To be of real use, lessons that are recorded need to be real lessons – not lessons that look and feel as if they have been staged for the camera.

Both pupils and teachers need to be relaxed, and that means that there should be nothing in the classroom (such as a large camera, a tripod or a technician) that reminds everyone that, “This lesson is being recorded”.

When such a lesson takes place, the reactions (both from teachers and pupils) are remarkable.  They are impressed that was all so easy to do, that there was no complex set up, no stranger in the room.

And the teacher, now more relaxed about the procedure, often says, “I can already see what I could do better.”

What’s more, the Lessonbox Mobile recording equipment is portable and can be used by any teacher in any room or building. There’s nothing to stop it being used to record a number of lessons by different teachers each day even in different schools.  In effect, the recording of lessons quickly becomes the norm.

Once recording is complete, schools can use the Lessonbox Cloud platform to save it securely, share, add comments, and attach related documents.

You can even use the Cloud’s desktop recorder to record your own screen and add video and commentary to PowerPoint presentations.

Recorded lessons can be kept for CPD, self-evaluation, and examples of excellent teaching and learning.  In addition, the Cloud can be used to deliver lessons to students away from the classroom, if required, using the flipped classroom model. And if you have any concerns about having enough space to store all the resultant content, we can solve that too.

In fact, it has never been easier to share good practice.

If you would like to know more you can watch a teacher set up the equipment and prepare to record here, and see just how extraordinarily easy the whole process is. If you would like to know about our Lessonbox Cloud options click here.

To discuss how Lessonbox can work in your school please call 0845 519 3660 or if you have any specific questions please do email info@lessonbox.co.uk

Andrew Jenkins

Primary schools across the UK have refused to take part in a series of tests because they are making children tearful. Unfortunately, this is not an option for secondary schools, even though older students can experience these same overwhelming emotions when it comes to exams.

So what is the most effective way of supporting your students in dealing with the pressure of exams?

One way which has proven to be highly effective comes from looking at how new recruits in the army prepare for combat. Many of the skills that new recruits have to acquire would be beneficial to students who are struggling to deal with the pressures of exams.

This is because everyone involved in a mission knows that success is not a possibility; it is essential. There are no second chances. This gives them the motivation and determination that students need in order to perform well in their exams and achieve their desired results.

Such skills include application, attention to detail and focus, the avoidance of excuses, and, above all, a determination to succeed, no matter what.

It is for this reason that upon leaving the army I formed Major Motivator – to share these invaluable skills (which are central to army training) with young people through a range of fun, inspiring, and motivational seminars.

Your pupils will be shown a wide range of innovative strategies to help them tackle the array of challenges that they face between now and their exams – from being overwhelmed by the sudden increase in their workload, to coming to terms with the greater onus placed on them to manage their own revision.

Whatever challenges your students are facing with regard to their upcoming exams, our team of dedicated ex-military staff will equip them with effective revision strategies that we have acquired (and adapted) from schools across the UK.

It is essential that young people today realise that their future success is under their control.

If they want it enough, if they are determined enough, they can succeed.

You can find more information about the different ways that we work with schools by visiting www.majormotivator.co.uk. Alternatively, you can call us on 01536 399010 or email us at info@majormotivator.co.uk.

SMSC is a big feature of the New Ofsted Common Inspection Framework.  Given that you are probably already providing your pupils with an abundance of SMSC education in a less formal way, this should make meeting the requirements of the CIF fairly straightforward.

The difficult bit, of course, is proving to Ofsted that you are actively providing SMSC learning.

So the first step to ensuring that you are meeting the requirements of the CIF is to analyse each and every aspect of your pupils’ education to identify exactly where and when SMSC learning is taking place.

The second step is as simple as logging this SMSC. And the third step is to evaluate the effectiveness of these SMSC provisions so that they can be developed and ultimately meet Ofsted’s demands – which can be slightly more challenging.

To ensure that this three-step process doesn’t take up too much of your time we have developed SMSC Gridmaker – a time-efficient way of auditing SMSC across the whole school.

Thus, SMSC Gridmaker allows you and your colleagues to focus more attention on implementing SMSC learning itself, rather than the bureaucracy and paperwork that comes with it.

It is an online tool which makes it possible to log SMSC activities in a matter of seconds, analyse whole-school SMSC at the click of a button, and share evidence of SMSC in the form of dynamic bar charts and PDF reports with others.

Furthermore, SMSC Gridmaker can be tailored to your school’s areas of SMSC priority to include criteria such as British values, PSHE, Citizenship, and so on.

To see how SMSC GridMaker can help your school to collect evidence of your SMSC provisions and evaluate these provisions to create an SMSC improvement

When we consider that 65% of the population are visual learners, it is clear that the use of visual materials in lessons is going to be highly beneficial for teaching and learning.

For not only will the use of such materials ensure that your pupils can identify relationships and distinctions between one concept and another, but it will also ensure that they will remember and recall the knowledge that they have learnt more readily in the future.

And so it is for this reason that we have developed the Graphic Organisers Set of 3 books, each containing 60 open-ended graphic organiser sheets.

Our Graphic Organisers encourage learners to organise their ideas visually, which in turn enables them to process, analyse, and synthesise ideas in a wholly different way. As a result, your pupils’ understanding and critical thinking skills will be enhanced, leading to greater attainment in assessments.

Graphic Organisers for Any Subject contains 60 open-ended graphic organisers to support your pupils’ learning in an array of subject areas.

The subject-specific graphic organisers for Reading and Writing support your visual learners in remembering and recalling the various concepts in literacy more readily.

Graphic Organisers for Reading contains 60 graphic organisers for fiction and non-fiction, literary elements and genre, and reading in any content area. The organisers can be used to reinforce important reading strategies.

And Graphic Organisers for Writing contains 60 graphic organisers for writing fiction and non-fiction and integrating explicit elements of good writing. The organisers can be used to produce excellent writing.

You can order the Graphic Organisers Set in a variety of ways, including:

• By visiting the website
• By phone on 01449 766629
• By fax on 01449 768047
• By email to orders@tradecounter.co.uk
• Or by post to Brilliant Publications, Mendlesham Industrial Estate, Norwich Road, Mendlesham, Suffolk, IP14 5ND.

Brilliant Publications,
Mendlesham Industrial Estate,
Norwich Road,
Mendlesham,
Suffolk,
IP14 5ND.

website: www.brilliantpublications.co.uk
email: orders@tradecounter.co.uk

phone: 01449 766629
fax: 01449 768047

It is almost inevitable that things will go wrong on school trips because, as you will know if you have ever had the pleasure to organise one, there are some things over which you have little or no control.

A couple of weeks ago TES set out five things that are expected to go wrong on school trips, some of which you may be able to relate to. Here they are in TES’ own words:

“1) Permission slips – You told them they would need one numerous times, you told their parents they would need one numerous times, and you emailed/texted/posted a letter saying exactly the same thing. And yet, here they are: excited, grinning with enthusiasm, all their kit ready and not a single permission slip in sight.

“2) The packed lunches – You’ve spent 30 minutes travelling in a 1970s living room (complete with curtains) masquerading as a coach, and for some reason every child has already eaten their lunch. Quite why school trips cause insatiable hunger, no one knows, but what you do know is that your carefully prepared meal is going to be shared into 30 equal parts.

“3) The lost items – Yes, they’ve had the spiel about the school not being responsible for lost or stolen items, but guess who is running back through every exhibition room searching for a missing iPod? Wide-eyed and frantic, you interrogate anyone who looks vaguely official, only to eventually get a call from another teacher to say that the iPod has been found. At the bottom of the child’s bag…

“4) The vomit – Excessive excitement, excessive sugar, excessive tiredness and excessively aggressive driving by the coach driver. There is no combination more accomplished at causing vomit than that. You reach for the sick bag, but you know it’s too late. The children in the seats behind scramble for safety as the stream of sick winds slowly towards the back of the coach.

“5) Missing parents – You begin to think that, this time, things are going to be different. But then you spot them: the one student stood on their own. A phone call, some swearing, and then a screech into the car park. The frantic parent loads the student into the car with profuse apologies and protests that they are “sure it said 5pm not 4pm”. And with that, you finally head home, vowing never to do this again but knowing full well you’ll be repeating the process next term.”

However there is one thing that has to be every teacher’s nightmare scenario but which is one thing over which they do actually have some control:  and that is the possibility of the minibus breaking down.

For you can significantly reduce the likelihood of a breakdown by ensuring that the school’s minibus is enrolled on a full maintenance programme – just one of the services that Benchmark offers as part of the leasing arrangements they have with schools.

And another benefit of leasing a minibus with Benchmark is that it can often work out to be cheaper than buying a minibus outright (especially if one takes into account the re-sale value of a school bus at the end of its working life), or hiring a coach each time.

It is an arrangement which makes it possible for schools to fund the minibus through a small payment each month, which benefits both the budget and cash flow.

For more information about leasing a minibus with Benchmark Leasing you can go to our website, call us on 01753 859944 or email minibus@benchmarkleasing.co.uk

Link to TES article: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/friday-five-things-always-go-wrong-school-trips

Benchmark Leasing Ltd
11 High Street
Eton
Berkshire
SL4 6AS

www.minibusleasing.co.uk/school-minibus.php

minibus@benchmarkleasing.co.uk

Tel: 01753 859944

Ideal for STEM and re-usable at only £39.95
So how do you give young people the opportunity to solve problems and develop creative thinking skills whilst they are still at school?

STEM resources have been developed to provide teachers with a way of giving students experience of solving problems and gaining confidence in how to respond to challenges. Good maths based problem solving exercises are hard to come by.

So in order that students might see how things can easily go wrong and how, by working together and sharing information they can go right, we’ve put together a business exercise called Safe Delivery which is designed to give students experience of solving a difficult maths based problem and to develop creative thinking skills.

The exercise is suitable for small teams of KS4 and 6th form students who will each act as managers in a business.  Each manager will have individual briefing notes which they must read carefully and then communicate to the rest of their team.

The Scenario – The MD has ordered a huge fire resistant storage cabinet for the business that will house a new ‘server’ on which information will be stored. It is Friday afternoon and the cabinet is being delivered Saturday morning. It must be installed in the General Office by Monday morning – an office floor plan of the building is provided.  A team meeting is called and the managers sit down to work out how this problem will be undertaken.

This resource contains: For the students:
A memo that sets out the task
5 detailed briefs for different managers in the business and one scribe
A floor plan of the office building showing all the obstacles that need to be overcome

For the teacher:
Clear teachers’ guidance notes that explain how to run the exercise
A snapshot crucial information chart
The written solution
The solution on a power point presentation

There are more details at…
http://c-l-e.co.uk/buy-teaching-resources-online/safe-delivery-exercise/

You can pay and download the exercise direct from our website using Paypal or you may wish to pay with a purchase order number. Simply e-mail your purchase order number to us and we will send the exercise to you along with the invoice for payment.  For more information e-mail Julie@c-l-e.co.uk

Join our schools and together we can make sure you get solar power in your energy mix in 2016.

We have over 50 systems in schools nationwide.

“We are lucky to have the support of governors with the vision and confidence in the management team that allows us to embrace new initiatives, which are for the long-term good of the school,” Linda Davies, Parkside Academy 150kWp

Register with us. Discover how you can get solar panels even if you have no capital.  There is no commitment to registering.

Act before all subsidies disappear. Find out if you can:

• Get a free solar panel system and renewable power for at least 20 years
• Cut your energy bills in the medium to long term
• Cut your carbon emissions
• Have a teaching resource that demonstrates your commitment to being more sustainable as a school.

Our commitment to you is that despite huge government cutbacks in supporting solar for 2016, we will find a solar panel solution for you, ideally at no cost to yourself.  Make sure you are all signed up before the summer so you can enjoy solar power.

Do the right thing to reduce your impact on the environment. Put renewable power into your energy mix and show your students that the school is acting in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

Kind regards,

Helen and Ann
Solar for Schools Team

Government warning: Government has once again cut its support of solar power in 2016 by over half. If your school is serious about getting renewable power into your energy mix, you need to act now before the support disappears completely.

The benefits of carrying out SMSC audits are boundless.

Not only because they provide the means to evaluate the effectiveness of existing provisions and improve upon these, but also because they provide the proof that Ofsted demands.

However, auditing an SMSC to respond to the demands of Ofsted and generating a SMSC improvement plan requires a great deal of time, which is something many of us are short of.

Fortunately, SMSC Gridmaker has found a time-efficient way of auditing SMSC across the whole school, which actually allows staff to focus more of their attention on SMSC provisions, SMSC auditing, and SMSC provision evaluation than before.

By watching the video here, you can see how evidence of an SMSC activity can be captured in less than 60 seconds.

The SMSC Gridmaker online tool makes it possible to log SMSC activities in a matter of seconds, analyse whole-school SMSC at the click of a button, and share evidence of SMSC in the form of dynamic bar charts and PDF reports with others.

Furthermore, SMSC Gridmaker can be tailored to your school’s areas of SMSC priority to include criteria such as British values, PSHE, Citizenship, and so on.

To see how SMSC GridMaker can help your school to collect evidence of your SMSC provisions and evaluate these provisions to create an SMSC improvement plan, please visit: http://smsc.opeus.org/home

Research by the Dyscalculia Centre, which has been published in SEN Magazine, has shown that there are five different types of dyscalculia – although inevitably many young people suffer from a combination of the types listed below.

Type 1 dyscalculics report significant worries about maths.  As a result they feel themselves living in an alien world in which everyone else can grasp maths, but they can’t.  Self-doubt becomes so strong that it gets increasingly difficult to persuade the individual that with proper support they might well be able to undertake and understand mathematical calculations.

Type 2 dyscalculics also experience this deep concern but have found strategies for understanding and coping with basic maths – yet they feel that they don’t have the automatic grasp that others have and often take twice as much time (or more) to do a maths problem as a non-dyscalculic person.

Type 3 students have a profound difficulty in comprehending and dealing with the concept of time.  Sometimes this issue appears on its own, sometimes in combination with types 1 or 2 dyscalculia.  For such people time itself makes no sense and they are quite unable to estimate “five minutes” or any other time length while questions about timetables and the like are also quite meaningless.

Type 4 dyscalculics may not always be dyscalculic in the genetic sense, although they display many of the symptoms of dyscalculic people because they have short-term and long-term memory problems.  These students generally have a problem with all sequences – and this, of course, affects their ability to handle maths perhaps more than any other subject.

Type 5 dyscalculics tend not to see numbers as in any way related to the real world.  In one sense most of us have this problem; after all, what is “six”?   We know what six sheep are.  But “six” on its own is close to meaningless.   For such people, maths can be learned automatically, but when it gets to issues such as fractions, decimals, and percentages then life gets difficult.

Fortunately all these types of dyscalculics can be helped through different types of multi-sensory learning of maths, and this is the approach we have set out in our series: “Dyscalculia Activities”

Each volume contains a vast array of activities which a teacher or assistant teacher can undertake with a small group of students, and involves turning the abstract concepts of maths into physical experiences.  No special equipment is needed, apart from paper, scissors, small cards and some ludo type counters.  (We can supply the cards and counters if you don’t already have them).

Each printed volume is copiable, and so only one copy is needed per school.

There are details here including sample pages

• Dyscalculia Activities 1: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division  http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/teacher.html#5
• Dyscalculia Activities 2: Shapes, fractions, percentages.  http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/teacher.html#9
• Dyscalculia Activities 3: Time and Timetables: http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/teacher.html#8
• Cards and counters for use with above books: http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/teacher.html#6

If you have any enquiries please do call 01536 399 000 or email Tony@schools.co.uk

You can place orders on line (there is a link from each of the above resource pages) or you can go straight to the on-line shop here http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/index.php?cPath=29 You can also order by post and fax:

• By post to First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Way, Corby, NN17 4HH
• By fax to 01536 399 012

Ask most people today what the three fundamentals of written English are and they will probably struggle to define them.

And yet if students can grasp that there are just three fundamentals then they can start to see that the written language has a unified logical base, rather than being an endless stream of rules and regulations.

The three fundamentals are defined in the volume “Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stage 3” as Word Classes (adverbs, prepositions, etc), Phrases, Clauses and Sentences, and finally Punctuation.

This 300 page copiable book works through these three fundamentals, in each case breaking them down into their constituent parts.

Thus there are ten sections relating to word classes, five relating to phrases, clauses, and sentences, and eight relating to punctuation.  Each section is itself subdivided into between five and ten sub-sections, making it easy to find rules and examples on any specific topic that is required.

As such the volume is designed as a comprehensive reference source to be used throughout Key Stage 3 but it may also be used with students at key stage 4 who need remedial work.

Throughout, the book includes authentic examples collected from a variety of written sources. Through this mechanism the volume pays particular attention to those areas with which authors of all ages tend to have difficulties and offers an abundance of examples of current usage highlighting these areas.

Such examples are then followed by suggested improvements and by explanations justifying those improvements. Finally the relevant principles are practised through activities designed for pupils.

Anna Nolan, the author of Grammar and Punctuation for Key Stage 3, has worked as a freelance consultant to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and as a teacher trainer with the Edexcel National Curriculum Services.

There is a sample chapter available on-line at http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/english/T1661.pdf

Cat No: 978 1 86083 594 0;  Publisher reference no: T1661emn

Prices

• Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £34.95. plus £3.95 delivery
• CD with school-wide rights: £34.95 plus £3.95 delivery
• Both the Ring Binder and the CD £41.94 plus £3.95 delivery
• Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the book…

• By post to First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Way, Corby, NN17 4HH
• By fax to 01536 399 012
• By phone with a school order number on 01536 399 011
• On line with a credit card at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=482

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In learning any language students we all go through two phases.

The first involves becoming familiar with the basic grammar and vocabulary of the language that allows the individual to engage in simple written and verbal communication – enough to ask the way to the shops and understand the answer.

That type of communication is expanded and developed through bringing in new situations and speeding up the exchanges while still keeping the subject matter very much in the every day.

That is part one. The second part then makes a conceptual leap from that position – a leap which takes the students up to a completely different level.

By this second stage the awareness of many everyday phrases is embedded in the brain and can be heard, understood and answered without translation. The language is understood as language.

And here students make the leap from a pass at GCSE to a higher grade and prepare themselves for A level, should they wish to take it.

Deutscher Wiederholungskurs will help this type of candidate make these steps forward.  It provides material for revision for the GCSE speaking and writing tests and helps to bridge the gap between GCSE and A level.

The course is divided into 8 topics drawn from the GCSE syllabus, each containing the same tasks:

• Oral questions to revise the topic briefly;
• Suggestions for visual stimuli for further oral revision;
• A passage of German entitled “Fritz erzählt” which contains gaps to fill in and practice for case endings, pronouns and verb endings;
• Comprehension exercises on the passage to be answered in full German sentences;
• A passage of English for translation into German; and a series of questions in German, the answers to which should form the basis for a short essay.  Finally there are a series of related role-play situations.

The book is fully photocopiable for ease of use in the classroom and will prove an invaluable source of revision and consolidation for your GCSE students.

Sample pages from the book, order code T1616emn,  can be found on http://pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/modlang/T1616.pdf

Prices

• Photocopiable report in a ring binder, £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
• CD with school-wide rights: £19.95 plus £3.95 delivery
• Both the Ring Binder and the CD £26.94 plus £3.95 delivery
• Prices include VAT.

 You can purchase the report…

• By post from First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct, Earlstrees Rd, Corby, NN17 4HH
• By fax to 01536 399 012
• On-line with a credit card at http://tinyurl.com/mw79zv
• By phone with a school order number or a credit card to 01536 399 011

When ordering the book please quote the reference T1

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