Grab and Go Guides

Overview Keeping students engaged can be a challenging task. One of the things my students love is playing 'escape the room' games on google forms. I will freely admit I usually help create a mood in the room with music on in the background etc, but I don't have lots of set up to do which helps between classes.  I also teach some of my classes how to make these for themselves and they sometimes create them as revision activities etc. They often share them with a time limit built in and have a bit of fun trying to make them so challenging their class mates  At the bottom, instead of the usual video, I've added a pdf of where to click to set up steps 3-9. This allows you to take it at your own pace and see it in more detail.  Equipment To create an escape the room game you don't need very much at all: 1. A source (or sources) of information. 2. Google form 3. Anything you want to help create the mood Here's a step by step guide: 1. Find your information they can w

 This is not going to be so much a 'here's resources' post, as a musing one with suggested ideas. It is a little self-indulgent of me, so if its not your thing, fair enough. Hopefully you'll come back soon for another one with lots of tips and resources!  As I've said before I am both a Music and History teacher. I also teach metacognition to year 7 pupils and bullet journaling to Year 9. I run multiple clubs (Orchestra, 2 ukulele groups and a Music Theatre group). I am a certified trainer in helping schools become Thinking Schools. I have the pleasure of presenting at conferences where I love meeting other teachers, and even writing articles. I have a varied and happy full time job and side hobbies out of it. Teaching, as we all know, can absorb as much time as you are willing to give it. There is always something else to do. I once had a colleague tell me that if he gave every member of staff a month off to catch up, create resources etc, within a couple of weeks

Overview In the past at my school we had to write longer, more personalised reports. The spreadsheet system works well when you have a limited variety of what to say, but can feel a little more cumbersome if you need to write entire paragraphs. At that point I was using Google Forms as my weapon of choice to create reports fast. Prepping The longest time element is creating the report bank in the first place which suits what you need to say. I like to start with a list of the topics I want to cover and then write a report for one student from scratch.  For example: Report Behaviour in class Overall grade Biggest success Exam outcome Homework Target Harry has worked very hard in Music this year . Overall he has achieved the expected leve l in assessments. His biggest achievement was his / composition for film music which he can share with you from google classroom. His exam results were below what I would expect . Homework is consistently handed in on time . To make further progre

 Using a Google Sheet (or spreadsheet) to Write Reports It's that time of year when workload increases with report writing. Just this week I have had to write 180 two sentence reports (we also had Ofsted in this week and a year 7 parents evening...). Although I would love to write highly individualised and detailed reports it is just not possible if I want to also run my extra-curricular groups, keep on top of marking and planning and see my family at all. Therefore cheats have to be found!  I have created two systems over the last few years, one using spreadsheets which I will go through here, and another using google forms, which I will write up at a later date.  Set up So the first step is to write a standard report that makes sense. For example I want to report back on the effort they put into lessons and a comment on their homework. I then want to give them a target that will help improve their attainment. An example would be: In year 9 Harry has demonstrated excellent attit

Data: Attitude to Learning It's that time of year when tracking and report writing are coming thick and fast. I'm currently in the process of writing 150 Year 9 reports, which is just the tip of the key stage 3 data iceberg looming on the horizon. I will do a series of posts on how I've found workarounds for things that have taken me time in the past. In this blog, it's about 'effort' grades for homework. I know not all schools require this, but if they do it can be a bit of a nightmare data gathering exercise - so here's where I recommend putting google sheets (or whichever spreadsheet creator you prefer) to work instead. At the bottom of this blog I have created a short video talking you through how I use these formula, so if visual/audio is better than words, please do scroll on down!  Prep Whenever my students do a homework I put a 1 in my mark book. This is purely a marker that they have completed the homework, not if they've done it correctly etc.