Wilson Waffling

Summer is one of the terms within primary school that becomes a series of events and jobs that before you know it the end of July is here and everyone is breaking up for the summer holidays. It is during this time that the majority of school trips are organised and classes or, in some cases whole schools, embark on coaches to museums, farms and historical settings. While working within school, it came to our attention that although the children knew things about rivers and coasts, mountains and platectonics and countries both far and wide, they did not know anything about their local wildlife. Acknowledging this, and wanting to do something about it, we started a series of lessons entitled ‘Fun with Nature’. After spending some of my childhood as a ‘twitcher’ I eagerly grabbed the topic of birds. This waffle is about some of the activities that we completed together as a class. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date wit

As I go around visiting students in schools I often come across a display board that has the digital images of the members of the class attached to the months of the year showing when the children’s birthdays are. When I was teaching, these were often taken early on in the year by the teaching assistant and were a perfect way of getting to know the class. However after these have been taken there was a range of activities that I would use them for using the technology which was available. Although technology has changed, I am sure that similar programs and applications exist in the present day classroom that would allow you to replicate the activities I am going to waffle about. So your mission, if you chose to accept it, is to find the new programs to do these old activities – alternatively you could just listen and enjoy :). The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to attend the Higher York e-learning Conference 2014 which was entitled -”Enhancing the student experience through flexible learning solutions”. Being a practitioner in higher education and a definite techie geek, I was really looking forward to a conference that linked technology to enhancing the student experience. The day consisted of key notes and workshops and I came away from the conference with a lot of new ideas and being inspired to use technology to, hopefully, continue to work on improving the student experience within my modules. There were, however, some discussion points that I wanted to waffle about so this week it is something a little bit different…but still a waffle. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts

You might remember, and if you don’t then go back and read it, that I wrote a waffle about the reasons I left primary school to teach in higher education. Within this waffle I mentioned that my first teaching session was not, as you might suspect, to do with mathematics or science, but was, in fact, to do with literacy. The session was from the initial days of the assessing pupil progress grids (APP grids) and was based on how to teach a series of lessons based on a book. What follows is a waffle about this session. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

If you follow me on Twitter, and if you don’t you are missing such a great experience, you will be aware that I have done a couple of attempts at a live show! Why on earth are you doing this I hear you ask…well this bank holiday waffle attempts to explain.

One of the most exciting parts of the Eurovision Song contest is the results - the awarding of points and the declaration of the eventual winner. The show would be a lot longer if more feedback was provided - something like 10 points due to the rousing nature of the tune and the inspiring lyrics, although the actual justification of the points would be interesting to hear. Detailed and effective feedback is not something that we, as practitioners, can or should avoid, so this week's waffle is about some ideas for managing that feedback. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

One part of the mathematics lesson that always seem to disappear as the lesson comes to the end, is the plenary. The plenary is an important ‘end of the lesson’ moment, where it is possible to both peer,self and teacher assess if the pupils have made progress. In today’s waffle I thought I would give you some ideas that I have used in the past to engage the pupils in the plenary. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

When I was teaching in primary school, we were lucky enough to have a dylsexic centre within the actual school. These children were integrated into the classrooms in the afternoon for subjects other than mathematics and literacy. As my teaching developed I became more proficient in providing learning opportunities for them to access the work. One of the areas of work which I started to develop was how the children were allowed to record their work – so this week’s waffle will discuss some of these ideas. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below. Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

I while ago I waffled about why I had made the move to higher education and mentioned a session I gave about planning a literacy unit from a book. This was not my first expedition into the realm of literacy, I had, as you can imagine, taught it for some time before this. However, it was when I was participating in the Thursday evening UKedchat and after reading a blog post from Mr. P's blog on using augmented reality, that the enthusiasm for teaching creative writing came back to me . I must say at this point, that the techniques I am going to mention are not purely my own creation, but ones I have collected and subsequently used after being on courses observing lessons. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you l

This week's waffle is all about all about mathematical SODAs. I've waffled about the ideas behind SODAs and thinking skills before, but thought I would concentrate on approaching it from a mathematical point of view. Essentially activities for SODAs should be very open ended and although they should be able to be completed within a certain period of time, they should be able to easily be extended if needed. With these two points in mind, here are a some suggestions which you could use effectively either as SODAs or mental and oral starters. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

A while ago I wrote a waffle on how I started off using Twitter and provided suggestions to help people get involved with its use. As I arrived at Starbucks today (I was the only customer in for a while) I decided it was time for round two of that series of waffles. (When I says series, I mean maybe a series of two!). So this week’s waffle is about the applications which live with Twitter on my computers/mobile devices. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

If you follow me on Instagram, you will probably be aware that I have a weekly shopping excursion with my mother every Saturday morning. This is my weekly engagement with my parent while I am at work, which can result in some interesting situations captured in tweets and images. Leading my own life now (which is not always accepted by my mother) the amount of engagement with her is sadly reduced. However, the interaction with parents plays an important part of primary education. In this week's waffle I look at the ways to engage parents with the teaching and learning of written strategies in mathematics. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

I often sit on a Thursday evening about 2000hrs and watch the ukedchat hashtag. This week it was about physical education. Although this is not one of my strong subjects in teaching (or even in real life) I was interested in the first question which asked how physical education could be related to literacy and/or mathematics. Just like a GSCE multiple choice essay question I chose to answer how it could be related to mathematics. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

I'm writing this waffle on a Saturday, which is unusual for me, since I usually write them Sunday morning while drinking my yummy soya wet latte. I'm currently trying to distract myself from a rather poorly made wet latte and the large degree of coughing and spluttering around me. So rather than having a panic attack and having to rush out...I thought I would write my waffle which today is all about the use of videos. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

I've watched a video on Mashable of a dot matrix printer ‘jamming’ along to the song ‘Eye of the Tiger’! I remember my dot matrix printer and fan fold paper fondly, but watching the video got me thinking about the way I use music in my teaching. So this week’s waffle is all about music mania! The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

When I am teaching how to teach, one of the dilemmas I have is what to teach first in the 'teaching process' (lots of teach/teaching there!). Although many will assume that planning is the obvious starting point, to me the starting point is always what the child knows and therefore, what do they need to learn. This needs to be assessed and so for me the starting point is observation and assessment. This waffle is all about the basic of managing the process of assessment. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

You must remember that although I have always taught with a National Curriculum in some form (yes there was education before the National Curriculum), when I started to teach there was no literacy or numeracy hour. How you organised your time was really up to you and I was always keen for children to take the lead role in their learning. It was because of this that I used to run an integrated day – what is an integrated day I hear you ask? – well that is what this week’s waffle is all about. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

At the recent NQT Conference at York St John University, there was a workshop taken by a lead inspector. The purpose of this workshop was to present some information on how to prepare for an OFSTED inspection. The overall main point was to continue to do what you are currently doing - demonstrating good or outstanding practice. However, one of the interesting points that was brought up was the use of 'no hands up' within the classroom. So let's waffle about that! The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

In the summer term, there is usually some sort of build up to the standard assessment tasks/tests when pupil and teachers alike hope that the hard work they have put in throughout the year will pay off. Once the dust has settled from these, I always felt it was important for the children to 'chill a bit' while still learning. During this time, for the whole week, I played a game with the class. It soon almost became an institution, something that everyone looked forward to playing if they were in Mr. Wilson's class. It was the infamous game of 'Sim-sim-cities!' The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!

One of my favourite things about my job is coming up with ideas for teaching and activities. With many of the students who I teach out on placement at the moment, I get frequent emails asking for support with activities for science and mathematics. This week's waffle was originally a reply to one of those requests which I thought would be interesting to share here. The complete transcript and links can be found by following the link to my Wilson Waffling blog below.Remember keep up to date with my waffles by subscribing to; Twitter- http://goo.gl/FcZaz Blog - http://goo.gl/IRne5D Youtube - http://goo.gl/ssxQNw Facebook - http://goo.gl/lDp6B Podcasts - http://goo.gl/NeEWjF Have fun and catch you later!