We have a new look website for our College. All of the previous information is still there – you may need to search a little to find it! It does look much better and I would like to thank Mrs Gibbs for her hard work in making this happen.

We all teach students with a range of abilities, interests and learning styles. Our students do not learn the same way and do not retain knowledge at the same speed. Some will grasp a concept quickly and some will need several explanations practice before understanding that concept. On the other hand, we need to ensure that they all achieve their full potential and make progress over time. We all use differentiation in different ways in our lessons

I would like to start this week by saying a huge well done to you all. I visited nearly all, if not all, classrooms last week and saw you focussed, working hard and doing well. A massive well done and thank you to you for your work and dedication. In terms of our values, you are definitely showing you want to achieve – this is great and we must keep it up.

What is active learning?

“Active learning is generally defined as any instructional method that engages students in the learning process. In short, active learning requires students to do meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing” (Prince, 2004).

I’d like to start by welcoming you all back to College after the half-term break. I hope that you all had a good half-term and are ready for the last seven weeks of this year. There is a lot to look forward to this half-term – we have awards evenings, sport and performance evening, art design and technology exhibition and Oklahoma to look forward to. In addition to this, we also have a new-look activities week at the start of July, which will start with a whole-college sponsored walk to raise money for a fantastic local charity. I will give more information and details about this in assemblies over the next two weeks. In July, we will also take a College photograph with all students in it, which will show our whole community together.

I’d like to start by saying a huge well done to all students for the fantastic start we have had with the MRC Proud cards. You all look incredibly smart and are wearing your uniform with pride. I always thought that you looked smart as a school, but I am hugely impressed that you have taken a step-up. We can always do better and you are proving this – well done and thank you.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” Benjamin Franklin

I often hear that it must be nice to teach a “creative” subject.  However, in my experience all subjects have an element of creativity, depending on what your definition of creativity is. 

Although music may be creative in an obvious way, we still have to teach theory and content for an exam.  In this blog, I wanted to explore how a creative classroom can support the learning of our students. 

This week will see the introduction of the MRC Proud cards. You have two key challenges with this card: to try to get as many ‘above and beyond’ signatures as possible. This will show that you are helping other students or staff in our school through being polite, hardworking and respectful. The other challenge is to keep your card completely clean, which will show that you always wear your MRC uniform with pride, that you look smart and are ready to learn. There will be house competitions and rewards for the house that gets the most clean cards, as well as above and beyond signatures. You may well win something for yourself, as well as for your house.

We’ve all done it, ‘Ok we are doing group work today….’ and we get the students into groups and then give a task.

Our expectation is that they know how to work in a group with other students, some who are more able than them, some less, others quiet, some loud etc!

How much actual work and progress are they all making in this scenario?

If we can get this right and train the students then the research suggests they can make gains quite rapidly in small collaborative work with each other.