Power Teaching

A clip from you tube which spells out power-teaching.

I say "class", you say "yes". "Class, class". "Yes, yes". Hmmm... not sure this is me. I like the silent glare to capture the attention of the 13 yr old boys I teach. Perhaps because I know they find it difficult to separate business and fun. Being a relatively small and short person, I find it more effective to keep some level of "mystery" than to come across as over enthusiastic and a load of laughs. Don't get me wrong, I am all for a laugh or two but at the right place and time in a lesson.



What did you think?

I might come and look at this again the week before school starts next year.

13 year old boys do find it challenging to judge "appropriate behaviour" at the best of times and I don't think encouraging them to mimic me is going to establish the orderly environment I like to maintain in my Science lab. Something to think about.

Fun with Photo's

Thanks to Andrew Churches (Ulearn buddy) - he told me (via a tweet) about this website called Photofunia. I have had a few hours of fun playing with my head shot and Millie's (my boxers') photo - you can check out some of them here.

You would need to be careful letting a class use this site for creating avatars, there are a couple of more risque templates. I let my Yr 9 students spend 10 minutes on the site at the end of one lesson last week and those who chose to update their profile used acceptable templates. The class had 10 minutes of fun and half of it was using photo-booth on their macbooks.










This week, also via Twitter I came across heymilly's wikispace. Heymilly tweeted a link to her wikispace:
She has very generously made available a huge bank of resources, tips, tricks and a whole lot more. What secondary school English teachers would find invaluable on Milly's wikispace is her "5 frame story telling". Ewen McIntosh also mentioned using flickr and 5 frame story telling at ulearn07 in his keynote - I can see how student's could have not just an amazing learning experience with this activity but a huge amount of fun too! (is fun allowed at school?).