The Twenty-Sixth Republic -Half Term Horror?

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You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

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Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the toffee vodka is hidden.

If you are fed up with cakes and biscuits there is now a cheeseboard on offer

If you come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

@MrsHamlet

I have a brain slide strategy. You put the index finger of your non writing hand in your ear do stuff can't get out. I can even get y13 to do it.

Genius

@TheHoneyBadger

*Think it's called the Hook at my school or the big question.

What happens if you trump in the bath etc*

I talked a lot about farting in the corner of the lab to teach diffusion - hooks for kids are generally vaguely inappropriate and highly memorable. It's actually part of why I found Science a pain to teach because it doesn't hook brilliantly into kids experiences (or at least not easily from my non specialist perspective) and I seemed to be teaching in a vacuum of context.

Talking about 1914 Europe led to me talking a lot about if Billy is annoying but he has a big brother in year 11 who is scary as hell are you more or less likely to bully Billy? Humanities is full of hooks thankfully.

MrsH that means they used to forget all about them after A'level, then after GCSE and now they forget all about them by year 7 Sorry for my cynicism. I'm just not convinced 'doing something younger' and younger = better.

This is true. Some of my hooks can be tenacious.

What links megan trainor and neutralisation?
Then play all about the base.

Why are brad , jen and Angelina like the reactivity series? Think I updated it with gigi hadid later on.

Some are really difficult though.

@TheHoneyBadger

omg why is it necessary to know that those words are called something eg. in a category? Surely using them confidently and competently is important which requires no need to know what they're called? Not in your own language surely?

Yeah I couldn't be a year 6 teacher.

At A level In English language, it's vital. Modals are a nice to know at GCSE. I don't know why primary school kids need to know. Many (most?) teachers don't and we're all fully functioning grown ups... I couldn't teach primary at all. Little kids scare me.

(Has anyone else just tried sticking the index finger of their non-dominant hand in their ear?)

Ah, just me then....

@Augustbreeze

(Has anyone else just tried sticking the index finger of their non-dominant hand in their ear?)

Ah, just me then....

Why?

I was once told the best way for kids to remember the EM spectrum was "gay xmen use vibrators in men's rectums" I've never forgotten it although have rarely been brave enough to use if

Sorry just a random inappropriate hook

@riga I've claimed the tax rebate, very easy to do, took a couple of minutes. Think it works out at £1.20 a week, but they give you the full year (and 2 week of last year from 23rd March at a lower rate). So it will be around £60 I think, definitely worth doing.

Riga I have used the Brad, Jen and Angelina for displacement reactions thanks to the unit's designer putting it in as a slide

As a former RS teacher I really thought that I'd topped the charts for the 'why do we have to learn this?' fits of pique but then I taught Science. Sadly ds is going through the I hate Science thing at the minute and the why do I need to know about atoms angst.

Now I get it from year 9's (who have chosen to do history) complaining about the American West module. My off the cuff answer is so you can understand why American are crazy gun toting anti government conspiracy theorists today. They're not convinced.

My rule for spelling necessary is "one condom; safe sex". They remember it... and I'm ticking that PSHCE box at the same time. Go me.

@hedgehogger1 that made me laugh out loud

Not sure I'd be brave enough to use it either

I LOVED A'level English Language. We did do grammar but also tons on phonetics and actually learning how to transcribe speech and a bit of Chomsky and all sorts.

I elected to do Linguistics and Anthropology at university only to find that a month in to Linguistics and people were still learning how to parse a subject and very basic grammar whereas Anthropology was fascinating so I went over to that full time.

Wouldn't happen now of course because everyone learns that shit at 10 years old apparently. Joking obviously - guessing ramming grammar down the throats of children who can't even confidently write a story yet has not much impact on what university lecturers have to cover in first year.

@MrsHamlet

My rule for spelling necessary is "one condom; safe sex". They remember it... and I'm ticking that PSHCE box at the same time. Go me.

love this! And it will stick in my head finally

Transcription has a special circle of hell! One of my students last year studied the classroom language of one of my colleagues and had to transcribe 3 lessons. I'd warned her but she wouldn't listen!
We're doing the wug test next week when we look at morphology. Happy days :)

I loved it. I loved that you could actually record someone's accent and the pitch and timing etc. And that you could analyse how many fillers someone used etc. I had a flashback to it when watching myself back on IRIS and realising how many times I decisively say the word, "Right!" in a lesson as code for get your shit together badger and get theirs together too

On Thursday 22 October, approximately 26% of state-funded schools, excluding those on half term, reported they had one or more pupils self-isolating who had been asked to do so due to potential contact with a case of coronavirus inside the school (compared to 21% of all state-funded schools last week). This equates to 55% of state-funded secondaries and 20% of state-funded primaries, excluding those on half term. Note that the vast majority of these schools remain open to most pupils.

55% of secondaries had pupils isolating? Is that right... am nit the best with stats?

Link: explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak/2020-week-43

But can you explain the difference between a modal verb, an adverb of frequency and a preposition? There's always a few questions that adk you to say whether the verb has been used as the above or not in the SATS.

I am old enough to remember teaching that in the old year 9 SATS.

I've just read a year 12 essay in which a student confidently asserts that the writer doesn't use grammar, so I'm just off for a weep.

The way they word things in that link try to make things not sound so bad until you do the maths. 16% of schools sent home 30 or more students, that's loads. Also 6% of a secondary cohort of 1500 (not an unusual sized school) is 90 - that's a lot missing from education - but 6% doesn't sound as bad...

omg why is it necessary to know that those words are called something eg. in a category? Surely using them confidently and competently is important which requires no need to know what they're called? Not in your own language surely?

The only reason it’s useful to know the “label” for words is to make it easier to explain what they do - this can be a useful shorthand for discussing reading or improving writing.

However, the primary curriculum has unfortunately been influenced by the GCSE specification which had a massive swerve towards students labelling “method” (the label of the word/phrase)....until markers for the exam board realised it was massively getting in the way of students articulating what writing made them feel/think/imagine.... so exam boards now advise against “method spotting”(but still, for some reason, have it on the mark scheme)

Hopefully primary will ease off on the label teaching in time 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sorry. Massive bugbear of mine. It’s Gove’s fault.

I’ve taught A Level Lang and I did English with French at university so grammar should be easy to me but I still break out in a cold sweat over terminology and manage to tie myself up in a thousand knots trying to parse stuff. I can talk to you about the effect of language choices until the cows come home but don’t get me to label stuff! For some reason the one phrase which has always stuck is “synthetic personalisation” which is quite handy when teaching advertising and marketing.

Massive bugbear of mine. It’s Gove’s fault so many things are Gove's fault. And Cummings'.
Do you think they ever lie awake at night wondering if they've made the right decisions about anythy?

Do you think they ever lie awake at night wondering if they've made the right decisions about anythy?

No. I think the only thing that keeps them awake is indigestion from too much port and how they’ll keep the numbers down to 30 at next weekend’s grouse shoot.

I've got year 6, but thankfully in Wales we don't have to delve so deep into all that spag terminology. Do have to teach Welsh though, and it's compulsory to GCSE.