundtracks. It had a superb effect on creative, descriptive thought too.
Well done to the children of Eccleston Mere Primary and Oakdene school. As teacher, Karen Pickthall commented “It was so moving to see the genuine enthusiasm of a little boy who is usually very reluctant to speak. The children really appeared to come ‘alive’ and completely engaged with the learning experience.”
Enjoy! (It may be difficult to pick out in places, but I think the children did incredibly well, and in a very short space of time.)

Second film to follow soon…

The first of a couple of trips to Milton Keynes. Firstly to Monkston Primary School
Monkston Primary School is a community school proud to be part of the developing area of Monkston and Monkston Park. It places a lot of emphasis on effective use of ICT and has received a couple of awards in recognition of this.

The school first opened in September 2001 as Monkston Combined School. In September 2005 it became known as Monkston Primary School. With 420 places, two classes in each year group, it boasts “a range of facilities each designed to promote quality learning for all children.” It is a very well designed and attractive school.

The school is also rightly proud of a living ‘Sedum‘ roof which changes colour with the seasons and acts as a “Green Roof”

I really enjoyed working with a really warm-spirited, open, imaginative, and humorous set of staff, from TAs and teachers to volunteers, on developing some ideas for inspiring writing and visual literacy.

Well done and thank you to head, Tom Winter and deputy head Phil Webster, for organising a really fun time.

I had a quick glimpse of Milton Keynes’ most famous inhabitants, the concrete cows, constructed in 1978 by community artist Liz Leyh with the help of local school children using scrap materials.

Just for the fun of it, here are a few silly cow links: Cow noughts and crosses, a cow “in and out” game for simple science, and Cowhtello, a twist on the game of Orthello to play on a whiteboard.

I promised a few folk I would link to some ideas for simple “non seasonal” DT.

Here’s fun site with some free nets of 3-D models to print and make. (Click on the model)

Thank you to Ewan McIntosh for the reference to the findings of Aberdeen Myst Project.

The project seems to have been a great success and has been well documented and recorded, including interviews with some of the teachers involved. I am glad to have been part of the experience and look forward to a return trip, to extend ideas further, in April next year.

For those who might ask “Looks good but… does it work?” read Ewan’s summary and thoughts HERE or explore the Aberdeen Games Based Learning case study HERE

Ewan keeps an excellent, informative and authoritative blog, and wins my prize for the most regularly updated and maintained site. Well worth a look.

Like Prof Heppell I love sailing. As Stephen shared with me at BETT in January, it is the joy of beating the wind and harnessing it to help you explore.

I enjoyed a last sail of the year with my dad and my daughter, Ellie.

A thoroughly relaxing time. Amazing what a bit of fresh air can do for the soul. Sat, at one time, looking out across sun-dappled water, to a wooded headland, Autumn air, and thought… “LOVE it! I wanna do it all, and I want to do it soon! Thank you.”

Feel very fortunate to be able to sail independently. I really appreciate the work done by the RYA to ensure equal access to the sailing experience for people with disabilities.

Ready for the new term…

Thank you to Andrew Jones for the nudge towards an interactive version of the punctuation pyramid I mentioned a few posts back.

The idea is taken from Ros Wilson’s book – ‘Strategies for Immediate Impact on Writing Standards’
This interactive version shows the punctuation marks from level 1 to 5 and how they are used:

.
. ?
. ? , !
. ?, ! ’ “”
- . ? , ! ’ “” : ; ()

There are a lot of other very useful activites and rescources on this site.

At the end of what had been an eventful fortnight, we gathered at Haydock Race Course for a conference celebrating and bringing together some of the creative ideas for inspiring writing.

I think the folk of the Write Club 7 schools (Eccleston Mere Primary, Rainford CE Primary, St Teresa’s Primary, Willow Tree, Oakdene Primary, Eccleston Lane Ends Primary, and Nutgrove MA Primary) are an imaginative and creative bunch with an original vision and have every right to celebrate.

I personally would like to thank Margaret Baxter and Sarah Neild, for helping me through a time that went off in directions no-one could have predicted. A hospital stay was not in the script when I came up North but those two were a remarkable back up team. THANK YOU!

Well done and thank you too, to ALL of the Write Club 7 crew. You have a “write” to be proud of what you are acheiving with your children.

Thank you to Helen Lee, the other heads and staff who provided us with a challenging and inspiring fortnight.

To paraphrase a famous film:

“The first rule of write club is: you MUST talk about write club.”

As part of the Write Club 7 celebration week, we were at the Village Hotel, Whiston, today, for a conference on creative approaches to improving writing.

Levi Tafari, Margaret Baxter, Nick Briscoe and myself were presenting different ways of inspiring and recording writing.

Margaret stretched us all by introducing multi-modal writing frames so that children can record their creative thoughts alongside film and sound files.

I really enjoyed Nick’s imaginative use of junk store props, story dice, pictures and other stimuli to inspire and structure stories. “Enchanting” is the word that springs to mind.

Levi had us creating rap-like poetry.

He mentioned his 5 Is of poetry creation. Inspiration. Ideas. Imagination. Information and Imagery.

Levi mentioned how surprised he was that so few schools pay attention to Black History Month Visit the website for a vast amount of useful resources.

I like Levi’s 4 line rhyming challenge

Here is Margaret’s response:

One awful day I was forced to write,

My heart was gripped with a terrible fright.

But, from this day I’ve seen the light,

And now, I’ll reach for that creative height!

That about sums up a motivating and truly varied day.

Thank you to Helen Lee and all colleagues who organised today’s event.