Monthly Archives: February 2015

Zentangle Club

I started a Zentangle club at school on a Monday lunchtime so students can learn about creating Zentangle doodles, edging into mindfulness occasionally, but also just sitting quietly and drawing of a lunchtime.

I started by making a poster and offering lunch passes so people could get through the dinner hall quickly.

My other extra curricula club - mindfulness and doodling with Zentangle.

The first two weeks, we watched the videos that came with the Zentangle Apprentice kit, all the way from America!

The week after that I made this card to show all that we had learned. The third week, loads more people came, so this card was really useful! I will have to photocopy more when we get back to school.

Summary of what we have learned so far in Zentangle Club.

I think after half term I will go back to basics and show the videos again for the new people.

My only criticism of the Zentangle Apprentice materials is what to do after the children have learned the first 8 tangles. There is clearly lots of potential from just the first ones, but what do we do after that?

At first I thought I would show some more of the Zentangle videos on Youtube in subsequent weeks, and I wondered about borrowing the departmental visualiser and projecting live images of me making tangles.

Then I wondered about making a few cards like this to project in subsequent weeks which give a bunch of new tangles with instructions.

Seven tangles for tomorrow's club. So much more fun than marking.

This didn’t work massively well – perhaps we just need a bit of time working on how to understand the instructions?

Ultimately, I would like to have a huge selection of tangles, each one drawn on a blank 8×5 index card, so that students can pick and choose from the instructions and see what they would like to draw today. Before long, the students should be able to help make the cards themselves, but until then, I’ve had a very happy half term making designs of my own. Each card I have made has the step-by-step instructions and then a sample completed tile using the new tangle.

BETWEED
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

FESCU
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

FLORZ
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

HUGGINS
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

MIST
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

NIPA
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

NZEPPEL
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

PARADOX
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

VEGA
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

W2
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

ZANDER
8x5 cards for Zentangle Club index card box

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PHSE: three fantastic resources for a lesson about consent

Here are three fantastic resources for a PHSE lesson in sex education on the topic of consent. Definitely something we should be teaching in my view! Some of the material is a little explicit and so this is intended for older teenagers. Of course we can’t teach sex ed without being explicit.

For a starter, here are some quotes from the Aqua song “Barbie Girl” as reimagined by LOLCATS. Barbie Girl dates back to my university days, but it is definitely a song today’s teens still know.

For a detailed, but easy to read exploration of consent, there is a fantastic cartoon on OhJoySexToy. Much of the rest of the website – not at all suitable for the classroom! Even this cartoon may be well outside the comfort zone of many teachers, so review it carefully before introducing it in yours.

Finally a letter from the Guardian “To the girl who accused me of rape“. This is a very tough read – and on the evidence presented, a deeply unfair scenario. However, it touches on some issues that are important to talk about and touch on the themes that we use as our bedrock in sex ed: people who have sex early regret it and that sex is supposed to be between two people who are in a committed long term relationship who love and trust each other, and who are open and honest and able to talk to each other about sex before they actually start trying to do it!

This letter would also be a useful reinforcement to the fact that underage sex is actually illegal, a notion which has been responded to with disbelief from young people. Of course it’s not illegal, everyone is doing it. Erm, a) yes it is illegal, and as the letter shows there are some very serious consequences to consider and b) it’s really, really not the case that everyone is doing it.

All three of these resources are things that crossed my browser from adults saying “I wish this had been part of sex ed when I was at school.” For those of us charged with teaching sex ed, it can be a part of it in our classrooms.