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Teachit


Susan Wilde

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Teachit is great but you do need to join as, occasionally, the materials contain significant errors you'll have to edit out yourself. A handout on grammar for KS3 has the sentence, "Britney goes to the shop" and underlines 'shop' as being the object and follows it with a number of sentences with intransitive verbs where, presumably, the adverbials are supposed to be underlined and called objects. Publishers would be unlikely to make those errors so you do have to be extra careful.

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Don't count on publishers getting it right either. A colleague of mine has just taken the TES to task for publishing an article (17 Sep) on adverbs in which there were several mistakes, resulting from confusion about the difference between a particle of a phrasal verb and a preposition forming part of an adverbial phrase. As a Germanist, this is the kind of mistake I can spot immediately. (My colleague is also a Germanist).

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Following up an earlier exchange on copyright issues, the following publication is probably what we have needed for a long time. It answers most of the questions surrounding copyright in the context of the development of e-learning materials. The publication appears at the Legal Information website of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which is funded by the UK further and higher education funding councils:

Casey J. (2004) Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in networked e-learning: a beginners guide for content developers: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/johncasey_1.htm

The publication is described as follows at the above website:

"This guide aims to provide a user-friendly introduction to IPR issues for e-learning content developers and managers. It is intended to act as a point of entry to the field of IPR in e-learning that will provide a good foundation for building expertise in the e-learning developer community. It deals with the basic aspects of IPR, especially copyright, in e-learning content development, with an emphasis on reusing third party materials to create new resources. The guide has been written by an e-learning content developer who has had to deal with these issues in practice. The style of the guide is practical and approachable with many useful tips and observations but it also provides a sketch of the wider issues. It also provides flow diagrams, templates, case studies and further sources of information and guidance."

Another interesting note:

"The right of John Casey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended)."

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Guest Chris Sweeney

Let's be realistic here. Hard pressed teachers produce worksheets which they submit to teachit.

We classroom teachers at secondary level are increasingly called upon to work inhumane hours - we work full time and have the usual pressures of performance-managed targets to attain put upon us (I have worked a 14 hour day today), as well as contribute to sites such as teachit.

Let us make a few extra pounds for our work without the sour grapes of a few professionals from other subject areas.

For those of us who rely on teachit for extremely useful back-up and base-line resources - more power to their elbow, I say.

It is easy enough to knock, but a great deal less easy to help!

Edited to add that membership per individual for a whole year is less than many colour ink cartridges for our computer printers. And no - I am NOT linked in any way with the site except as a user - and for that small sum I am extremely grateful someone had the courage to start and run such a site. It is an ENGLISH site for ENGLISH teachers and it WORKS (even if we have to occasionally check each other's skills, for G's sake!)

Edited by Chris Sweeney
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Guest Chris Sweeney
Teachit is great...............

Glad you think so.

. A handout on grammar for KS3 has the sentence, "Britney goes to the shop" and underlines 'shop' as being the object and follows it with a number of sentences with intransitive verbs where, presumably, the adverbials are supposed to be underlined and called objects.

How many UK teachers of English do you think would even spot this? It is more comment on our level of expertise than on teachit imo. Most of us don't need to teach this subject at any but a Literary level beyond the limited GCSE (which isn't even about language...)

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As I said before in my earlier message, "Teachit looks like a very useful site!" It's a remarkable achievement to be able gather together so many resources and to disseminate them. And it's great that teachers can make a few extra quid for themselves in this way. This is how I got started as an author around 25 years ago, eventually building my income from such activities up to a level where I was able to accept an early retirement package in 1993 - although I continued to work part-time in HE until the end of 2001.

Regarding the issue of understanding English grammar, this has an obvious spin-off into learning modern foreign languages. If the learner knows what an object is, then it is easier for the learner to understand that an object in German and Russian (and many other languages) appears in the accusative case. Obviously, you don't confuse the learner with complex grammatical metalanguage, but if the concept is understood it helps!

The KS3 "Framework for Teaching MFL Years 7, 8 and 9" contains a glossary of grammatical terms based on the National Literacy Strategy "Framework for Teaching". There was much discussion about the precise terms to use, however, and it was clear that English language teachers and MFL teachers do not always use the same terms, compounded by the fact that there were glaring mistakes in the early drafts of the National Literacy Strategy documents. There has been a good deal of convergence in the meantime, and now we appear to be talking the same language!

See:

National Literacy Strategy: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy/

KS3 Framework for Teaching MFL: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3...b/mflframework/

But having read the following article in The Guardian (5 Oct), one wonders for how much longer Modern Foreign Languages will continue to be taught to children beyond the age of 14:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/s...1319291,00.html

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Guest Chris Sweeney
As I said before in my earlier message, "Teachit looks like a very useful site!" It's a remarkable achievement to be able gather together so many resources and to disseminate them. And it's great that teachers can make a few extra quid for themselves in this way. This is how I got started as an author around 25 years ago, eventually building my income from such activities up to a level where I was able to accept an early retirement package in 1993 - although I continued to work part-time in HE until the end of 2001.

Regarding the issue of understanding English grammar, this has an obvious spin-off into learning modern foreign languages. If the learner knows what an object is, then it is easier for the learner to understand that an object in German and Russian (and many other languages) appears in the accusative case. Obviously, you don't confuse the learner with complex grammatical metalanguage, but if the concept is understood it helps!

The KS3 "Framework for Teaching MFL Years 7, 8 and 9" contains a glossary of grammatical terms based on the National Literacy Strategy "Framework for Teaching". There was much discussion about the precise terms to use, however, and it was clear that English language teachers and MFL teachers do not always use the same terms, compounded by the fact that there were glaring mistakes in the early drafts of the National Literacy Strategy documents. There has been a good deal of convergence in the meantime, and now we appear to be talking the same language!

See:

National Literacy Strategy: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy/

KS3 Framework for Teaching MFL: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3...b/mflframework/

But having read the following article in The Guardian (5 Oct), one wonders for how much longer Modern Foreign Languages will continue to be taught to children beyond the age of 14:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/s...1319291,00.html

Graham - this IS the English thread and not the MFL thread.

I am not being bolshy - but it would be better and more productive if you take your MFL concerns to your own thread to discuss. I am not being xxxxty with you as such because I DO - and I really DO - have a great deal of professional respect for you as you know your onions in certain areas - but honestly, do you really think that us English specialist are not familiar with the National Literacy Strategy and so need a non-specialist to point it out to us?

I hope you would not intentionally insult colleagues so!

As to the rest of us - any English specialist @ this level who remain on this Board.. what do WE think?

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Graham - this IS the English thread and not the MFL thread. 

I am not being bolshy - but it would be better and more productive if you take your MFL concerns to your own thread to discuss.  I am not being xxxxty with you as such because I DO - and I really DO - have a great deal of professional respect for you as you know your onions in certain areas - but honestly, do you really think that us English specialist are not familiar with the National Literacy Strategy and so need a non-specialist to point it out to us?

I hope you would not intentionally insult colleagues so!

As to the rest of us - any English specialist @ this level who remain on this Board..  what do WE think?

I see nothing wrong with Graham's contribution in this thread and would advise Chris to try and communicate in more appropriate language on this forum.

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In what way is drawing attention to the cross-fertilisation between two closely-related subject areas insulting?

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  • 2 weeks later...

On a related topic - this outfit posted itself on the A level Lang List this summer

JL Hagger

Development Manager

ZigZag Education and Computing Centre Publications

Unit 3, Greenway Business Centre, Doncaster Road, Bristol BS10 5PY

0117 950 3199

www.zigzageducation.co.uk    www.publishmenow.co.uk

I do not know anything about them, does anyone?

in fact JL Hagger was appealling for resources on certain texts, so you might be able to talk terms?

xx

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