Graham Andre

Graham Andre

Graham is a primary school teacher working on the Isle of Wight. Most recently Graham was seen working with his class on the (now BAFTA nominated!) BBC2 documentary ‘No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free’. Through this documentary, he has been invited to speak on national TV and live events to talk about its impact and his role with The GEC. Graham has always worked in the education sector, starting as a teaching assistant and having various roles before doing a part-time degree and completing his GTP six years ago.

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For those working in education and have not heard of the shell-suit wearing, #PrimaryRocks, BAFTA-nominated BBC documentary legend that is Graham Andre, shame on you! A Primary school teacher from the Isle of Wight, Graham has been jetted into the consciousness of thousands of educators through his passion for inclusion and progression. Nicole Ponsford, co-founder of the Gender Equality Collective, caught up with Graham and asked him to share his tips.

Monday, 05 February 2018 12:00

No more boys and girls? [Interview]

In August 2017, BBC Two aired a two-part series looking at the role of gender equality in Primary education, with much of the action taking place at Lanesend Primary School on the Isle of Wight. Here, IMS editor James Cain and programme star (and Lanesend leader of learning for Years 3 and 4) Graham Andre discuss how attitudes towards gender have changed at the school.

Its was a with some trepidation and a little fear when our head said to us about teaching Shakespeare as a topic. This was shaped by my own experience with Shakespeare at school, which basically amounted to reading from a book and having little to no understanding of his fantastic language. After a staff trip to the Globe in London for CPD and some inspiring ideas shared I was happier, even a little excited about the prospect of teaching Shakespeare to 7 and 8 year olds. My class were called The Tempest - this was primarily the play I concentrated on - but many of the ideas I used could be used and adapted with any Shakespeare play.

Friday, 12 February 2016 11:00

Gamification off the cuff

Teaching can be a strange thing, you can plan a lesson to within an inch of your life, you can create resources and finely tune the learning objective, but sometimes some of the best lessons can be those that you didn’t plan or even create an objective for. This is one of those lessons. It was our termly celebration day, where parents are invited in to share their children’s work from the term, and we had just come to the end of the sharing with an hour still left of the day. I had a class of expectant parents with little to do. “Right,” I thought, and pulled a bit of gamification out of the bag.

I love music and regularly use it in my classroom (I have written a couple of Staff Room blogs about this). I love the impact it can have on your children and the mood of the class, want to soothe them, play some chilled classical music or Spanish guitar music, want them to get ready for learning then use Don’t Stop me Now for a wake up shake up.

What’s better than the Amazon Prime Sale and Black Friday? Twitter! When I first joined Twitter I didn’t realise its full potential. I followed a few sporting heroes and a couple of celebs but did not realise the use it had, especially as educators. It wasn’t until I offered to edit the Numeracy Shed for Rob Smith that I started to follow other educators and take part in educational chats. As my following and followers rose, the benefits and potential for learning using Twitter grew. In fact I’d say it has been one of the single most influential things in my teaching in the last 18 months, and continues to give me fantastic ideas and resources. It has opened up avenues for me that otherwise would not have been possible.

Now that the new year and new term is well underway, how about trying something new in your classroom? How about trying ‘Genius Hour’?

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