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We all had a good laugh today reading through a collection of excuse notes (supposedly) written by American parents, with their spelling errors preserved:

1. “My son is under a doctor’s care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.”
2. “Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.”
3. “John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.”
   
4. “Please excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels.”
5. “Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea and his boots leak.”
6. “Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.”
7. “Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father’s fault.”
8. “Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.”
9. “Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.”
10. “Dear School: Excuses
    Please ekscuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33.”
11. “Please excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administrating.”
12. “Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.”
13. “I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because I don’t know what size she wear.”
    
14. “My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.”
15. “Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.”
16. “Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.”
    

As recorded by http://madtbone.tripod.com/school.htm.

Hopefully you haven’t seen any off-school notes quite as concerning as number 9, or quite as dumb as number 10.  But if you’d like to share any funny ones you have seen (or used), then you can reply to this post.

Why can the smartest kids often come up with the most annoying, disruptive, and irritating ideas?

I can’t remember who said it, but someone famous did comment once that being bored breeds ideas and innovation, and it is good for children to have some down time and boredom in order for them to have the opportunity to be creative and imaginative without framework or limitation. The only problem with this is that if you develop an equation that combines intellect with boredom, adds peer influence, and subtracts constraints, that equals sheer nightmare for a teacher! There are a whole range of ideas and inventions that students have dreamed up under these circumstances, and the pea-shooter is one that reoccurs often.

Teachable went to see the World Pea Shooting Championships last week, held ever year at Witcham, Cambridgeshire. The rules are simple, and the equipment even more so: use straw, pea and a puff to hit the target.

Now, we know that Pea-Shooting is perhaps not a teacher’s favourite sport, but why not use our ideas and inspiration to twist an old student favourite into something the whole class, including you the teacher, can enjoy! The safety precautions are fairly obvious: have a clear target area, and perhaps control the supply of peas so that only one at a time are fired. But a basic pea-shooter can be made with a cheap plastic straws and dried peas, although a range of sized straws and peas will help the experiment. There are some obvious science-related questions to explore:

1. Do smaller peas travel further, or is it about how well the pea fits in the straw?
2. Would a shorter straw help the speed and accuracy?
3. Can the class design a different way to launch peas at the target (but not necessarily test it…)?

And finally, some more off-the-wall ideas to entertain in the last week of term:

Living Without Technology – Research and discuss technological inventions and their impact on our lives. Give up a particular technology for one to two days and keep a journal about the experience (mobile phones or a computer / internet would be a good one to choose). The discussion afterwards can be directed either towards how much impact the science behind these everyday technology has on our lives, or how people in the mid 20th century would have lived without them. (Ages: 7-14, Subjects: Science, Citizenship, History).
Science and Disablity – Investigate technological innovations that help people with disabilities to communicate, and list design features you would want to include in a personal digital assistant (Ages: 11-16, Subjects: Health & Fitness, Science & Tech, Topics: Chronic Conditions. Communications & Computing. Design & Invention)
Programming a Pizza – Design the sequence of steps needed to make a pizza, create an algorithm of the steps and simulate programming a robotic device to “create” a pizza (Ages: 11-16, Subjects: ICT, DT).

Well, here it goes – me in a Welsh bog! As you can see, it is really a pond within a bog, but I certainly didn’t have time to look for pond-skaters or frogs.

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If you’re looking for even more ideas and inspiration around the Tour De France, look no further:

• French: examine France’s sporting successes over the decades and relate to French government policy
• Maths: explore the percentage of foreign versus French TdF winners over the decades, looking at probability, charting data and averages
• PE: develop theories about sport training and how it prepares an athlete for the actual event, including doing research into which non-French athletes train in France and if they train with other athletes who they will later compete against
• PE / Business: how do athletes who participate in the Tour De France earn income and what percentage of cycling athletes can make a living simply from sport-related activities?
• Research Wikipedia facts about the Tour De France and explore the issues of truth versus fiction when using the internet for research.

For those of you interested in using ‘biking’ in the classroom, we’ve brainstormed the following:

• search the internet for the last 5 press-covered examples of people cycling from Land’s End to John O Groats, and discuss the successes, issues, and charities concerned;
• research accidents that cyclists experience on the road, discussing road safety and how to improve it;
• discuss whether biking is a true green alternative for commuters, and how business could assist employees using this form of transport more;
• research the timings of Tour De France ‘legs’ over the decades and discuss how technology and biology have developed to improve sporting performance.

If you have any other ideas that you have used in your classroom, please do share them!

It’s my experience that bikes are nowhere near as popular with the 10-16 year olds as they were, say, 10 years ago. There seem to be fewer kids on bikes and certainly less images of children and adults on bikes than there were only a few years ago. I’ve been polling my friends and colleagues about some reasons why this is so. Perhaps it is down to Lance Armstrong never being able to shake off the rumours of substance abuse, despite his legacy and hero status in America. Could David Cameron have made mountain biking the epitome of uncool, in one quick and easy PR step?

Has pop culture and the proliferation of z-list celebrities (people who have become famous for simply appearing on Big Brother or the internet without any obvious skill or talent) become the modern aspiration of children, so that they no longer look up to those who are successful by dint of effort and commitment, but simply look up to those who can achieve press coverage?

I have to admit that I do struggle to find examples of modern heroes who are admired for their effort and strength — perhaps Andy Murray, who made it far enough and with enough panache to be inspiring!? But I then start to draw a blank. Perhaps you can let me know what you and your class think?…

Maybe you’re always trying to stop children jumping in your school pond, or being pushed in. In which case, it probably doesn’t help much to hear that grown men actually jump in muddy ponds / bogs for fun!

I’m off to do just that at the World Mountain Bike Bog Snorkeling Championship in Wales. I’d like to say it’s all in the name of science education, but really it’s just a bit of fun. We’ll bring you pictures and more from the event after the weekend.