Tripping the light fantastic

And so 2011 approaches its end. It's been an enormously busy term, with no real time to blog- but I couldn't let 2012 arrive without marking out a couple of highlights from the Autumn Term.
2011 was a turbulent year at my school. A major staff restructure, and some dramas within year groups, meant that September marked the start of a new chapter. It has been a time for challenge and change, and my personal ambition was to try new things, be bold and try new things in the classroom that hadn't been done in our school before.

The first of these has taken the shape of planning a residential visit for the Year 4s. After my old year group partner left and I awaited the arrival of my new one, I got a bit trip-happy and booked a whole load of them. The most significant was a plan to go to Ufton Court in Berkshire, as part of our work on Tudors. It's a beautiful place, and highly atmospheric. It also has the distinction of being the only house of its age to allow children to sleep in it, as opposed to near it.

There are lots of activities on offer, from archery to Tudor games and even a dramatic re-enactment of a raid on the house (as it was indeed subjected to in the past). They generally cater for Year 4 groups, with many schools using them as a primer for later residential visits.

I'd never tried to organise something like this before, and I can honestly say it has been incredibly time-consuming but very exciting. The risk assessment alone was special- going from the centre of London to seeing actual horses and cows within the space of a couple of hours was a rare experience!
We will be heading there in the new year- stay tuned for more on how it goes.

Back on the day visits, and this term we also tried something new in the form of Wandsworth Museum:

Admittedly the workshop we did (Village Inventors) probably only really works for schools within the vicinity of the borough of Wandsworth, they are a growing museum and know how to get children enthused about topics that have traditionally been a bit more dry, and certainly less the focus of school trips.

We did also visit the Science Museum, which was excellent as usual, and included a drama show for 40 mins by a Michael Faraday actor- the Science Museum have this picture of him, but we think there may be others (equally good, according to my year group partner).

Although this came at an extra charge (£3 per child), it was well worth it. In addition to our visit to the Energy gallery (although Launchpad is more playground-like), this helped us with our Circuits/Electricity topic.

Back at school, it was time to start thinking about Christmas. This meant the annual return to the catalogue of Out of the Ark, eventually settling on It's a Cracker for my colleagues and me in Years 3 and 4. Every one of these good-quality productions has at least one particularly annoyingly catchy tune- this time it was In My Day- Track 3, with a needlessly over-repeated chorus that I am still trying to ditch from my brain. What productions were in action at your school?

It all went well, and though there's much else I'd love to catch up on, it's important that the only thing I overdo this season is the festivities. If anything from 2011 still seems relevant in the new year, I will do some retrospective blogging. Otherwise, it's time to write some more new plans and experiences.
Happy Holidays, and have a great start to 2012!

Monsieur Chips