International School Award

Back in January, it was suggested to me that I went to the ISA briefing meeting in London "as I was involved in a lot of the projects in it so would be good for me to know what to put in". A month later, no longer an innocentl by-stander in our bid to gain the Full International School Award, I was launched into compiling the whole portfolio.

For those who don't know, in order to gain the Full ISA you need to complete an Action Plan in September/October of all of your international, curricular-based projects that are taking place within that school year. This is then (hopefull) approved by the "ISA people" and then you spend the academic year gathering evidence of your 7 (minimum) "Key Activities", which  includes things like evaluations from pupils, staff and parents of events, photographs, samples of pupil work. All of this gets put together in a (very large) file and is then dispatched to the British Council in time for the deadline date, some time around the end of the school year. Simples...?

Or maybe not! It took over my life, the file went everywhere with me, I had evaluation forms coming out of my ears and chasing those evaluation forms, well...

However, in Ocotber I learnt that the hard work had paid off and we had been successful in our bid to be awarded the Full ISA - hurrah!!!

[caption id="attachment_323" align="alignleft" width="210" caption="Alistair Armstrong receiving our ISA from George Alagia"][/caption]

The Award Ceremony took place in London on Friday 16th October and was presented by George Alagia and you can see our award being presented on the left. Those of you who know me will know that I have dramatically changed over the last few months...unfortunately I was ill in bed and couldn't attend the ceremony, so one of our Assistant Heads went in my place.

What I didn't realise was that, alongside the certificate we received, we are also the proud owners of an ISA flag which is now flying on one of the school flagpoles and a beautiful crysal. I could take a picture of the crystal today but not the flag as it was dull and raining all day.

[caption id="attachment_324" align="aligncenter" width="210" caption="Our ISA Crystal"][/caption]

Turning into a naughty school girl?

Yesterday, I was privileged enough to attend the ISA briefing at Regent's College, to help schools who are hoping to gain the International School Award understand how to compile their portfolios of evidence. This blogpost is not about that! So, why mention it now? Well, one of the speakers (whose name escapes me at the moment) had a quote "dead fish can only float down stream, live fish can swim upstream". I've no idea what it means but felt that it was quite apt fo me at this moment in time. I've recently been feeling like I was stood still and could go no further with my ventures into new technologies, in the situation that I'm in, upon thinking about this quote I felt like maybe there was something I could offer others after all and that maybe I could re-awake my enthusiasm.

Upon my arrival back at work today I had a look at what I was going to be doing...obviously using those well-prepared 3 part lesson plans that I create for every lesson that I teach...and it occured to me I could do a section of a lesson involving using the sound recorders on mobile phones (I'd been thinking about mobiles ever since watching Chris Fuller's presentation at the IOWconference about use of mobile phones in the classroom). At my school mobiles are banned, as such, but pupils shouldn't have them turned on in class. I fore-warned a couple of collegues at break who all said "go for it", so I did.

It was my Yr10 NVQ Spanish class...so anything to avoid me having to teach/speak Spanish is a blessing...and we were learning how to understand/make phone messages about dates and rooms booked in hotels. We looked at some models, researched some vocabulary and did a listening exercise then wrote our own messages. Then I asked who had a mobile with them (halting hands rose) and then I asked who had a voice recorder on their phones (again, all hands half-way up, as they started to worry about what I was going to ask them to do!), so, I asked them to get their phones out and record their messages. Of course there was hysteria "wouldn't dare", "can't do that" etc...but then a cool girl just got on and did it and played it back...and then of course they all did it, realising that no-one was going to criticise what they said. I then asked them to play their recording to someone near them for their friend to note what they'd said...and there we had a listening comprehesion created by them. They were clearly impressed and I could see the lights going on in some heads as they realised they could do this was all of their language work to improve their speaking and listening skills.

Of course we had the looking through photos, listening to music (someone said "can I set mine to music?"...of course you can!), comparing of phones (I was jealous of some of them!). It was only to be expected but that, of course will disappear with more regular use. Although, naturally the use of the phones will lose its appeal if they are used too often.

I was very pleased with the activity and am now planning my next venture into breaking the rules, don't know what it will be yet...maybe I'll not take my register folder up to registration...since it's done on the computer! As for the phones I'm trying to come up with something with a more able class that involves speaking for longer and bluetoothing it to me for me to do something with.