Learning and Teaching Web-site of CHristleton High School
Welcome to our learning and teaching web-site. We hope you find what you are looking for as we showcase educational articles and resources from the around the world as well as from our own amazing staff.
A developing partnership with Frogn High School - NorwayTowards the end of the last academic year, I decided to widen the focus of this Learning and Teaching bulletin, to include more articles, resources and educational research from across Europe. When discussing remote learning platforms, I was directed to 'its Learning' which was developed in Norway. Having a personal link with that country, I exploited family ties to get an introduction to senior staff at Frogn High School. In early May 2015, I was fortunate enough to make contact with colleagues from Frogn High School, in particular Berit Vike, their head of international relations and Sandra Marthinson their English co-ordinator. Following many e-mail exchanges, it became clear that we were both interested in establishing a collaboration to share ideas, best practice and possibly, teacher secondments.
In March this year, colleagues from Frogn visited us and spent a day getting to know us and more about the English education system. They were highly impressed by our structures and processes for appraisal and lesson observations, but were blown away by the quality of teaching and learning they witnessed and the conversations they had with our students and staff. The head teacher of Frogn, Pål Riis, spent some time with Tony, discussing future collaboration and our shared values.Sandra and Berit also met with Barry to discuss ITT best practice and with Jen O'Hare and Adam Simpson to discuss shared values and possible future links. ![]() Sandra Marthinson, Berit Vike and Pål Sverre Riis during a tour of the maths block - they were effusive in the praise of the art work they say around school - as a relatively new build school, they are not permitted to put up displays of any kind - but went home with renewed determination to change this. During the Spring break, I was able to make a reciprocal visit to Frogn High School, spending two days there - I have to admit a declared interest - my 17 year old niece is studying there! My two day programme:
Monday 4th April 8.00 am - I observed a Social Science lesson taught in English by Jorn Hoelstad, an English Language graduate. Twenty eight sixteen year olds opt to study this course through the medium of English as part of their diploma programme 9.15 am - I gave a presentation to the Leadership team of Frogn HS on our appraisal systems, including our lesson observation programme, performance management system and CPD. 10.45 am - Tour of school 11.30 am - Partnership discussions with Berit - teacher exchanges, sharing of learning resources, student exchanges Tuesday 5th April 10.00 am - Discussion with Jorn on the 'Its Learning platform' - see the Learning Resources page 10.45 am - Discussion with Sandra on learning systems 11.30 am - Meeting with a panel of First Graders (similar to our lower sixth) - what happens when learning is really great? 12.00 pm - Discussions on collaboration with Sandra and Berit ![]() Frogn High School is situated close to the town of Drøbak, about 30km south of Oslo. It is a relatively new school, opening in 2006. With a student population of 850 16-19 year olds and 80 staff, it delivers three of the possible fifteen diploma programmes that are available to students in Norway. For more information see the Odds page I had a highly enjoyable visit and we discussed how to develop our embryonic partnership. It is hoped, as part of the international Erasmus programme, that two colleagues from Frogn will spend a few weeks on placement with us in 2017 and the hope that we will be able to send some CHS staff over there as well. I was very impressed with the study skills of their students and their use of the learning platform that I discuss on the Learning Resources page, but it was also a good benchmark to measure ourselves by. -The Scandinavian education model is always held up as an outstanding model by various educational experts, yet it's fair to say that our colleagues from Frogn were highly impressed with what they witnessed at Christleton, as the partnership develops I hope that there is much we can learn from each other.
Learning Spaces - De-clutter to let learning get messyExplore ways that you can build a creative learning space by de-cluttering and getting messy.
The Why...............It is important to be able to build a messy space that is able to display the "guts of the learning" in all of its jumbled glory during immersion and the first phase of a design thinking project. What is also needed is a whole learning space that makes the distinction and purpose of these spaces very clear. You and your children need to be able to explain to visitors the role of the space in your projects. The space in your room should be able to clearly show the process, thinking and the development of learning. We need to be able to de-clutter our rooms so that we can make good use of messy spaces that help children share the story of their learning. Check out this web-site for further details on the above and loads of other ideas: http://notosh.com/who-we-are/ |
Independent Thinking
Dr Andrew Curran, a paediatric neurologist at Alder Hay Children’s Hospital in Liverpool recently gave a speech to the Independent Thinking organisation, here a few extracts from his talk....
"Everything we do as teachers is sculpting a child’s brain. This is terrifying – and a very good reason for making sure that we’re getting it right".
See Interesting Articles page for more thought provoking ideas.....
"Everything we do as teachers is sculpting a child’s brain. This is terrifying – and a very good reason for making sure that we’re getting it right".
See Interesting Articles page for more thought provoking ideas.....