Posts tagged Homework Calendar

One of the key findings from Ofsted inspections show time and time again the impact, consistency, clarity and routines have on students.

Our readers are made up largely of senior leaders and middle managers, so  this won’t be ground breaking information in the first instance but what I’m about to tell you will certainly help you improve homework and get support from parents.

As an aspiring leader myself, I know the difficulties we share of embedding new new policies, processes and tools. It’s certainly not easy within a school but do this right, the benefits can be incredible for your colleagues and for the learning experience students receive.

My tool, Show My Homework is being embedded into school policies as a must have for the provision of homework for over 33,000 students. If homework is important to your school and you want to improve it or get it to work the way you want to, it needs to be consistent,  tracked and monitored across the school. Can you do that right now? More often than not the honest answer is ‘No’. Its ‘No’ because its difficult, painstakingly time intensive and requires a lot of effort. This leads to situations where students can get away with not doing homework, teachers can get away with not setting it and opens the door for parents to complain at Parent evening about the lack of homework.

I’m really passionate about introducing classroom tools that work for me and work for my colleagues who teach, day-in, day-out.

If you’d like to find out more about Show My Homework, please read Horndean Technology College’s Case Study or visit http://www.showmyhomework.co.uk

If you find this post of genuine interest and would like to explore options to put in place consistency, clarity and routines with homework, please get in touch. 

I know together we can make an immediate impact.

(Source: showmyhomeworkblog.com)

Dear colleague,
Would you consider an alternative to Fronter? Show My Homework provides a simple VLE where teachers can post homework questions, attach worksheets, set deadlines and assess work online. Since Feb 2010 over 300 schools have installed Show My Homework painlessly. 

In the current economic climate it is worth looking at alternative solutions. Show My Homework is £4,000 less than Fronter and will provide a VLE that will work and transform e-learning at your school.

To learn more, please visit http://www.showmyhomework.co.uk

If you would like us to visit your school and talk about how you could use Show My Homework, please send an email to naimish@showmyhomework.co.uk with your preferred dates.

Many thanks
Naimish Gohil

http://www.showmyhomework.co.uk

PS. I am currently looking for teachers / ex teachers interested in earning extra money in 2011 to sell Show My Homework - Please get in touch!

This week is national anti bullying week! There are lots of good resources on the web. Below are some websites and videos you may wish to use during class and tutor time.

Sites
http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/ - official site

www.cybermentors.org.uk  - ‘The CyberMentors website uses a social networking model to allow young people at different levels to mentor each other.’   Very good site to make your students aware of!

Videos

You Tube beatbullying site
http://www.youtube.com/user/Beatbullying

Celeb’s voice beatbullying campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keVe44R4jOQ&feature=channel

Ndubz anti cyber bullying campaign song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hEeflUzX_4

Aston from JLS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT50vAO4d2k&feature=channel

Anti bullying Ad – This is quite hard hitting! You may want to check first to see if it’s suitable for your KS3 students.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wklre2_18BU&feature=related

Many Thanks to Graham Quantrell for providing these useful links!

@showmyhomework

http://www.showmyhomework.co.uk 

(Source: showmyhomeworkblog.com)

I have to admit, when I first signed up to Twitter, I was not expecting how 

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…

http://www.showmyhomework.co.uk

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

Show My Homework in Times Education Supplement (TES)