Rachael C

@monstroso @MichaelRosenYes Thank you- that’s helpful to know. I probably would not have given it any thought going closer to home.

@twintwo_73 @MichaelRosenYes To enter any Schengen country (EU) your passport's DATE OF ISSUE (not the expiry date) must be less than 10 years before the date you arrive & your passport must have at least 3 months of validity remaining (until expiry) on the day you plan to leave the Schengen area

I ordered a new passport (having been alerted by a @MichaelRosenYes post that the issue date is more relevant than the expiry date) & it came impressively fast. I’ll miss my red one. The new one photographs much bluer than it looks. It’s actually very dark, almost…

A Martian lands in Camden. An activist eagerly explains modern textile ethics to it. Activist: "So we've stopped wearing wool. It's an enormous step forward." Martian: "The fibre that grows on the sheep." Activist: "Yes!" Martian: "Which must be removed or the animal overheats and dies." Activist: "Well, technically, but the point is the industry exploits them." Martian: "By removing the fibre that would otherwise kill them." Activist: "It's more nuanced than that." Martian: "What are you wearing instead." Activist: "Recycled polyester! It's made from plastic bottles. Totally cruelty-free." Martian: "And the microplastics." Activist: "The what?" Martian: "The fibres that shed from your jumper into the ocean every time you wash it. For roughly the rest of geological time." Activist: "I haven't heard about that." Martian: "The fish have." Activist: "..." Martian: "I'd like to go home now."

@MsEscoTeaches Phonics is not the answer for every child. If they’re still doing phonics now, it’s probably never going to work…

Here’s the sad thing about reading… I teach a phonics intervention class for 30 mins a day. It is extremely difficult to get them to pay attention, practice, and participate. They fight me every step of the way. I’m at a loss on how to help them when they won’t help themselves.

@Ria1984 @Headteacherchat I think it would add an additional level of unnecessary stress for the children.

All the y6 teachers covering their displays in paper etc. why aren’t the tests done in the hall? #SATs

@AagantukVisitor @KensingtonRoyal Tell me you know about Attenborough’s work without telling me…

@KensingtonRoyal Stupid Britons living in the past while ignoring the gloomy future is one of the funniest, and equally tragic, things to watch these days

A special evening celebrating Sir David Attenborough's 100th Birthday at The Royal Albert Hall.

@floridanow1 @historyinmemes Came here to say this.

@historyinmemes Kids are influenced by those around them. Did you see them look to make sure "they are with the group? It might be a different story if there were only 1 child.

The greatest moment in TV history was when Jamie Oliver showed children how mcnuggets are made and smugly said 'now who would still eat this?' and literally everyone put their hand up and he looked really sad

@elonmusk But why is this a *good* thing? I hate the idea of not knowing whether what I see is real anymore. And what is the actual point of it? Apart from putting real people out of jobs.

New Grok Imagine model just dropped with much better lip sync & sound. Nothing in this video is real.

@MaryMyatt Expectations in KS2 are high- we are teaching content that I didn’t learn until Secondary. Ex-pupils have complained in Y7 that they ‘just repeat what we did in Y6.’

And perhaps the most significant cause is the simplest: we don't always believe pupils can do more. The assumption that Year 7 needs to be "eased in" has taken hold in many parts of the sector.

Secondary schools receive data, but they rarely receive information about the curriculum. They know what score a pupil achieved, but they don't know what they've read, written, discussed, or argued. And in the absence of that knowledge, the professional default is to begin again

Schemes of work designed around coverage rather than depth create relentless pressure to move on. When pace is valued over depth, the quality of thinking in the room suffers. Pupils learn that the minimum response is sufficient.

People ask me why I'm so passionate about sheep. Here's why. A sheep wakes up on a hillside nothing else will live on. 32-degree slopes. Acidic soil. Wind off the Atlantic. Rain in quantities most European crops would consider insulting. She walks out, eats grass nobody asked her to grow, and turns it into meat, milk, wool, lanolin, and the maintained landscape beneath her feet. She requires no pesticides. No irrigation. No imported feed. No lab. No patent. She takes the sun, the rain, the soil, and the specific botanical composition of a particular upland, and produces the leanest, most nutritionally complete meat in the British food supply. Every gram of lamb contains complete protein, zinc, iron, B12, selenium, and the conjugated linoleic acid your metabolism actually asked for. She also produces, as a side effect, the landscape the tourists photograph. The wildflowers the campaigners claim to care about. The birdlife the charities fundraise on. The stone walls the poets write about. The curlew, the skylark, the golden plover, the red grouse, the hen harrier. None of it exists without her. And we have spent the last fifty years being told this animal is wrecking the countryside. The audacity. I'll take my chances with the creature that has been shaping these hills for ten thousand years over the pea protein isolate that was patented in 2017.

@mum3003 @Ria1984 You are ‘reflecting on your behaviour’ and how it. And how it could be better. It will a written response sheet.

@Ria1984 I have no clue what any of that means! I thought a reflection sheet was a plastic mirror! How can you be "in reflection"?

I’m more worried that the teacher thinks “not showing smart” is an appropriate sentence.

@DeputyGrocott This is the main reason behaviour and school refusal are at their worst. It’s not all Covid, parents or technology. The system has to take responsibility for the monster it is creating.

What if the biggest thing holding primary education back is in fact…time? Time to talk. Time to think. Time to fail and learn from it We want resilient,creative children but structure their day so tightly there’s barely space to become either. Are we educating… or managing?

@Ria1984 I don’t ‘dislike’ them but my mum brain says, ‘Ooh bit of waste of money. They’ll have grown out of it by Year 8 (latest). Currently have two leavers hoodies in home that are of NO USE to anyone. Can’t even charity shop it.

#UnpopularOpinion. Leavers hoodies are awful.

Year 9 is where ambition goes to die in too many schools . Options are chosen, GCSEs are looming and the curriculum quietly thins out. Teachers know it, pupils feel it. And yet we treat it as inevitable, a structural feature of secondary education, as opposed to a design flaw

@monstroso @mistressdivy It could make all the difference…

@twintwo_73 @mistressdivy Take them out and swap them round.

Shout out to everyone who takes the back off the remote control and rolls the batteries around instead of just replacing them.

President Trump has posted this picture on social media of himself as Christ healing the sick. I’ve long given up saying how hard it is to think of any previous US president who behaved like Donald Trump, but comparing himself to Jesus puts him on another level altogether.

You want to know the most efficient land use in Britain? Not almonds. (You can't grow almonds here. The climate would make them feel personally attacked.) Not avocados. (Laughable.) Not quinoa. (We tried. It's fine. It's not fine.) Grass. Which grows on the 65% of British agricultural land that cannot support arable crops. Which feeds ruminants. Which converts that grass into complete protein, saturated fat, and fat-soluble vitamins through a digestive system that has been running without modification for forty million years. The cow is not a problem to be solved. The cow is the solution that was already here.

@ShakinthatChalk @grahamchatterl2 It’s starts in primary and feeds up to. Too formal-too soon. Loss of continuous provision in KS1. Loss of before school morning play. Short playtimes (15mins) and shortened lunchtimes. No afternoon play for most children in most schools. So different to my own primary days

It’s not behaviour. The behaviour crisis is the byproduct of the compressed day and disproportionate emphasis on academic subjects. Teachers get burnt out because of the compressed day and the increased contact time (which no one talks about).