Well, it has been another busy week at school. On Monday evening I drove down to Loughborough, which is near Leicester to collect an award for all our work in ICT. It took about two and a half hours to get there and I arrived just in time to quickly freshen up before attending the special awards dinner.

Hawes Side was one of ten educational institutions shortlisted from the whole country. It was great to be in such company!  There were only two primary schools in the group, the rest were colleges, high schools, learning centres and federations (this is when a group of schools work together in one name). The awards were given by the ICT Register and the presentations were sponsored by Brother and Toshiba (we were given a label printer by Brother!)

We didn’t win the final award but it was really good to be recognised for all our hard work and innovation. There were no other schools from Blackpool or anywhere near us so the judges were obviously very impressed with what is happening at Hawes Side.

On Tuesday the ICT Register held their annual showcase event to tie in with the awards evening. This is where schools and companies are invited to give presentations on ICT innovations to a big audience from up and down the country. We were asked to give two presentations; one on the school blogs and one on the Life Channel. Mr Glynn drove Mr Maloney, Gabby, Tayla, Katie and Niall down early in the morning and I was able to meet them when they arrived. They gave their presentations to lots of interested people who were really impressed with Gaby and Tayla for showing them the school blogs and Katie and Niall who told them how we use the Life Channel at school.

After meeting with Mr Glynn and Mr Maloney and spending some time with Gabby, Tayla, Katie and Niall I headed back to Blackpool to collect another award for school.

A great big organisation called Naace (a national association for the advancement of IT) were holding their annual conference at the Hilton and they invited us to collect our ICT Quality Mark from them at the start of their three day conference. The award was presented to us in recognition of our work in ICT at school. This includes things like the website, the blogs, the Life Channel, the texting service we use, the laptops and IT suite, the way ICT is used to support learning across the curriculum and lots more. The people who assessed school said that we should now look to apply for an excellence award next year and that is just what we intend to do!

I was presented with the award on the great big stage in front of the huge audience. It was great to see our fantastic school celebrated and applauded by so many people and made me feel very proud of everyone involved with Hawes Side.

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Well everyone, it’s nearly half term! It seems funny to think that just six weeks ago we were returning to school following the Christmas holidays. The school was covered in snow and everyone had fun in what were unusual conditions for us here in Blackpool.

Parents’ Evenings were well attended following mid year reports being sent out and parents’ surveys were completed by lots of people. It was the best return we have ever had, so that will help us plan things for the future.
Lots of events have happened since we came back last month including:
School Council Toy Fair
Valentines Disco
Schools Alive
Charity Run for Haiti
Lancaster University visit
and lots more!!
If you can think of anything else that I need to tell people about let me know! Have a good rest over half term, see you all when we get back.

The campus at Lancaster University

On Friday 8th January, Y6 spent a day a Lancaster University to learn all about campus life.

It was a great visit and a real insight into what it is like to spend a few years at university. We were met on arrival by a group of students who double as learning ambassadors. They took us into a lecture theatre for some warm up activities. We then broke into smaller groups and went into seminar rooms to learn a bit more about this level of education. The children found out all about lectures, seminars, professors, halls of residence, freshers weeks and lots more.

The tour of the campus gave us all an idea of how huge the site is. ‘Is it bigger than Blackpool?’ Someone asked me. ‘It’s like a town- it’s got everything, and the cinema is only a pound!’

The campus has shops, offices, restaurants, bars, cafes, hairdressers, launderettes, cinemas, clubs and a library the size of a large department store! We found out about all sorts of courses you could do, trips and field study opportunities and sports facilities that are being built for the future.

One of the ambassadors was kind enough to let us all see her flat in the halls of residence. She had a bedsit style room- very smart, and a shared kitchen. One the the children thought it was like big brother. The rooms were like hotel rooms and had really fast internet connection. All the children thought it looked like a great place to live.

The trip taught us all an awful lot about what university is like. Most students don’t get to visit them until they are about 17 or 18 so we all thought it was great to go at 10 and 11. Hopefully many of our Y6 we get to experience a university for themselves when they get older. If they do, the will already know quite a lot about what to expect!

The library - as big as a department store!

Hawes Side is a fantastic place to be if you’re interested in learning!   I want to tell you a little bit about some of the pupils groups we have in school and how they impact on the learning journey.

ITKids – This is a new group set up this year to carry on the great work of last year’s ‘ICT Strategy Group’.   Their role was to road test new IT equipment, they tried out software, set up free trials and also took home netboooks and wrote evaluation reports on how all these things could impact on learning.   This year’s group have a slightly different remit as they will be looking at web 2.0 tools and apps.   Last week they began to look at comic strip makers ‘Bitstrips’ and ‘ToonDoo’.   They are asked to let us know which tools could be best used in the classroom to suuport children’s learning and how.   Their results will then be shared via the blog – we’ll let you know what they think when we get their report.

T&L group – This group has been around for a few years now, the children change each year although we’re trying to keep links with the children who left us last year to go to high school.   We thought it would be really useful to get their input and see how they view things differently now they’re in a different learning environment.   The Teaching and Learning Group have been looking at how we can be more effective learners.   A few years ago they began this work with a film entitled ‘The Ideal Teacher/The Ideal Learner’ that sparked a lot of interest with other pupils and staff.   The following year the theme was taken a bit further with another film called ‘What is Learning?’ Last year the children (along with their partner T&L groups in our partner schools) began looking at the work of two very important educationalists, Guy Claxton and Chris Quigely.   These two people have broken down the key qualities of an effective learner.   Chris Quigley has identified five and Guy Claxton four – there is a lot of similarity in what they say and in school so far we have looked at three of these qualities – Reflectiveness, Resourcefulness and Resilience.   Our current T&L Group are making posters to explain what resilience means and how being resilient can help you learn.   We’ll be sharing their work with our partner schools very soon.

Schools United – This group is made up of children from our neighbouring schools – four primaries and one secondary.   They meet each half term and are looking at some key issues over the next 12 months such as bullying, eco friendly schools, new technologies and transition.  The meetings take place in a different school each half term with the host schools providing the chair person and secretary – it gives a lot of children the chance to plan and lead meetings.   Schools United Reps then feed back to their own school councils and school councils feedback to classes via class councils.   The councils are a great platform for student voice and provide a great forum for open and honest dicussion aimed at making our schools fantstic places to be.

At Hawes Side we also have a number of other forums that promote student voice among them are The Home-School Group, Playground Committee ,  Sports Council,  Art Academy, Assembly Committee and  Green Council to name but a few.   Over the weeks and months I’ll tell you more about these groups and what they’re up to, in the meantime let me know what you think – maybe you’re on one of these groups and want to share a bit more about your work.   It’d be great to hear your comments!

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