Wednesday’s vote in the ITV Anglia West region is between:

Beds Garden Carers, their project ‘Growing Together’ is described as ‘The project will provide an enclosed garden courtyard and meeting facilities for the community. The facility will be free of charge for the first year and will cost a nominal fee thereafter.’

Ardley Hill Lower School, their project ‘Swimming for our future!’ is described as ‘The project will refurbish the existing pool area and provide a conservatory type enclosure so that it can be used all year round by the whole community.’

Voting will take place from 9am until midnight on the day. There will be a winner chosen each day Monday to Thursday, who will receive an award up to £50,000 and the highest scoring runner-up will also receive an award on Friday. Calls will cost 10p per call from a BT landline, calls from other networks may vary, and from mobiles will be considerably more. After operating costs have been recouped, any remaining phone revenue will be donated to charity.

If you are in the UK and you have 10p to spare, please consider Ardley Hill or any of the causes in your local area. The voting number will be made available on the day of voting on the Peoples Millions website.

[Edited 26th November] The number for Ardley Hill is 0871 6268814. Lines are open until midnight today 26th November.

[Edited 27th November] Ardley Hill won last night and have been awarded £50,000.

It is obvious with the timing of the strike, just as children are about to start their annual tests and exams, that the union do not care about the education of our children, they are only interested in lining their members’ pockets and causing the maximum disruption. The strike was called following a ballot of members, in which a majority of those who voted agreed with the strike, however this majority was less than one quarter of NUT members, so it is apparent most teachers didn’t want to strike.

To put this in perspective, the average earnings for a full time male employee was £498 a week (£25,896 per annum) in April 2007 (National Statistics Online – Earnings) and £394 (£20,480) for a full time female employee. From the NUT website you can find the teachers payscales and find the following:

A qualified teacher will start on point 1 on the main pay scale which at September 2007 is £20,133, the following year they will under normal performance conditions progress to point 2 which is proposed to be £22,259, the following year point 3 at £24,601, the following year point 4 at £27,103, the following year point 5 at £29,239(+next pay rise) and the following year £31,551(+the next 2 pay rises).

So, to recap, after 4 years of teaching, a qualified teacher is already earning above the national average, with 2 more years of points gain on the main pay scale and a guaranteed rise each year.

When you look around an average school staff car park, you will see an abundance of new cars, so I must be missing something. What makes teachers think that they are the only people who work hard for a living and are hard done by? Other people also work hard to provide the money through our taxes to pay for teachers guaranteed rises. Many people in the private sector go for years with below inflation or no pay rises, with increasing responsibilities (without bonuses for taking them on). We are the ones who have to find additional childcare costs or use our holiday time to look after our children who should be in school (of course we don’t have as much holiday time to start with).

Am I bitter, yes of course I am. It’s impossible not to to be when the disruption this causes has such a personal impact. Do teachers work hard, again yes, I don’t dispute that. Do they work efficiently, I’m not so certain; from observation, time management that you would see at all levels in a private company seems to have bypassed many teachers, increasing their levels of stress as they struggle to manage their day.

The big question is what do the unions expect to achieve with this strike? Blackmail the government into giving them their demanded 10% pay rise by disrupting our children’s education just as they prepare to take exams? Gain public support by causing millions of parents financial cost to look after their children while earning more than many of them?

I’d love to work for a company where each year’s pay rise was guaranteed, but I work in the real world.

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*End Copy Here*

Continued in Big Bang – World Record pt2

The idea is to teach the children more about other countries in terms of their location, culture, language, food and lifestyle. Each day is assigned a different continent and the children are asked to dress in either colours of any country’s flag from the continent or traditional dress / sportsware from a country.

To give them a taste of the countries, the children have been asked to bring in foods representative of the continent of the day. To fit in with the 5 days of the school week, Antarctica has been dropped and North and South America are counted together.

Today was Oceania (Australasia), so the kids took in Australian Vegemite and New Zealand honey. I wasn’t surprised that my daughter didn’t like the Vegemite, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that my son loved it.

Tomorrow is Africa, and Jo has managed to get some dry Sharon Fruit (produce of South Africa). I don’t know what this tastes like; I hadn’t heard of it before.

Wednesday is Europe with some Swiss Emmental cheese and some German Bockwurst sausages.

Thursday is Americas and they have some Baguls to take in.

On Friday, it is Asia and they will take some Passion fruit, which was produce of Thailand (but seems to grow everywhere).

He explained that we all favour a dominant hand, eye, ear, foot and brain hemisphere. The combinations of these dominances affects the ways in which we are best able to learn. For example some people may visualise, others may be more hands on and others may need to take notes for information to be absorbed.

By using a series of tests or questions it is possible to identify fairly accurately the dominant side in each of the cases and then by entering the results into the software an Individual Learning Profile is produced for the person. All of the children at Watling are being assessed and their results entered to provide a profile for each child and also one for each class summarising the class characteristics and suggesting teaching techniques that will work best for the types of learners and best seating locations for learning. Sample reports are available on the Individual Learning Profiles section of MovementInMind.

It was an engaging talk with participation from parents as we did some of the simple tests. Simon puts a lot of importance in not just identifying the hurdles to learning but providing exercises to help improve whole brain learning and reducing stress. For one example of this, I was a volunteer. Simon had asked for people who were not overly flexible and had difficulty touching their toes. Now, although I trained in aikido for several years, I have never been flexible, so I was an ideal candidate. First he had us try to touch our toes as a benchmark,
then we did a stress reduction exercise which involved massaging our ears to increase blood flow. After we had done this exercise he asked us to try touching our toes again. I was surprised, I actually stretched a further 2-3 inches. This was after a simple exercise that lasted maybe a couple of minutes.

This looks to be a very interesting approach which will allow parents to understand how their children best learn and what exercises can be done to help improve their learning capability.

They both had good days, which is the best way to start a new term. As Jo isn’t working at the moment, she was able to take them and collect them today.

I think they are both going to sleep well tonight; they were very tied.

Jo’s probably going to help out at the school again until she gets another job.

This is going to be a mixed bag, so hence the title.

On Wednesday evening, Jo and I went to the school for the end of year staff and governors’ BBQ. After the weather that we had been having for the previous days, I had visions of everyone eating in the hall and running out to the BBQ under umberellas for the food. Sitting in the canteen at work at lunchtime watching the rain, I was sure that this was going to come true. However, when I drove home it was bright sunshine and we had clear skies all evening. The food was excellent, provided and cooked by T.Harper and Son, from Bell Farm Studham. We all sat out under the large ash tree in the school grounds eating and chating until dark.

Last night I didn’t get a lot of blogging done as we had a power cut. It seemed strange sitting in a silent house by candle light. The power was only out for an hour, but when it came back I didn’t get round to posting anything, just a bit of blog reading.

The weather forecast for today was heavy rain and boy were they right. I could hear it hammering on the roof at work all day and when I left at 1pm to drive home, it was the worst rain that I have ever driven in. It was coming down so hard that even with the wipers on full it was difficult to see the road. Maybe that should have been difficult to see the river, as there was so much water pouring onto the roads from the banks and footpaths that the drains weren’t coping and as a result it was just flowing in rivers along the roads. At the top of the hill going into Hockliffe, you could see where a large branch had fallen off the overhanging oak tree and landed in the road; I’m not sure exactly what had happened, but the branch was about 50 yards further down the road with a police car partially across the road blocking it. The policewoman directing traffic looked absolutely soaked. A bit further, on the other side of Hockliffe, there was a large removals lorry changing a flat tyre. I know there isn’t ever a good time for a flat tyre, but that had to be one of the worst.

By about 3pm, the weather had completely changed and it was bright and sunny. Hopefully the weather tomorrow will be good. We are planning to go to the Joust at Berkeley Castle tomorrow. The BBC weather forecast is still telling us tomorrow will be sunny intervals, so we are hopeful. We will however be taking our wellies, I think we will need them!

[Update] Due to the amount of rain across the country, there is major flooding across England and Wales. This includes flooding across the motorways in the area of Berkeley. Checking the Joust website this evening, the first weekend of the Joust has been cancelled, so lets hope the weather stays dry for the next week so that the second weekend can go ahead as planned.

This assembly was started about 8 years ago with just 4 awards and has grown. This year saw the introduction of the ‘Wat Ticks’ awards for achieving the highest scores in each years assessments. It was a particularly proud moment for me, as my daughter was one of the seven with joint highest score in the Foundation stage and my son was the highest score in Year 2.

There were awards presented for those who had been taking part in the Walk to School scheme, part of the school’s travel plan, and had walked over 100 times. Awards were given for attendance, highest number of merit points, to the house captains and vice-captains among others.

Andy Pilborough-Skinner from Templar Martial Arts presented certificates to several pupils who had graded in the after school club that he runs.
This year’s academic results are the best that the school has had and to celebrate that the children are being allowed a MUFTI day on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

We took the kids and had a go on each stall with varying success. One of the regular stalls is the unlock the box and with our last key we had the one that fitted, so now in addition to the toys that were in there, the kids have a large bucket of sweets that will probably last them for a week or two.

The weather held, which was a surprise as it has been an awful summer so far this year. This allowed the outside stalls such as the soak a teacher and the crockery smash. The later was very popular, but judging from the look of the playground towards the end it will take a while to clear up the bits.

The weather here this last week has been exceptional for the time of year. We had the wettest day of the wettest June on record on Monday. It wasn’t too bad in the south of the country but further north, parts of South and East Yorkshire were severly affected with over 100mm of rain in one day (1.5 times the average rainfall for the month). At least four people have been killed and more than 3000 properties have been flooded. I was reading on the BBC website that more heavy rain is expected on Saturday. It has also been unseasonally cool for June with temperatures overnight around 10-12′C

Unfortunately, the bad weather has proved a disappointment for the kids’ school. The PSA at Watling Lower School had organised a funfair for this coming weekend, but due to the weather, the school fields are too muddy and soft for the heavy equipment, so this has had to be cancelled. The PSA put a lot of work into organising these events and so it is sad when the weather spoils it. A meeting will be held after school tomorrow to see what can be done instead.

I finished listening to the audio book today of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini read by the author. This book was recommended to me by jmb back in February in the comments to my Book Meme post. In the same comment she also recommended The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. Both books were excellent in their own ways; the later is a good fantasy book which I must now get the others in the series of. The Kite Runner isn’t a book that I would have naturally picked up to read, but very soon after starting I was transported to Afganistan in the 1970′s and how life and society changes there with the coming of the Taliban. A big thank you to jmb for the recommendation and if you come across it pick it up and have a read.

On Saturday, Gary posted Instant Message Me Direct from Azazil.net where he talks about Plugoo, an instant messaging widget for your website/blog. On Sunday evening, while watching a re-run of Ramsey’s Kitchen Knightmares on More4, I was checking out some blogs and while I was there I thought I’d give it a try. I had a quick chat with Gary, and as all Brits do we discussed the weather (as a nation we are obsessed with talking about the weather!). I can vouch for the fact that Plugoo works really well, although it would be better if you had a bit more control on the size of the widget. I liked it so much that I have added it to my contact me page. The only problem it seems to have is that it is beta at the moment and sometimes the Plugoo servers are not responding or a bit slow. So if you want to have a chat when I’m online by all means pop over to my contact me page and chat away.

Last night I watched a film that I hadn’t seen for about 20 years. I watched Kagemusha by Akira Kurosawa. This is a film set in 16th Century feudal Japan, where the powerful warlord Shingen is replaced when he dies by a double to deceive Shingen’s enemies. The double is a thief who has to transform himself into the great leader and maintain the deception. There is a battle scene at the end of the film that I remember from when I saw the film 20 years ago and in my mind it was a much bigger battle. It’s strange how your mind plays tricks on you like that.

So that’s it for the moment, normal posting should now be resumed. If it isn’t give me a kick.