Hosting #ukedchat

Well the end to a very eventful day!


Thursdays are my dream teaching day! I have 3 GCSE groups a gorgeous year 7 group and PSHCE with my form class of 3 years. 


My year 10s were an absolute dream today making great links with the various causes of tsunamis they came up with 10 different causes! (1. ocean floor based earthquake, 2. Ocean floor based volcanic eruption, 3. landslide caused by human error - building on unstable land over its loading capacity and structural potential, 4. meteor impact in ocean, 5. comet impact in sea, 6. volcanic eruption landslide (La Palma Canaries) 7. Volcanic rock landslide Hawaii due to instability and wave hydraulic action erosion 8. underwater nuclear experiments 9. Nuclear warhead landing in ocean 10. nuclear warhead hitting coast and causing landslide) I thought they could have gone on!!!! They then categorised the effects of tsunamis into human and physical effects and primary and secondary and based this on the current Japanese crisis including the Nuclear issue. They subsequently added to this with short and long effects.


They have a homework to cover the various responses to tsunamis:)


I was observed by my Line Manager today and got a good with outstanding features (which was nice). I had year 11s also doing a tsunami lesson. They were in an ICT room and I had them working through a geog.ICT file on tsunamis (will upload after this blog post) as task 1. Task 2 involved them in pairs comparing the before and after pictures of 4 parts of Japan. One of the pictures had no impact and they had to link this to location on a map and the proximity to the epicentre of the earthquake (west coast). The students had to write annotations around the photos a key skill for the GCSE exam.  Students then created a blog post by reviewing 4 articles. They had to classify them into a cause, effect or a response article and evaluate the details they included and add extras to improve them. The final task was to exam a google earth kml I had made on the earthquakes and tsunami and add the layers one at a time to see if patterns emerged. They noted them down as they saw them:) Phew!


The day was not over! Far from it! 


I next as manager of my school year 9 football team witnessed them getting a schooling (10-0) One of my players suffered a suspected broken wrist so I had to drive him and his mum to the local hospital for a check up. I had to leave so am hoping he is ok as mum did not ring me to let me know:(


My final part to the day has been hosting the ukedchat on twitter about 'why NQTs leave teaching after or before 5 years and what can we do to stop this from happening?'


It proved to be a very popular chat which I wasn't in control of at all but that is part of the fun watching great practitioners and creative people passing on their thoughts and experiences on any topic. ukedchat had changed my life in teaching more than anything else in my career to date. I recommend it to anyone out there as it will leave you feeling like you do have support in places you least expected.


NOw back to work for me at 12:30am!