We're expecting almost one hundred people at TeachMeet Wirral, so leave yourself some time to find a parking place.  If you're using a satvnav to get to us, our postcode is CH41 0DQ.  To find our full address and map, visit the school website.

Bidston Avenue Primary can be found on the corner of Tollemache Road and Bidston Avenue.  We'll be opening our playground on Bidston Avenue, to use as a car park on Wednesday.  There will be signs up directing you to the playground, but if it fills up, then there should be ample space along Tollemache Road to park.  Please keep our neighbours in mind as you find a convenient space.

Do you have a question about teaching and learning that you're struggling to find the answer to?  Could you use the combined experience of almost one hundred educators? 

Add your questions as a comment and we'll choose a number of them to be displayed at TeachMeet Wirral, meaning we can crowd source ideas to help you find an answer.
For example, What is SOLO taxonomy?  How do you get children to do their homework? etc.

We're not guaranteeing that we'll be able to answer all of them, but we'll do our best!

We're delighted to be working with a number of local organisations to bring you the best TeachMeet Wirral that we can.  Each company has kindly offered to donate prizes for a raffle which we'll hold on the night. 

Here's the list of fantastic prizes on offer:
 
£50 Amazon gift voucher (courtesy of McDermott & Shaw Education Associates)
£25, £50 gift vouchers and a ‘year’s supply of chocolate’ (courtesy of Today Starts Now)
£50 gift voucher (courtesy of  MerseySTEM)
Frog goodies (courtesy of  Frog Trade)
‘Bubbles’ UKS2 music resource (courtesy of Dimensions Curriculum)
Free screening of a current film for a class (of up to 30 children and accompanying adults) at the Light Cinema New Brighton (courtesy of the Light Cinema New Brighton)

All you have to do to enter the raffle is complete the card, which you'll be provided with upon arrival at TeachMeet Wirral.

To find out more about our sponsors, click on the link above.

If all this talk of TeachMeets has inspired you and left you wanting to attend as many as you can, here are details of two events that you might be interested in.

TeachMeet EYFS

On Thursday 20th June, Woolton Primary School are hosting a TeachMeet dedicated to Early Years.

Click on the event above to visit their TeachMeet wiki and find out more.

Twitter can be an amazing platform to share ideas and best practice (see below for more on this). 

To help bring local tweachers together, we've started to compile a number of lists, that anybody can subscribe to.  These include all those people who have signed up to TeachMeet Wirral, including the presenters and another list of tweeting Wirral schools.

You can either follow tweachers individually or choose to subscribe to the list- meaning that it will appear in your lists on your profile.  Here they are: 

TMWirral presenters (who are on Twitter)

Wirral tweachers

Wirral Schools (on Twitter)

Calderstones School in Liverpool, are holding a North West TeachMeet in September.  They've also been compiling a list of North West tweachers.

If we've missed you off a list, or you'd like to be removed from a list just get in touch.

You'll no doubt be used to hearing about Twitter and used to seeing hashtags (e.g. #bbcnews) on television programmes.  Did you know that there's a thriving community of teachers tweeting too (often referred to as tweachers)?  

If you're a little reluctant to start tweeting yourself then keep reading!

As well as following the obvious celebrities or keeping track of what your local MP is up to, you can also share, collaborate and be inspired by teachers from across the world.  By following other teachers you will start to build your very own network, sometimes referred to as a PLN (professional learning network).  One quick way to identify teachers who are of particular interest to you is to search for particular hastags. 

One of the best hastags to search/follow is #ukedchat.  Adding a hashtag to your tweet allows tweeters to search for tweets about a common theme, in this case education.  Below is a snippet of some of the latest tweets with the ukedchat hashtag.  At the very least, they'll provide you with a number of fantastic sites to visits or ideas to try in your classroom.

Every Thursday at 8pm, there's an online staff meeting.  At this point you may have just rolled your eyes, thinking about why anybody who has been teaching all day would want to go home and follow an online discussion.  While you really need to try a #ukedchat out to understand fully it, here's a brief explanation.  Each week, a number of themes are voted on, before the most popular is shared.  A 'moderator' then posts a number of prompts during the hour and keeps the discussion ticking along.  Each theme attracts hundreds of tweets and while the hour speeds by, it's possible to collaborate with a range of colleagues who together have a vast wealth of experience and ideas.

What are you waiting for?  Sign up at Twitter.com.  If you follow @TMWirral and let us know you're new to Twitter, we'll do our best to introduce you to our followers and start to build your PLN.

One of TeachMeet Wirral's  presenters, @ICT_MrP, has collated an vast array of reasons why twitter really is essential for teachers.  Explore these here.

If you're coming to TeachMeet Wirral, you'll be in great company!  Educators from primary schools, secondary schools, university lecturers, students, governors, consultants, advisory teachers and many more have already signed up to attend.  The thing that unites everybody attending the event, is a curiosity about how to make learning and teaching brilliant in their own classroom and school.  It is not just about ICT!

Anybody can sign up to attend a TeachMeet, whether that be to present or to 'enthusiastically lurk'.  Presenters can usually choose to share a micro or nano presentation, in the case of TeachMeet Wirral, lasting 3 and 7 minutes respectively.  It's up to you what you present on.  Ideally, it will be something that you've trialled in your own class or used in your school and so are passionate about.  Presentations aren't an opportunity to sell a product or service. 

Those who sign up to be enthusiastic lurkers have an important role too.  They'll have an opportunity to ask the presenters questions, or have a chat with like-minded people during the coffee break.  More importantly, after the TeachMeet, presenters and enthusiastic lurkers should leave buzzing with ideas they're keen to introduce to their classroom and school.  If colleagues see that passion and curiosity to develop practice then they're more likely to attend a TeachMeet themselves.

If you're new to the whole idea of a TeachMeet, there are a number of videos available on the internet to explain what they are.  After watching a number of them, we think the video below does the job best.  Why not share it with other staff at your school and try to get them to sign up to a TeachMeet themselves.

Over the coming weeks, this blog will keep feature details of TeachMeet Wirral and what you can look forward to if you're coming along.

After the event, this is where we'll be posting videos and details of where you can find more about our presenters and their work. 

We've also had a number of requests about how to create a TeachMeet wiki page and link it to a Google form,  or how we've gone about organising our own TeachMeet.  We'll be posting these details for anybody to access and share.