October 17, 2016 5:01 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
I have always felt games provide the best way of teaching children, especially if the concept involved is fairly abstract. When my son was tiny, back in the sixties, we used to play a game which, though simplistic in nature, provided him with an excellent lesson for the future. The biscuit tin game involved placing a biscuit tin on the kitchen table (often he would fetch it himself in anticipation of playing the game). We would sit on either side of the table and he would describe the tin he could see – it had two lambs and some roses. I would tell him my tin had a shepherd and a dog on the side. We’d hmm and hah, roll...
October 1, 2016 4:39 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
School scraps homework, ‘to help staff plan their lessons.’ And there was I believing teenagers were the ‘snowflake generation.’ I make no apology for believing this to be one huge cop-out. Teachers have good jobs, well paid, secure and by and large, undemanding, while at the same time providing enormous job-satisfaction. They also have perhaps the most generous holidays of any profession. Even their in-service training is carried out in school time as an adjunct to their holiday break. And now the principal of a very large school (1650 pupils) has called time on homework. The reason? Marking homework was taking up too much time for staff. She thinks her teachers need more time to plan lessons. As teachers we...
