Read: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes ★★★★☆ 📚
Multi narrator life story of Clio, Scottish singer & activist. Starts at her end in 2018. Revisiting most of the narrators and scenes revels more & more about all the characters.
Kind: Reads
reading a book, magazine, newspaper, other physical document, or online post
Read: The Heartbeat of Trees
Read: The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature
by Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst(Translator)
★★★★☆ 📚
New science about trees back up with references mixed with personal rumination and experiences. The good trees do for us and the planet and the bad we do to them.
Some really fascinating snippets about tree biology too:
The trick to living another couple of decades or even centuries is to compost yourself. Fungi that enter via a wound in the tree convert the wood into a sort of humus as they eat their way through the tree, creating debris that is soft, crumbly, and moist. Now the tree can grow inner roots into this “soil” and reabsorb nutrients it stored in earlier years in its growth rings.
Read: Why coding should at the centre of the curriculum
Coding develops cognitive skills, problem solving and analytical thinking (“computational thinking”). By introducing and developing these abilities from primary school onwards, we create the building blocks and thought processes necessary for robotics and AI. This is not about displacing traditional subjects but, rather, changing the emphasis. Coding can comfortably sit alongside other subjects, especially those with a creative slant, reinforcing the development of key skills through multiple channels.
Digital skills: Why coding should at the centre of the school curriculum | Tes
Coding certainly can develop cognitive skills, problem solving and analytical thinking. A lot of other things can too. I think it is difficult.
Any class will present a wide range of learners. Designing or adapting lessons to try and get as many of them in the right zone to develop these skills is tricky. If you don’t get this right coding is neither productive or fun.
The article notes:
. Coding can comfortably sit alongside other subjects, especially those with a creative slant, reinforcing the development of key skills through multiple channels.
I’ve certainly found that putting coding into a context can lead to more fun and success. By adding elements art or making to a coding project more pupils are involved in problem solving, collaboration and creativity.
A difficulty in managing this might be the perceive need to be an expert in several different areas. I’ve certainly found myself in situations where I’ve not be completely confident around some of these areas.
The article acknowledges that covid has had an effect:
It is a reasonable assumption that this immersion in IT and technology is preparing young people for a digital future and teaching them the skills they will need.
But we need pupils to be creators as well as users:
there is a largely unrecognised digital difference between the users of technology and the creators
I think there is also a gap around literacy and the problems that the mixing of commercial and educational interests in technology. A lot of the uptake in digital solutions lacks any questioning of the provides of these solutions.
This is something I am not very sure I’d know where to start with? Perhaps Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex:
In just a few years, understanding programming will be an indispensable part of active citizenship. The idea that coding offers an unproblematic path to social progress and personal enhancement works to the advantage of the growing techno-plutocracy that’s insulating itself behind its own technology.
Wild salmon was on sale last week at the Harrods luxury store in London for £245 a kilo, making the cost of the average salmon to be over £700, or around £60 for a single portion. Chips would prob…
The conditions that make this so are really depressing. I remember family holidays as a child in the 60s. We would buy a wild salmon for the freezer on the way home. This from netters on Galloway estuaries because the price was so good. I also recall seeing the nets in operation at the mouth of the Spey huge numbers of fish being caught.
Read: Pew by Catherine Lacey
Read: Pew by Catherine Lacey ★★★★☆ 📚
The main character has little memory and their sex, colour, age and origin are all in doubt. They are discovered in church and meet the locals, good folks to their own thinking, without talking Pew revels them to us. We never find out about Pew and the ending is ambiguous.
But we’ve always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time
The book begins with a quote from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – which I’ve not read for a long time.
Children here at early level experience 50 per cent of learning and play outdoors, those at first level have 33 per cent and second level children have a quarter of their school time outdoors. This has enabled the school to use a mixture of formal and informal learning outdoors to build in play-based and pupil-led learning, which, in turn, has helped to reduce anxiety and build resilience.
Really positive article in TES by Jay Helbert💙 (@learningjay) .
Our Forest School (in the grounds of Argyll Estate) and Beach School (on the shore of Loch Fyne) provide opportunities for a blended experience. These lessons take place weekly over the course of a school term and are child-centred experiences where teachers set up learning “provocations” and options for activities ranging from den-building and mapping to creating artwork and storytelling.
I’ve done a bit of outdoor learning in school but nowhere near the 25% the second level classes are managing here. I was interested to see this maths idea:
where children survey plant and animal species to gather data
I sometimes struggle to think up second level ideas for literacy & numeracy. I’ve mostly found early and first level ideas online.
The outdoors a great stimulus for writing, reports, narrative and poetry. Talking and listening seem built in. In maths we have done a fair bit of shape & measure and I can see the potential for data and related activities. It would be good to see a bank of ideas. 25% is more than once a week.
Bonus thought, has TES Scotland become a sort of medium for educational blogging. I am reading a lot of good stuff on TES.
Read: Burning Your Own
Read: Burning Your Own by Glenn Patterson ★★★★☆ 📚 1969, Mal is 10. I’d have been 11. Mal lives in a estate in Northern Ireland. Great, horrible, atmosphere. Football with his pals and building bonfires with civil rights and politics in the background.
Read: Cunning Women: A feminist tale of forbidden love after the witch trials by Elizabeth Lee ★★★☆☆ 📚 I enjoyed this well enough, unlikely plot, felt a bit like a young adult book.
Read: The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
Read: The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig ★★★☆☆ 📚 a take on “Strangers on a Train”. This kept me turning the pages but spelled things out a bit too much. I also guessed what was going on even before the big hint.
Read: August by Callan Wink
Read: August by Callan Wink ★★★☆☆ 📚This was a nice change from the daily introspective books live been reading. August, the main character says little and doesn’t seem to think much. The sensitive silent type. I enjoyed reading about his mum more.