Proud of Your Work?

Lee recently published his 'Taking Teaching Back Episode 1 - Book Scrutinies' video. While watching it, one of his points really struck a chord with me.

The above image is from 5:14 in the video. I've seen this online many times and thought it a good idea, but never got round to it. Lee's point is about the extra work this places on the teacher. His solution is something along these lines...

This is a poster we've now placed in our classrooms. We used 'iPad' as those are the devices we have and used 'Google Drive' as every child has access. You can adapt it for the devices your school has and whatever cloud the children have access to.

So, 'Request a Selfie' nice but no thanks. Take your own photo, put it in your own cloud and show the adults at home: yes please.

Any similar ideas, please let us know. And, check out Lee on YouTube (Or Facebook - he's Facebook royalty!)

The Canary in the Coal Mine (Classroom)

Whilst watching The Graham Norton Show last week, I discovered a name for something I often do with with class.

One of Graham's guests was Tom Hanks. Hanks asked Norton if he'd ready the copy of the book he'd sent him. Norton replied that he had, and that he'd found the 'Canary in the Coal Mine'. On one of the pages, to test if Graham Norton would read the book, Tom Hanks had left an inscription for him to read. 

Hanks described this as a 'Canary in the Coal Mine' and added that they're often put into scripts to check that the actors read the script. 

The above picture is one I recently used with my class. You'll see that not only did I give them a sentence that didn't need correcting (that was the activity), but I repeated it. How many would notice? How many would plough on regardless?

So, in slides, worksheets and in your own speech, start dropping in the odd canary to check the people in the coal mine as still 'with it'.