Another thoroughly enjoyable day at Wawne Primary School here, near Hull, teaching classes Year 3/4, Year 2 and Year 5/6. We were joined, again, by colleagues from the neighbouring schools, some have recorded their observations for us, below.

Karen Drury (KS2 teacher) – Having been fortunate enough to attend a 2 day course with Tim Rylands and Sarah Neild at Wawne Primary School, I would like to share my thoughts on the experience.

Day One was held for staff members, in order to prepare us for the 2nd day with the children in school.

Having no preconceptions about the training, I was in for an intriguing experience.  All I knew was that we were going to be learning about how to use ICT in Literacy lessons to inspire writing.

During the afternoon, we were treated to a whirlwind tour of some incredible free programs which we can use to enhance our lessons.  We were also given an excellent lesson on improving our PowerPoint presentations to make them more dynamic.  All of these are things which I am looking forward to experimenting with in class.

What we encountered during the morning however, was an introduction to another realm in the form of a computer game, Myst III.  Ordinarily, I would switch off at the thought of computer gaming (teachers having time to play games??) 

But, this is no typical game.  There’s no shooting or fighting.  This is problem-solving at its best, set amongst the most stunning scenery.

Tim is the teacher you wished you’d had at Primary school.
The one you will remember for years and tell your own children about.  They probably wouldn’t believe you when you regaled them with tales of mystical lands and musical walking sticks.  But you’d know.

So how does all of this help us as teachers to improve the quality of our Literacy lessons?  Firstly, Tim’s humorous style immediately engages both staff and children alike.  We can all learn from his confident approach, taking risks in terms of the way we can interact with the children in our class.  He shares the children’s excitement as he explores the mystical lands with them.  He breaks down barriers and encourages reluctant speakers and writers to engage in creative narrative with his animated style.  He encourages kinaesthetic learning which appeals to everyone, despite initial reservations about this being “different.” 

During Day Two we were able to get involved in model lessons with learners from Year 2 to Year 6. 

We were shown how to adapt the learning for each Phase/ability range and seeing the children’s enthusiasm for writing (and Speaking and Listening) was enthralling. 

Tim used slightly different visual stimuli with each of the groups, but the methodology was the same – introduce a virtual world, frozen at one point and encourage the children to want to find out more and to expand their imaginations and their sentences using open-ended questioning techniques (“can you explain that?  What does it feel like?” etc.)

The product of each of these sessions was fascinating because the writing produced by the children was incredible.  They used similes and adverbs and fabulous descriptive language.  More to the point, when the time came for the lesson to end, the children didn’t want to stop writing.  They didn’t want to go out to play – they wanted to continue their writing. 

Chris Stringer – Wow….. Where do you start? The sessions were so simple but more effective then any other session I’ve been in .Tim had the children hooked immediately, they were mesmerised. Their faces just lit up and stayed alight throughout. The best thing of all was not only the fact it was fun and interactive but they learned. Simple tasks, like understanding similes, to using their imagination to explain a basic image on the screen. By the end a huge percentage of the children wanted to stand and read out the work they had done , that’s impressive . Tim gives the children time to respond. He got them to gain confidence in what they, as an individual, had to say.