Just a quick post today, on Thursday I am planning on meeting with some ICT guys from our local secondary school. This came about because a friend of mine mentioned on Twitter he’d been to see a guy at a local school and it turned out to be mine. Now don’t get me wrong, I was planning on contacting them at some point anyway, but this sped it up a bit.
So what do I want to talk to them about?
What is the point of meeing with them?
Will meeting them actually make any difference?
What should we even be talking about? Moderating ICT levels? Sharing ideas? Collaboration? Accessing their VLE? Sharing their equipment? What would you be asking them? Or if you are from a secondary school, what would you want to be telling me as a primary school?
One definite thing I am going to ask for their support with is a local gifted and talented day for Year 6 children. We will do one with Y2 as well, but I don’t think they’ll want to get involved with that one.Another is that we will probably get some access to their Moodle and the children in Year 6 will be able to have a bit of a play beforehand. This is fine, but we have mixed year5-6 so it might make it tricky. But we shall see.
Any tips and ideas would be welcome as I haven’t had a secondary school interested in sharing before, but the potential is enormous. I think.
Speaking from a secondary perspective it is always amazing to see the creative ways in which primary students use ICT. Much more exciting than talking about levels for staff and students!
We have had a KS3 teacher come and teach some Y6 lessons. We saw this as a good transition opportunity for our children with CPD opportunity for Y6 staff. Actually the biggest benefit has been raising the expectations of the KS3 teacher – there may be fewer bored Y7s in ICT lessons at that secondary school next year…
This is really interesting mate I hope you do a follow up post with details about what was discussed!
I think that these things work best when the focus is on what the children can do (in KS2) and therefore how we can help them make progress (in KS3). It’s easy for these things to get bogged down in talk about ‘levels’ and ‘which bits are in KS2 or KS3’, but in the end we need to focus on what’s best for children (who apparently don’t care what’s supposed to be taught when … they just want to get better, and explore exciting stuff that helps move their thinking on)
Lots you could do with this, the links between are a really positive thing for us. The sensible advice would be to introduce things gradually- you don’t have to do it all at once!
Few things that spring to mind:
1) G&T students. Collaborative projects between the schools great. We’ve had a drama teacher working with one of our feeder schools to do a combined after school set of sessions to create short films. Combines drama & ICT so gets two groups of kids involved. Or better still, projects between Y6&7 students? We’re currently looking at some work designing games at this level.
2) Y6 induction. Your VLE idea is spot on. We add Y6 students to our VLE a term early as part of the induction activities- chat to Y7’s about concerns, learn about the school/VLE in advance, extend the induction day activities.
3) Technical support & collaboration. Use the expertise of the staff there- if it’s the school I think it is they have some very talented people.
4) Collaborate. Is there a network of potential blog readers/contributors currently in Y7 you could make use of for your school blogs?
5) ICT skills for KS3. I would love our feeder IT co-ordinators to ask us what skills they could be teaching to help prepare students for Y7 ICT…
Agree what people are saying about showing KS3 what is happening in best KS2 schools. Vital. BUT not all primary schools necessarily anywhere near your level of development. Could you get some sort of TeachMeet (but more structured) where staff from bath phases talk about innovative and/or engaging things they are doing? Would probably need someone to go round in advance to identify and (more importantly) push people forward.
Untill all primary schools are doing this stuff (and developing competence), KS3 teachers will continue to have excuse that kids don’t get skills etc in KS2.