Useful Equipment

It’salways tempting to spend a large proportion of your own money on decking out your classroom in the latest educational bunting (don’t feel bad, we all do it); teachers are territorial beings and we love to make a mark on our own little kingdoms.  BUT, and this is a big but, it is a dangerous path to tread.  Before you know where you are, you will be heavily subsidising the education system (don’t worry, we’ve all done that too), so in order to save you running out of money I have put together a list of teaching essentials, that is, things that you really are better off owning yourself. (This is a list aimed at primary teachers, I’m sure secondary teachers will have their own list of essentials.)

A good, large pencil case

When I first started teaching I used the battered old pencil case I had had since my own school days (it has long since gone to the desk in the sky); now I use a clear plastic one, the same kind the children have.  In it I keep pens of the current marking colours (ball point, fibre tipped and highlighters) a fine liner black felt tip, a fat liner black felt tip, a sharpie (don’t use it on the whiteboard) a pencil, a sharpener and my best dry wipe pen. I label the pencil case with my name and count everything in and out.  I find that some sort of desk tidy just encourages me to keep things I don’t need, so a pencil case it is.

Toolbox

Every teacher needs a small toolbox in their cupboard.  In it you need to put all the things you need for displays and various bits of fixing equipment that you will no doubt be called on to do. Suggestions include:

• Staple gun (belonging to the school)
• Bambi stapler (I prefer to use a bambi stapler for my displays, to be honest) (school’s if they have them, yours if not)
• The correct size staples (this is very important)
• Large, sharp pair of scissors
• Ruler (school’s, or a novelty one that will amuse you and/or the children when you use it)
• Pair of pliers (for removing staples)
• Official staple remover (for throwing to the floor in frustration) (this belongs to school and will be rubbish)
• Your own glue stick (school’s)
• A knife from the school kitchen if you can’t find a pair pf pliers and you have drawing pins in school (they WILL get stuck in shoes)
• Hole punch (this doesn’t have to be yours, but you do need to label it)

Personally, I don’t like drawing pins (foot health and safety) or blu tac (too often stolen by busy fingers) for displays, but that might be just me.

• Another great suggestion has been a phillips screwdriver – especially a teeny tiny one of the sort that comes in Christmas crackers. With it you will be able to fix glasses and compasses in maths.

A whistle

Do not use the school whistle you will be given. @michaelT1979 recommends an Acme Thunderer (on a piece of string or lanyard, do not lose).  These are much better.  If, like me, you are challenged by asthma, use the school bell at the end of playtime.  Do not ask a child to blow your whistle for you, or you will be instantly poorly.

A collection of children’s literature (don’t forget to use the library or all your money will disappear)

It’s always nice to have your own copies of a few favourites, and it is a good idea to keep up with the latest in children’s literature so that you know what they are talking about.  Make sure you put your name in your own books and by all means lend them to children, but not to other teachers. You won’t get them back.

A way to label your own things

I’m a bit of a cheapskate so I tend to use that drawing tippex stuff or a sharpie to label my belongings, but other people swear by label printing machines, and who am I to judge?  If they are anything like laminators I am sure they are worth the money in therapeutic terms.  Oh, don’t buy your own laminator.  That is the school’s job.

A maths dictionary and a guide to English grammar

Always useful. Some bright spark is bound to ask you a question you don’t know the answer to or you will have to teach a tricky concept and you need an elegant way to explain it.  These kinds of books are invaluable; make sure you write your name in them.

Reference books in areas you don’t feel sure of (if these are not available in the staff room)

But really, don’t spend a fortune.

Special clothes

The first and most important of these being a decent winter coat for playground duty.  Playgrounds are, in fact, connected to the Arctic Tundra.  You need to be warm.  Next, make sure you have shoes you can stand all day in (and avoid getting chilblains when on duty), and a smart-ish PE kit.  You might want to invest in some sort of generic historic costume while you are at it and/or a world book day outfit you can get out every year or mix and match.

 

REMINDER: don’t spend too much of your own money prettifying your classroom.

SEND for Beginners

Last Saturday, I led a session on the SEND Code of Practice, for teachers and school leaders who were interested, and wanted to know more about SEN, what it all means, and what their responsibilities are, at TLT16 Southampton.

It was a fun session (well, it was for me, anyway), partly because I decided to go ‘old school’ and abandon any thought of using a powerpoint presentation (so I can’t give you a link to it here), and teach, like I would in a classroom.  I wanted to do three things – and I hope I succeeded.

1. Challenge the idea that people who teach children with SEND, or SENCOs are somehow magical human beings.  They aren’t.  They are just ordinary teachers, some of whom have a particular interest in the field (often these are people who are fascinated by how people learn – or not – and often they have a family connection to disability in some form), some of whom have found themselves stepping up to the plate because no one else wanted the job.
2. Ensure that attendees knew some key information about the Code of Practice and what it means.
3. Give attendees a bit of time to talk to each other about any students that were causing them concern, and pool ideas about how they might go about removing barriers.

Key Areas

I split these into three main messages.

1. Every teacher is a teacher of special needs.  I really can’t say this enough.  Basically, this means that the class teacher needs to take responsibility for ALL of the students in the class.  The ones with SEND do not belong either to the SENCO or to the TA, but to them – and they need to get informed.  If there is an EHCP or Statement, they need to read it.  If there are short term targets to be written, they need to do them.  They need to teach the children themselves.
2. Categories of need – what they are and what they mean. There are four categories of need in the Code of Practice; we spent a little bit of time going over what they are, and what sort of need they cover, but the main idea I wanted to get across was that just because a child has a label/diagnosis, this does not mean they only have one area of need.  Depending on the child, they could have needs that span all four categories.  Teachers need to abandon any thought of neatness where SEND is concerned, and embrace several dimensions, lots of slipperiness, and considerable grey areas.  We also discussed the line where SEND and not-SEND meet.  A bereavement, for example, will give a child an additional need, but it is likely that this is short term.  EAL on its own is not an SEND, and EAL children will, in the main, require a different form of teaching.  A child who is poorly with, say cancer, and who has been/is likely to be poorly long term, will come under the disability legislation and be covered by the Code of Practice.

3. Removing barriers and the social model of disability.  Despite the need to demonstrate needs and diagnose, the Code of Practice is built on the notion of the social model of disability, which says that it is not so much the disability that makes life difficult for a person, as the world, and society that surrounds them.  Other people’s attitudes towards them, and the lack of adjustments to the environment in which they live are the things that make life hard.

As teachers, we are in the business of removing barriers to learning – and this is something that we do every day.  Every time we move a child away from a chatty friend, every time we shut the curtains against the glare of the sun in the afternoon, every time we ask for quiet so that we can concentrate we are removing a barrier to learning.  It is what we do.  The only difference with SEND is that we might have to think a bit harder about what the barriers a child is experiencing in our class actually are.  Then we can go about making adjustments.

After all that we indulged ourselves in ‘Nancy’s Great Acronym and Edubabble Quiz’ (where I mourned the fact that a G&T is no longer something to be enjoyed with ice and lemon).

 

If you would like me to come and talk to you or your colleagues about SEND and the Code of Practice or issues around inclusion, please do get in touch.

 

You can buy my book, Inclusion for Primary School Teachers here

Thank you Rob Webster, for being my ‘glamorous assistant’ (ie. tall!) and sticking labels on the wall.  Well done Michael Slavinksy for giving the blu tac back ;P

Teaching Spelling

There’s lots of advice out there on the teaching of spelling, how to approach it, which order of words/concepts/rules to teach and, if you’re anything like me, you read it all and you think, ‘great!’ and then you look at your class day and you think, ‘but how?’ and, ‘but when?’  So, at the risk of being accused of offering nothing new and merely sharing the things that have worked for an experienced teacher, here are some of the ways I have found to be successful in the teaching of spelling.

1. Practice, practice, practice.

I really can’t emphasise how important practice is in the learning of spellings.  When we write things down we bring muscle memory into play, which is helpful for many of us, we get used to the way words look and the patterns of the letters, and repetition really does bring its own rewards.  We often set spelling as homework for this reason.

However, it must be said that some children, for a multitude of reasons and all of them valid, don’t get the opportunity to practise their spellings at home, and if this is the case, well, the simple answer is to practise them at school.  I don’t mean that you send the children who haven’t had their spelling books initialled by their parents to the not-so-voluntary playtime homework club (aka detention).  I mean fitting it in to the school day.

First thing in the morning is ideal (no need to bother with a fancy morning task, just get the spelling and reading books out, write each word out three times), as is at the beginning of an English lesson, especially if you are gathering children from different classes, for an intervention or a set.

2. Make meaning.

When we understand the meaning of things, even better, when we can attach a story to them, we can remember them better.  This is why many teachers ask children to write their spellings in a sentence.  For some children, for instance very young ones, or those with SEN, this might be a step too far, so there is nothing to stop you getting children to tell you a sentence (which then you, as a group, can learn and then write down before you forget it) or even to draw a sketch next to the word to demonstrate that they know what it means (I have found this very useful with my EAL learners).

3. Make it into a game.

My last group used to like getting the felt tips out (talk about a privilege, usually I wouldn’t let them touch them!).  I gave them an unlined book and told them to fill the pages with words, like a wordle.  If you take two colours, sometimes the pattern you have been going on about (but which they haven’t really understood, despite nodding and smiling at you or the last five lessons) will pop out at them.

Another game we liked to play was suggested to me by my friend Brenda.  She wrote the words up on the wall and then played guess the word, by giving the children clues.  This meant that the children had to do things like count letters, know the words ‘vowel’ and ‘consonant’, know what type of word it was (was it a noun, an adverb and so on?) and understand the concepts prefix and suffix.

4. Identify the tricky bit.

Get the children to explain which word they think is the most difficult to spell and say why.  Discuss how they are going to remember it/work it out.

5. Use flashcards.

Many of the children I taught last year had difficulties with remembering all sorts of things, including their spellings.  I used flashcards (and let them look at them again) – the only rule being that they couldn’t start writing the word until I said go.

6. Use whiteboard pens.

I am not the biggest fan of mini-whiteboards, but they do have their uses, and practicing spelling is one of them.  You can shock the children by allowing them to write on the tables (it’s amazing how many times they will write a word that way), or you could challenge them to see how many times they could fit the word onto a whiteboard.

Handwriting is one of those skills that has a plethora of benefits, one of which is writing words out and really concentrating on them.  Teaching handwriting?  Teach spelling at the same time.

8. Ring the changes.

When I first began teaching, I stuck to the ‘practice your spellings while I take the register and get the dinner numbers wrong’ like glue.  As the years have gone by and I began to teach children with increasingly complex needs, I found that having a bank of different activities to use and use a different one each day worked better.  If you find yourself teaching children with low levels of resilience, you might find this works for you too.

 

I’m sure there are plenty more way to get children to practice spellings, these are just a few of the activities, and times to fit them in, that have worked for me.

Phonics for Junior Teachers Part 1

A quick preface to this post would be, ‘most junior teachers do not teach phonics, TAs do.’

 

While infant teachers are well versed in how to teach phonics and early reading – and how to manage the teaching, it has to be said that this is not always the case for the junior teacher, especially the higher up the school you go. Part of the issue, it has to be said, is that it is more unusual for there to be much phonics teaching needed in the junior years – by the time the children reach Years 3-6, they are generally well on the road to reading.

There are those children, however, who, for whatever reason (this could be because of SEND, or it could be that a child had a period of illness during this phase of their education, has moved between schools a lot, or has learned different sounds to the corresponding letters, as is the case for many children coming in to UK education from Eastern Europe), have not internalised the letters and their corresponding sounds, and the challenge then becomes: how do you teach them? It’s all very well to declare ‘I will teach phonics to those who need it’, but in reality, how is this to be achieved? It is hardly the answer to go over the whole lot again with the whole class (because most of them will already know what you are going on about and will hardly be stretched by any feat of the imagination), so with this in mind, unless you intend sending them down to an infant classroom for some/all of their reading lessons then some sort of group/individual work will need to be employed.

Once you have identified which children need extra instruction, you will need to think about their needs, in terms of why they haven’t moved on in their reading. This is because the needs of children vary enormously, and just putting all of the children who know /a/ but not /igh/ for example, isn’t necessarily going to work. For some, the pace will be too slow, for others, too fast. Equally, you may find that you have put all of the children with the same sort of problem in the same group and that doesn’t work either. Having everyone with attention problems in the same group is a recipe for no-one learning very much, so you will need to bear personality in mind too. Aim to group children in ways that will aid their learning, thinking beyond the level they have achieved on the school tracking system. And, while grouping is an efficient use of resources, bear in mind that some children will need individual tuition.

Next, you need to look at the resources that you are going to use. There are plenty of commercial schemes out there and it may be that you use one of these in your school. If you don’t know, you need to pop down to the infant department and see what they do. It might be that your school runs a catch-up programme – or at least has the materials in school. These things may well seem mysterious to the junior teacher, but don’t be afraid. Ask if you can borrow the teacher’s book and read it.

However, bear in mind that using material designed for very young children isn’t necessarily going to work, especially for children in the upper reaches of Year 5 and 6. The subject matter won’t necessarily appeal to them and, if they have been at your school for a length of time, it is likely that they have ‘read’ through them before – either they will know them off by heart already, or they will be bored to tears or patronised by them.

Last of all, you need to think about who will actually be doing the teaching. Depending on the size of your school and the organisational structure, there are a range of options at your disposal.
• Send them to another class/teacher for a daily phonics lesson.
• Use a TA to run a group intervention – you will need to think about when this happens.
• Use a TA to run a 1-1 intervention (timing as above).
• Teach them yourself – in which case you will need to think carefully about who will be teaching the rest of the class.

If you are a junior teacher, you may well find it impossible to teach phonics to the children who need it entirely on your own – they need a short little lesson, and lots of activities that help them to blend sounds together and make meaning, to learn how words work every day – so you will need to work closely with other people, either teachers or TAs, to make sure that this happens.

Remember:
• Once the children are out of your regular teaching group they are very easy to forget.
• Take some time to communicate with the people who are teaching them, so that you know what they are doing – you are their teacher after all.
• Plan in some time to teach them the activities yourself – there is no better way to assess how they are getting on than teaching them.

Above all, if you know that you have children who would benefit from going over their phonics again, or learning them from scratch even, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t see a way to fit it into your classroom in an ordinary whole-class lesson. You will need to be creative – and accept that you can’t do it all yourself, on your own.

Magic and Sparkle

Christmas is the time of year when, in primary schools, it all becomes almost unbearably exciting.  Children, being as they are children, are in a high state of anticipation, Christmas can hardly be avoided in the World Outside after all, and that’s before you add in the numerous changes to the timetable, depending on Christmas dinners, panto visits, extra rehearsals you know they need because when they sang it yesterday it was a DISASTER and no mistake, and somewhere in amongst it all, learning needs to happen because it is, after all, a school and not a baby sitting service so that harried parents can take the day off work and get the shopping done.

There are some children, in particular those with SEN, who will appreciate your efforts to maintain a little of the ordinary routine, despite it being the last week of term, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add a festive ‘twist’ to proceedings.  What you will find below are a few ideas for maths activities  – once you get going I’m sure you could add more of your own.  If you like, you can add them to the comments.

 

• Calculate the amount of wrapping paper Father Christmas will need to use for a specified number of parcels
• Select gifts within a given budget (you might even want to use the Argos Catalogue)
• Plan a Christmas party
• Plan the family shopping for the week – have a budget
• Guess the nets of the parcels
• Make the nets of the parcels
• Make boxes to fit a selection of gifts
• Measure the ingredients for a Christmas punch – or experiment with the ideal combinations
• Use co-ordinates to design ‘join the dots’ style festive pictures
• Calculate the volume of the parcels
• Get the children to write their own seasonal story problems

 

It doesn’t have to be all about colouring in the times-tables festive picture, there are lots of real-life maths options to choose from (and lots of fantasy ones too).

 

Happy Christmas

Organising your Primary Classroom

As well as being (ideally) a tidy, orderly place, your classroom needs to be organised.  This is for one simple reason – so that the children can learn to be independent and sort things out for themselves so that you don’t spend all day every day running around after them.  Learning to do things for yourself, leaving things in a orderly way ready for the next person and taking responsibility for your surroundings are all part of growing up, and so are essential lessons to learn.

There are several ways you can organise your room, as far as resources (that is, the things that the children will need and that you want to encourage them to take responsibility for) are concerned.

• Tidy tubs at the desk.  Put everything the children will ordinarily need in a tub at the desk (remembering NOT to spend your own money on them, no matter how tempting).  This will be things like: pencils, a selection of pencil crayons, scissors, rulers, rubbers (if you allow them), a pencil sharpener, dictionaries and word mats (if you use them).
• Organise the tidy tub. Having a bunch of half sharpened-to-within-an-inch-of-their-useful-lives pencils floating around at the bottom of a tub is not really what you are aiming for in terms of organisation.  Have the pencils and pencil crayons in separate pots within the tidy tub (or compartments) and make that the children count them up every so often, to ensure that there are enough to go around.
• Reduce movement towards the bin. There is nothing quite like the sight of a child standing for hours at the waste bin sharpening a pencil to get on my teacherly nerves.  In order to reduce the chances of this kind of displacement activity taking over the lives of certain small people, ask them to bring in a small yoghurt pot (washed) to go in the tidy tub.  This way they need only empty the pot of pencil shavings every so often – and you have limited the number of excuses for going for a little wander around the room.
• Reading books at the desk. There is nothing quite like having finished off all of your work and being allowed to read until the end of the lesson (this is a worthy and educational activity, don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t), but it is disturbing to children who are still beavering away if you have to get up to get to your book.  Having the books at the desk (I ask children to stack them either in the tidy tub or under it) reduces the chances of this.
• Some teachers use individual pencil cases. If this is you, run checks every so often to make sure that the children still have everything in them that they are supposed to have.
• Label resources clearly. I know we all seem to like a colourful classroom, but don’t get so carried away with how your labels look that reading what they say is a challenge even when you don’t wear glasses.  You want all of the children to know where things are, so make your labels as clear as possible.  Use symbols if necessary.
• Keep paper clips on line guides. If you use line guides for finished pieces of work, laminate them and keep them in a drawer with two paper clips attached to the top edge.  This will save hours and hours of hunting about – and you can pass the responsibility for keeping them replenished on to the children.
• Keep your book shelf tidy and in a place where children can get to it easily. Squeezing a book shelf into a tiny corner where you have to stand on ten children in order to get to a muddle of books that are rapidly ruined says a lot about how you value reading in your class.  Think about where you put things like book shelves.
• Organise your art materials. Do you have art materials, such as powder paints, ready mix, paintbrushes, water pots, paint trays, PVA glue, table cloths stored in your classroom?  If so, make sure that the cupboard is ordered and tidy and has easy (although not open) access.  Make sure that everything is clean (if not totally dry) before you put it away.  If you are running out of something, replenish it before storing.  The same goes for cooking utensils and other craft resources, or, indeed, any other consumable such as tracing paper.
• Think about your table layout. Think about whether or not the children can move about the classroom with relative ease.  In the worst case scenario, can they get out in a hurry?  Can you get around the room – or have you wedged yourself in to a tight corner and you can’t get round to investigate what is so interesting (and is not what they are supposed to be doing) at the furthest possible point from you?

Unfortunately I have never been any good at keeping the teacher’s cupboard tidy (I have a tendency to throw things in and shut the door as quickly as possible) but I am sure there is merit in ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ somewhere along the line.

The main thing is to keep whatever system you use simple.  Don’t over complicate it, and give the children as much responsibility for their own equipment as you can.

Keep your classroom tidy

It seems a funny thing to make an important one, but, as is often the case, it is small things that make huge differences.  As a new teacher I was never really convinced of this, and consequently my first classroom was always a bit of a muddle.  Thankfully I had an understanding boss.

Keeping your classroom tidy has several benefits.

• You will be able to find things when you need them – as will the children, and any colleagues who either pop in to borrow something, or find themselves teaching in your class.
• You will be promoting respect for both things and people.
• You will be creating a space that is pleasant for all to learn in.
• By making the classroom somewhere that is tidy and organised, you will be promoting independence, as the children will not need to keep asking you where things are.
• You will be able to get on with the learning more quickly as you don’t need to scrabble around looking for things.
• When you give the children responsibility for helping you to keep the classroom tidy, you will be contributing to their sense that it is a place where they belong – it is theirs.

 

There are lots of ways that you can keep a classroom tidy – the worst one being that you do it all yourself at the end of the day. By far the easiest way is to give the responsibility for keeping the classroom tidy over to the children.  There are several ways to do this:

• Give out jobs.  Decide which jobs really need to be done in the class, such as book shelf monitors, cleaning the board, giving out books and resources, and collecting them in again.  If you have a cloakroom that is for your class take responsibility for it as well.  Think about how often each job will need to be done.  Make sure that you have plenty of jobs to go round, and rotate them every so often so that everyone gets a go.
• Use tidy tubs at the tables. Give the children who work there the responsibility for making sure that it has the correct resources in it.
• At the end of a lesson or activity, make sure that everything has been collected in and tidied away. Instigate routines at the beginning of the year to make sure this happens.  Make sure that you leave enough time at the end of a lesson for the tidying up to take place – and some lessons, such as painting – take more time to tidy up and clear away than others.
• When the children are ready to leave the class, make sure that you take some time to ensure that everything is in its place before they go. Get them to check there is nothing on the tables – or, more importantly, under them.  If the desks have moved about a bit, get the children to straighten them up.
• Every so often run a ‘table check’.  Patrol the classroom looking for the tidiest and best equipped table.  Award points – or the privilege of being the first out to play time for the winners.
• Keep your own desk (if you have one) tidy. If it is impossible to keep on top of it during the working day, make sure that you clear it at the end.

 

It may seem a bit of a no brainer, but it never fails to surprise how much a little bit of attention to details makes a bigger difference than you might think.

The Silent Game

This is the time of year when all teachers are hard at work establishing themselves in the classroom.  They know that the key to learning is to get the atmosphere right: calm, purposeful and the kind of place where children can have a go, try things out, and not worry about what is going to happen to them if they get it wrong while they do that.  Leaving the room is one of the key moments when, instead of calm there can be cause for calamity.

There are lots of way that teachers can use to ensure an orderly classroom exit.  One of the simplest is to allow the children who are sitting up the straightest to leave or line up first (make sure you specify where this should be).  However, this tiny part of the day can provide you with a moment to build the relationship between you and them, and the atmosphere, the ethos, that is most conducive to learning – one of joyful trust.

 

Tidy table competition

Something for the end of the week, perhaps, or the end of the day.  A minute spent inching desks together, stacking rulers and pencils to their respective places in tidy tubs, a quick scan on the floor for bits and voila!  The teacher may patrol the room and decide which children have made the most effort and therefore deserve to leave their clutches first.

 

Birthdays

Children who are born in particular months may leave first.  Or, if you wish, children who are either side of the year within which your class is contained.

 

Gender divide

I used to shy away from this one, early in my career, but, out of respect to children’s growing sense of their own identity, of which gender forms a part, I do occasionally use it.

 

Random features

Type of socks, lace up or Velcro shoes, cardigans, jumpers, long hair, short hair, colour of hair, hairstyle, right handers, left handers, gappy teeth; the array of possibilities is (almost) endless.

 

The Silent Game

Games are a brilliant way to develop the relationship with a class – a reward for finishing early, something to do when they finish early by mistake, a way of binding the group together, and, if I dare mention it, adding a bit of fun into the learning (there are plenty of educational games, it doesn’t have to be Heads Down, Thumbs Up).  This one, the Silent Game, is an excellent one for managing the exit of large numbers of children through a small door.

After you get the children sitting nicely and waiting for your signal to leave, the game is to challenge individual or groups of children to leave the room without making a single noise.  Not a scrape of the chair, not a footstep, a creak, a giggle, nothing.  If they fail, they sit down again.  If they succeed they (and their group/friend – the choice is yours) they may leave.

It’s as simple as that.

*Overacting on your part is probably essential.

 

I have no idea who invented this game.  I stole it from the teacher in whose class I completed my first teaching practice, who probably stole it from someone else.  And just the fact that I write it that way shows how old it is.  Enjoy.

Interviewing the Head Teacher

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘context for learning’ lately.  A lot of my present teaching is done through schemes, so finding that way to make the writing task ‘real’ has been a challenge.  One recent task that was on the list was to write a biography of David Beckham.  Thanks to the fact that my Y6s didn’t really know who he was (read this and weep Mr B!), I could see that this writing task was going to be one of those where the blood didn’t exactly ooze out of the stone.  So, after a little thought, I settled on asking my boss if he would consent to be interviewed so that the children could write a biography of him instead.

I have used this technique before, and, provided they have a heads up, as it were, it has usually been successful.  My bosses through the years have consented to join in with a fantasy visit to the moon, analyses of what happened when the children went to Neverland and spy reports from the Persian forces at Thermopylae.

In my experience, primary head teachers like nothing better than coming into classrooms to talk to the children.  And, also in my experience, the children love it too.  Head teachers can be remote people to them, and they relish the opportunity to get to know them better.  My little group certainly did.  The devised questions and diligently wrote down the answers.  When it came to writing the biography, they set to with a will, partly because they related to the task, the person, and partly because they were excited about him reading the finished product.

I’m not very good at turning my classroom into a different world, so I tend to look for context in the everyday things we do in the classroom.  I don’t try to force it.  It works for me.