Skills for writing.

I get excited when I receive new resources...yes, quite excited

 ...but with no-one to share my excitement!

A private tutor's life can be quite lonely...the staff room buzz

is missing...at least in my staff room it is!

Coffee time is a riot...not!

Anyway, I've been waiting for quite some time

to receive this resource, in the hope that it really is a little different

and will help my KS3 children to improve their writing.

Debra Myhill is the Director of the Centre for Research

in Writing. She is also the Subject leader for Secondary English.

She and her team have been working on this resource, which is

now finally published.

She says:

'... my commitment is to the bringing together of teaching, teacher education and research so that children and young people‘s experience of learning to be literate enables them to be confident, articulate citizens of the future, able to use language and literature for personal fulfilment and economic well-being.'

I have huge issues with the way that children write and so

I am really longing to get my teeth into this resource in the hope that I can

help my older pupils achieve better things!

Fingers crossed!!

;-)

Scruffy teachers!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10690386/Teachers-condemned-for-being-too-scruffy-report.html

Many teachers will be up in arms today, their answer being, 

’ What I wear doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to the way that I teach,’

That might be absolutely true but those teachers are missing the point…completely!

Teachers are supposed to be role models.

They are the people who have most contact with pupils throughout the year. They should set an example in how to behave, how to conduct oneself and how to dress. They are helping to prepare children and young people, for life and to take a pride in EVERY aspect of their lives. It’s all about taking a pride. That surely has to start with looking at yourself and your appearance. If you can’t be bothered with that then why will you be bothered with expecting high standards in the classroom, in other areas, for instance, classroom tidiness, classroom displays, classroom discipline. If you’re going to dumb down on appearance then that will lead to dumbing down on all sorts of other everyday things. That’s what I think.

Personally, I think that the erosion of dress standards, over the years, is much to do with many teachers wanting to be the children’s ‘friend’. Not good! It’s doing the children a massive dis-service and not only that, showing them total disrespect.

Looking at the picture of that scruffy devil at a Camden school, I thought, ‘You want to be treated as a professional person but you certainly don’t want to dress like one.’

For me, the clue is in the word, 'professional'!

I’ve never thought much of Ofsted but I’m with them on this one. ;-)