Posts tagged Henry Compton School
Posts tagged Henry Compton School
I’ve been meaning to share the success we have had at Henry Compton via a blog post but have not had a chance to get around to it sooner, so here goes! This year results for BTEC ICT have jumped to 93% from 89% last year. I am really happy and my team have worked super hard! We continue to raise the bar every year. When I am teaching I often talk to students about it being a journey we all start together. Our goal is to stay as a pact, stay together, work together, help each other, motivate each other along our epic journey. During the journey there is going to be some hairy moments, moments where we will disagree, where we will go off track. It is my job and your job to help a friend / class mate during this time so they don’t fall behind. There will also be moments where things are difficult else where, at home or with peers. All these things will happen at some stage to one of use more often then not along this journey. Let’s be prepared for those moments and know that with the above we will get through it. I tell the students the journey will not be easy and there will be yet again times when you find the work boring. You are not going to like everything we do and at the same time you are not always going to like everyone on your football team but to be successful, to get through the tough moments, you back each other, support each other and move forward.
Let’s not forget about what success means and what we are working towards. Let’s remind each other regularly and imagine what that feeling will be like to get Merits or Distinctions. Let’s imagine that moment telling your parents and siblings. Let’s imagine that moment when you have a college interview and you can proudly hold your head high and say “I achieved a Distinction at Henry Compton in ICT”.
I encourage my ICT team to always remind students why they are doing this and what they will get from it. I love telling them stories about entrepreneurial spirit. All of these things get them excited. Along with excellent teaching, interesting lessons and meeting students half way, we get great results. It is a lot of hard work and it is tough but thankfully our journey has been pretty successful the last few years.
Congrats again to the students and staff at Henry Compton for doing a super job!
Long may it continue…
The summer holidays have kicked off and I’m really excited about the next few months ahead for myself and Show My Homework. Since I last wrote a full blog post, Twitter have reached 20 billion tweets, My school, Henry Compton had an OfSTED inspection during the last week of July and got rated “Good” with Outstanding “Features”. I recently celebrated my one year Wedding Anniversary, two of my best friends got married and Apple have firmly shot themselves with the iPhone Antenna problems. Following those headlines, I recently read that a number of people have also complained about the iPad over overheating. I own a Macbook, iPod, iTouch, iPad and once owned an iPhone 3GS before I lost it when I left it on the tennis courts at Clayhall Park. Personally I have never had any problems with Apple products as yet. They really are a cut above the rest and I guess when a company is as successful as Apple is, it is bound to get a few moments where it takes very little for people to take a dig at it. Steve Jobs is a legend in my opinion. In the past I have shown my Year 11’s a very inspiring commencement speech Steve did at his Stanford University called “How to live before you die” available on TED talks. It’s well worth watching it as a starter activity and brings something different into the classroom.
I should really stop talking about Apple and get back to Show My Homework. As I mentioned, I’m really excited about the next few months. Thank you to everyone that has used the Show My Homework service so far, blogged about it and offered to help. A Big thank you to Mark Warner from Teaching Ideas, John Mclear from John McLear’s School Technology, Tim Jefferson for his take on VLE Vs Show My Homework and everyone who is following me on Twitter.
Over the next few months a number of exciting new features will be introduced such as submitting homework online - a feature that has been heavily requested by my users. I have listened and this will be available very soon. Some of you have had a sneak preview of how it is going to work already…Exciting stuff so please watch this space. Show My Homework will also be launching in the USA and Rest of the World to cater for our friends from all over word that have enquired about Show My Homework. Show My Homework is in its infancy and still has a long long way to go but I can’t hide how proud and excited I am to have users from London to Jakarta in Indonesia (Tunas Muda International School) using Show My Homework.
This is where I say thank you for your support so far. You have been fantastic, so encouraging and positive about what I am trying to do with Show My Homework. I would also like to take this opportunity to ask you, if you have not already done so, to please come along for this journey and sign up to try Show My Homework. It may not be for you but it may change the way you approach homework forever at your school.
Have fantastic summer holidays, whatever your doing.
Naimish Gohil
