Wanted: Teachers with the peregrine bug

NOTICE: There will be a temporary test of a new camera feed on the morning of Saturday16th February. This may result in a short period of disruption to our webcameras and, if all goes well, some  rather unusual views brought to you from inside the ringing chamber at Derby Cathedral!
A new blog post from Ian Layton will then be published on Saturday afternoon.  Nick M.

One of the tasks the Peregrine Project set itself to achieve with its lottery grant is to reach out to schools and get Derby's amazing peregrines used within the curriculum much more widely.

Drawing from Brigg Infants School

We think the project can be used right across the whole curriculum, from literacy to science and from history to biology... and at all Key Stages.

If you are a teacher, have you seen the live web cams and our video clips of the 'best moments'? Do you follow this blog, and have you seen the excellent work (shown here) achieved by 5 and 6 year olds from Brigg Infants School?

If so, we hope you can see the huge potential of this project to engage your own pupils in stimulating ways. And we want to help you do this.

We already have a few teachers (at Infant, Junior and a Special School) who have used the project with their classes. They have shown just how valuable and stimulating our birds can be, even for infants. These infants  even write their own blog comments and questions (under careful guidance) which we always try to answer in one for or another.
We have some really good curricular links etc at the Infant level but we now need to find innovative teachers working at Junior, GCSE and A level who would like to work with us, or showcase their schoolwork here.

If you think you could help us with this process, perhaps by trialling worksheets with your children, or by devising project material that would work for you and which we can add to our resources pack, then please get in touch. We have a wealth of material we can make available to you, too. See the new 'Schools' tab at the top of our blog for news of these developments (this will be developed further as and when we get time).

Birds and their feathers - some
work from Brigg Infants

Of course, if you don't have time to help, but would still like to be on our schools mailing list, just contact us. You'll  receive updates on resources as they become available and invites to teacher training, for example.

computer graphics by an infant at Brigg School

Email us at peregrines@derbyshirewt.co.uk  Tell us if you'd be interested in working with us, or just want to be kept informed of developments. Either is great!
While the HLF grant doesn't allow us to do more than provide (free) resources and remote help and advice, we are now in a position to offer (primary) schools a session on peregrines at your school by a trained sessional worker working for DWT. We will have to charge for this service however. If you might like a visit, please get in touch.

Today (9th) we attended an Opal conference run for teachers and other educators at Derby University. We had a stand and were involved in a Science Circus. The conference was a success and we chatted to quite a lot of teachers and other providers of environmental education. If you were among them - it was good to meet you and do please stay in touch. If you left your email address with us, we'll contact you, probably about the time the eggs are laid (end of March with luck!). If you didn't leave us your details then email peregrines@derbyshirewt.co.uk and let us know how we can help etc.

Ian Layton (Engagement Officer) and Nick Brown (long term volunteer)

Ps Please see the updated/new SCHOOLS TAB at the top of the blog for further information - and to see  Brigg School's brilliant vimeo video made by the children themselves.