by Ian Addison | Mar 19, 2014 | blogposts, General Thoughts
This is a guest post, written by Graham Cooper Interview with Graham Cooper – SHINE What inspired me at school? Graham Cooper, Head of Product Strategy at Capita SIMS and former deputy head, reflects on his teaching days, when he witnessed the inspirational turnaround...
by Ian Addison | Feb 20, 2014 | blogposts, Curriculum, General Thoughts
This half-term has been a bit different to usual. Yes there are days out and yes, the nieces have come to visit, but I have also been into school, not for planning, but for completely redesigning my classroom. This post will also be an update on the classroom tour...
by Ian Addison | Jan 1, 2014 | blogposts, Curriculum
One benefit of the Christmas holidays is the chance to catch up on various jobs that need doing and books that need reading. One book that I have had for a couple of weeks is Scratch Programming in Easy Steps by Sean McManus. I know that many people will find this...
by Ian Addison | Dec 31, 2013 | blogposts, General Thoughts
To be honest, 2013 was never going to top 2012 was it? Last year I got married, turned 30 and released my first book. 2013 would’ve had to be very special to come close. Although it didn’t have anything as huge as those events, it was a year of change for...
by Ian Addison | Dec 27, 2013 | blogposts, Curriculum
One of my Christmas jobs is to plan the curriculum for the rest of Year 4. We did look at this in May when draft documents were out and we pencilled in an overview for the year but quite quickly we realised that we needed to change it. This happened for many reasons...
by Ian Addison | Dec 2, 2013 | blogposts, Curriculum
Recently we have introduced a few new strategies to improve the vocabulary and the writing for the children we work with. Firstly, we started with “Word of the Week”. This is a different word that we would teach the children each week. Following an inset...
by Ian Addison | Oct 30, 2013 | blogposts, Conferences / BETT
This post has been written to ask for your help and support. Each year for the past four years, there has been a Takeover event at BETT. This is where companies give up their stand for half hour slots so that teachers can come and present on a range of free software,...
by Ian Addison | Oct 20, 2013 | blogposts, Curriculum, Useful Sites/Software
I am writing this post because I have been asked by a few people how I actually use the 100 Word Challenge within school. So I though I would share a few ideas to get you started. This week, over 1000 children have contributed to the weekly prompt for the first time....
by Ian Addison | Oct 15, 2013 | blogposts, Curriculum
We’ve been having a bit of discussion about the curriculum at my new school and I wanted a chance to jot down some ideas and see if anyone had done something similar to help guide us before we get started. Currently we are sort-of looking at the new curriculum...
by Ian Addison | Sep 26, 2013 | blogposts, General Thoughts
It’s that time of year again. I will be running 10miles around Portsmouth in the Great South Run in just 31 days time. Am I ready? Not sure…but it will be fun finding out! I have created a sponsorship page and would very much appreciate any support that...
