Pig Sty Avenue

Allotmenteering is a lot like life: no matter how careful your plans, how well thought-out your projections, you will likely have to change them in light of what you find-out as you progress. And so it is with the shape of the allotment t hat I had in mind a month ago . Now it's beginning to shape up more like this: The shed and the poly tunnel are now to scale, (6x4ft, and 10x6 respectively), as is the comfrey bed.  The size of the pond is an estimate , based on its being 1 metre deep. 

I've searched "common core state standards" in TESOL Quarterly. This gave me mainstream papers referencing the standards, close to my own familiar field of research, (TESOL and Applied Linguistics). [NB, this background research is also serving to  familiarise me with the University of Strathclyde's Library's eJournals, and usage of Mendeley Desktop as a reference manager.] Kibler et al (2014) serves as an introduction to an issue of TESOL Quarterly all about the impact of the new standards movement on ESOL. As such it's a good literature review not only for articles in this issue, but for related articles. [Will need to read this issue, and then look to articles published in succeeding 12 months, 2015/15.] Flores (2014) defines dynamic bilingualism as "the fluid language practices in which [learners] engage to make meaning and communicate in the many cultural contexts that they inhabit on a daily basis". Further, "both teachers and s...

Third bonfire in a week. This one was on top of the ground elder root infested spoil from the Mysterious Mound. I raked the whole SW area closely, and, whilst I surely haven't cleared it of ground elder, I've given it a serious setback. For the spring, I plan to get a strong solution of glyphosate in, say, a perfume bottle, and spray each individual plant, close up, as it shows itself. I've got a feeling that the root systems are so massive, a single spraying of glyphosate won't kill the whole plant, and enough of the root will survive to put out new shoots, but I'm hoping it must give up the ghost after several doses.  Most of this area, let's call it the SW bed, was under a sea of 4ft high nettles and thistles. I've had a go at the ground with the HDGH. There's a thick carapace of roots from the nettles. What I've learned about them is, they pull up quite easily, but that's deceptive because they leave most of their roots behind. With the...

Still at the early stages of reading-around a research question: gathering background information and noise, getting a feel for what and who have gone before. My initial thoughts were to ignore the political noise around the CCSS and regard them simply as standards.  Dream on. This can't be done because those criticising the standards as standards may have an ideological beef with the CCSS which may (just "may", mind) affect their objectivity. In any case, we need to know the landscapes from which critique originates.  I spent some of yesterday closely reading Mathis (2010). The year of publication is significant. Things were moving very quickly at that time. Achieve Inc. had been set up by the NGO and "corporate leaders" in 1996, was briefed to prepare CCSS in 2009, and came up with the 500 page document in 2010. There was minimal involvement from public school teachers. There was no trialing whatsoever. Although not issuing from the Federal Government per s...

I had to give it up just after 5pm GMT last night, too dark to work. I lit the bonfire, (even with the Co-op firelighters, there was one false start), and got back at the Mysterious Mound with the HDGH and rake. Breaking down the mound wasn't the hard part - it was trying to isolate the ground-elder roots. These are massive. The methodology is to hack off about 6 inches from the top and side of the mound with the hoe, and then rake it level across the depressed bed, getting out as many root balls as possible with the rake and by hand. And then throw them onto the bonfire, which was tnearby. I was a-feared that the mound might turn out to be another midden. But whilst there is broken glass, pebbles, and fibreglass sheeting through it, it's not been an actual midden. Another thing I noticed, the centre of the mound is bone dry. Which I assume means all those ground elder root systems in the top 12ins soak up all the available water. As the fire got going, taking care of the g...

The Mysterious Mound, BEFORE What with work, study and feeling a bit off colour, I've not been getting to the allotment for as long as I'd like this week. Early dusk is another issue this weather. But I got down there Sunday afternoon, with the intention of lighting a bonfire, and clearing the mysterious mound on the SW area, near where the pond's now going to go. ...also DURING... It's been amusing and annoying me in equal measure since I started back in June. It just sits there. It was sitting there, covered in nettles, but I glyphosated and pulled them out. Then came the ground elder, also glyphosated and left alone, under an old plastic sheet. So, anyway I got a fire going, (using two of a box of thirty firelighters, couple of quid in the Co-op, highly recommended to the allotmenteer needing to burn rotten wood on a rainy day). And then I set about the mysterious mound with the Libyan hoe... which immediately fell apart. The end of the handle, the busine...

TEXT 1 - ACADEMIC Tienken, C. (2012). The Common Core State Standards: The Emperor Is Still Looking for His Clothes. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 48(4), 152-155. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00228958.2012.733928 The Common Core State Standards (the CCSS)  “are the culmination of an extended, broad-based effort to fulfill the charge issued by the states to create the next generation of K–12 standards in order to help ensure that all students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school.” (Common Core State Standards, 2015, p3). All but five States of the USA have adopted the CCSS, (Tienken, 2012).  The CCSS are extremely controversial politically in the USA. We know from the first few lines of Tienken (2012) that the author is not well disposed to the CCSS when he notes that “empirical evidence that demonstrates the efficacy of the initiative remains elusive.” He then refers to Baines (2011) who has “gone as far to describe the de facto nationalization o...

I've seen plenty of frogs as I've been weeding and digging, and hopefully the Frogs' Winter Palace will give some of them a refuge until Spring. By when the pond should be dug. Or ponds. The Old Greenhouse Foundations go right across the plot, so I could dig two ponds - or even have one big one and a bridge, which is an attractive idea aesthetically.  I haven't seen any newts, but you never know. Whilst googling around these ideas I found McNeill (2010) who tells us of a great crested newt translocation project at Gartcosh, which isn't all that very far away from Riddrie at all... So it's a case of dig a pond and see what happens.  McNeill, D. C. (2010).  Translocation of a population of great crested newts (Triturus cristatus): a Scottish case study  (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow).

Whilst researching the historical topography of the allotment yesterday, (ascertaining the location of the Blackhill Brickworks to see if it gave any clues about the quality of the local clay) I came across this detail from a 1930s OS map. I haven't the technology to overlay it to a satellite photo like google maps, but I'd put money on that rectangular structure (the one away from the path, with a square structure adjoining) is the Old Greenhouse. That's the 1930s mind, and one of the few structures in the entire "Allotment Gardens" deemed worthy of inclusion by the OS. Like I said, #ffs.

A quick search in the wardrobe located a cheap cycling waterproof, which I seem to remember paying a fiver for in Lidl, Saltcoats. It's ideal for the allotment as the weather worsens, (though the day-glo orange colour makes me feel a bit conspicuous). So last night I was able to work for a couple of hours despite a fine drizzle. Not that I achieved much. The plan was to burn all the rotten wood I'd taken out of the ridiculous layers of "fencing" at the southern end. Several times since I started back in June I've re-learned the lesson: don't even bloody try to light a bonfire with damp wood and a few old Magnum boxes - you need a lot of newspaper, and dry kindling, failing which some kind of inflammable liquid, (though, I doubt I'll get barbecue lighting fluid at a supermarket, this weather). Spent nearly an hour fanning a pile of damp twigs, experiencing absurd hope as things seemed to go from smouldering to actual flames, disappointment and fearful cur...

BEFORE Visits to the allotment get shorter and shorter as the nights draw in. Only managed 45 mins or so yesterday, but got a bit done. In the next week or so I'm going to be cutting back the borage and phacelia, and there's more weeding to be done, so I need a biggish compost container. Today's "before" is the compost heap - household waste and all those nettles and thistles I weeded out in the summer, now much reduced in bulk. I tried hot-composting, but couldn't get it to heat up more than 5C above ambient temperature. AFTER So I'm just going to have to grin and bear that one, and hope there's not too many grass seeds in there that are still viable. I must have turned that bloody heap dozens of times, moving it all over the plot in the process, but now that I've given up on hot-composting, there's no point in turning it, and so it needs put in a proper container. Of some sort. I don't like these dalek things people use. I tri...

Yesterday evening a library session at the University. There was a lot to take in during 3 hours. I've tests to write today, but I was keen before starting on them to put into practice what I'd learned last night. It happened that, thinking about the pond at the allotment, and noticing yesterday afternoon that the digging I'd done earlier into the clay hadn't held any of the overnight rain, I'd googled my way to Fordyce (2012) and so went onto the University's library site to see if I could use my newly-learned database searching skills to find it again... I couldn't. Which is a bit troublesome, if Google.uk (not Scholar) could get me somewhere (admittedly, entirely off-discipline) to a paper more easily than Google. Heigh ho. On the plus side, I did find a reference to Browne (1998) on the library site, and I'll borrow a copy of that when I go back in tomorrow. In the meantime, I picked up a couple of interesting facts from Fordyce (2012). Glasgow...

T wo birds with one stone, a literature review for a paper on test results , and writing an assignment critically reviewing two papers . Well, that was the theory, but I got sidetracked yesterday with a close reading of Sanford, 2012. I came across the paper when I was wanting to get background on the CCSS. I knew the standards were politically contentious in the US, but had thought it was a simple  Right v Left matter, with Republican deep-rooted distrust of central government leading to distrust of what might be framed as standards imposed by government.  But it's not that simple, says Sanford. She's an ELA teacher. Her dissertation is an analysis of the CCSS from a Foucaultian perspective. This involves using Foucault's genealogical approach to history, starting from the point of view that we're asking a question of history now , in the present. What really jumped out from the historical analysis is how educational standards reforms are generally framed as ...

It was one of those eureka moments you get when you turn the telly off before going to bed, and sit quietly finishing the last glass of wine... The whole plot, apart from the area around the old greenhouse, has got good, deep top-soil, up to three foot deep in places. The area around the old greenhouse on the other hand has fairly poor topsoil going down 1 foot or less. I don't know what the relationship between top- and sub-soil is in a plot cultivated long term, but expect that depth of top-soil will increase with the action of worms and micro-organisms as organic matter is introduced - perhaps turning the top few millimetres of sub-soil into top-soil every year. The old greenhouse hasn't really been properly gardened - dug over and fed, and planted out with plants with long roots, - since before the days of the greenhouse, which goes back several decades, maybe almost a century. Thus, if you looked at the garden in profile, you'd see a hump of sub-soil where the gree...

My pal and fellow allotmenteer, CliffDotMac , suggested I should be doing a photo journal of the allotment, and he's right. I've always got the iPhone, and I can take a not-bad photo, so it's absurd not to. Started today with a "before" and "after". Here's the SW corner "before" I did any work this afternoon. This area, when I first started last June, was mostly very tall nettles. So tall, in fact, that TWO proper builder's barrows were concealed amongst them; (both barrows, btw, just needed their tyres re-inflated, and some minor maintenance, and they were good to go). And at the back, there were peculiar layers on top of the fence. It's difficult to explain, it was as if the fence wasn't good enough, and it needed another three layers of fence - using old bit of wire and chain link fencing. It was a a bugger to get rid of, requiring a new set of heavy duty wire clippers.  Anyway, this is "after", about tw...

No allotment today. I'm doing that much hard labour, I need to stay away every third day to recover, as I believe weight-lifters do. I used to ridicule folk who appeared to be addicted to the gym, but I understand them now - you can't beat that well-being sensation you get from the exercise-released endorphins.  The foundations consist of two courses of bricks, and a bottom layer of concrete. It goes right down into the subsoil, heavy orange clay. I'm surmising that Glasgow must have once been a glacial lake - according to Professor Wikipedia , clay is " associated with very low energy  depositional environments  such as large lakes and marine basins". All of the pebbles I've found would bear that out, there's a lot of quartz, smooth and round, what you'd find on the seashore.  Uncovering the foundations, and then digging down has left me with a trench which will extend across the width of the West bed, about 2 to 3ft deep, and 3ft wide. So I'v...

The old greenhouse measured 24x12ft, and crossed almost the entire plot, East to West, which is why there's no central path, and to get from one end to the other one had to skirt the greenhouse, with hardly room to get a barrow around. When there was a greenhouse there, it must have looked a bit odd, but at least it was doing a job. Maybe it was kept by a family that loved tomatoes.  Or "Indian hemp". I knew the region around and inside it had a lot of bricks and rubble. My predecessor has used that area as onion beds. I planted phacelia and borage on the East side. When I was digging it over back in June, I realised that it would need excavating, but thought "not yet". The time has come, and it's worse than I'd feared: it's not only stray bricks and a forgotten path (down the middle of the greenhouse, obviously), there's a proper brick greenhouse foundation wall, properly mortared and laid on top of rubble - a real pro job. In the photo ...

I'm pretty sure that's a bean germinated. There are more of them, and they seem to be in rows, so probably not weeds; (though I can't be sure, bound to be all kinds of seeds in this soil, not to mention it's the time of year for numerous blow-ins). Last night I got the NW bed finally dug over and sown with the beans right up to the Frog's Winter Palace. South of the Winter Palace is the old greenhouse, and I've had a bit of a poke around with the fork. It's going to be quite a chore. There seems to be a buried path running E-W. Hmm. Considered keeping it, but then thought, no, the only thing I'm keeping from the previous regime is the central path, (which anyway stops at the greenhouse). So buried paths and visible walls, (some of which are - bugger 'em - mortared) will all go, the bricks and rubble piled onto the Winter Palace.  I'll use the bricks for temporary paths running E-W, say to mark-off areas for rotation, next year. But the ni...

It might not look much, but it's the fruit of 50 or 60 hours hard labour. The area at the back was once mounds of earth, covered in nettles, reaching beyond the height of the fence there. The middle and foreground were sunken to 2 or 3 feet below the level now. All of the earth from the mounds was grubbed out, shovelled into the barrow, and used to fill up the hollow bed and its multifarious wee ditches. Once it was more-or-less level, started the work of digging it over and planting the field beans. 2 rows of digging equals one of beans. They're sown pretty thickly, about 2 inches apart in rows about 10 inches apart - just enough so I can get along them to weed over the winter.  The first row went in (I think) about a week past Thursday, so that's about ten days now, and not a sign of anything germinating yet. Couldn't quite get the bed finished yesterday afternoon. The dull double thud of Red Road flats being blown up went off as I was digging, followed by a sli...

Data from a multiple choice test shows the option candidates chose (1, 2 or 3). I've used a formula to calculate by reference to a row of the keys how many questions were answered correctly. But when I come to do regression analysis, the option chosen by each candidate is meaningless unless referenced to the key - it's just a number 1, 2 or 3...  So, what we need (for now) is a binary system where 1= chose key, and 0= chose a distractor. I add in another column, and get the right answer in the first cell with: =COUNTIF( C3 , C2 ) .   But when I drag that down the whole column, (and, mind, it's candidates n=540, here, don't want to do anything manual on each of them), the second value in the formula, which I want to stick at C2 (the key) will keep shifting, C3, C4, C5 etc. No bloody good.  Thanks to the nice man who does the Not Just Numbers blog for this post which showed me how to do it . To preserve the value of the cell in a formula which you want to k...

Like the head of Hitler studies in DeLillo (1985) who didn't actually know German, I'm a language tester who doesn't actually know statistics. Oh, yeah, I can work out median scores, percentages, and correlations in Excel. But I can't get down to the real nitty-gritty of it, and I don't have any of the underlying algebraic abilities.  I say, "don't have", but like the protagonist of White Noise , I'm working on it. The need became acute when I found Zhang (2014) was researching in one of my fields of interest, and had run analyses of his data which I really need to do on mine.  So, this morning I'll be mostly working with Professor Graham (2013) learning about regression and its attendant scattergraphs. Already, before the second cup of coffee this morning, I've gotten my head around slopes and intercepts.  And yesterday afternoon I found that Excel won't actually do regression on its own, it needs a little help from StatPlus, whi...

Working on a literature review, realising that when you're researching something that, apparently, hasn't been done before, and ergo no literature, then reviewing said non-existent literature is a really rather difficult task... Or something. So I managed a couple of hours at the allotment yesterday, let the mind work on abstractions whilst the hand holds a spade. I planted another few rows of winter field beans. I should get the NW bed done by this weekend, if the weather's kind. And speaking of weather, there have been heavy showers in Glasgow the last couple of days, plenty of big puddles in all the places where puddles assemble... But not in my allotment. The levelling has clearly paid off. Despite the rain, the soil was well enough drained to dig. Two or three feet north of the old greenhouse foundations, there was a sheet of corrugated iron held up with two iron posts. I have no idea what the hell it thought it was doing there. It was the sort of structure one wou...

An evolving list of references to papers I've found and not had time to read, but which might come in handy in future: Cheng, L., Wu, Y. and Liu, X. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of assessment tasks and classroom assessment environment. Language Testing in Asia , 5(1).

Blimey. Only a few days into the EdD, and I'm beginning to feel stretched. In an expected way: the way one feels stretched as a new undergraduate, or Masters student. Getting overlap between study and work, I'm using background reading for a report into test performance of the first biggish cohort of learners (n=529) to also cover the critical-review task.  Which has given me a reason to closely read Tienken, C (2012), and How Next-Generation Standards and Assessments Can Foster Success for California’s English Learners, (2011).  (The former a peer reviewed academic paper, the latter a policy document, as required for the EdD formative submission).  The vertigo comes in with the realisation that critical reading of these documents takes a lot more time and effort, and involves peering under rocks or up into the branches of familiar trees, and taking a second and third look.  For example, Tienken (2012) is published in one of the jo...

WORK IN PROGRESS - 2015.10.19 SEARCH TERMS [SUPrimo>articles and databases] "common core state standards" AND English AND assessment AND EFL = 0 results "common core state standards" AND English AND assessment NOT mathematics = 191, (76 full text online; 76 peer reviewed) Bailey, A. and Carroll, P. (2015). Assessment of English Language Learners in the Era of New Academic Content Standards. Review of Research in Education , 39(1), pp.253-294.[largely concerned with national (US) structure of EL assessment, but some interesting off-topic details: (a) placement at K in US is assessed with 50/50 Speaking/Listening domains. California tests Reading & Writing but only given weighting of 5% each. (b) EG Illinois uses WIDA MODLE Assessment, (Grade specific).]  Baines, L. 2011. Stalinizing American education. Teachers College Record, September 16. [Unavailable - copy not yet requested] Conley, D. T. (2015). A new era for educational asse...

There's nothing quite like an outdoor activity to make one acutely aware of weather, day length and the seasons. Showers and encroaching evening are causing a slow-down of activity at the allotment, and so last night I got back on the piano stool and went through The Lincolnshire Poacher RH, all the Grade 1 scales and broken chords. First run through of each a little rusty, but second one was fine, (except for A minor, which remained a bit slippery). Only did 20 mins, but that's me back at it. There might be another relationship between the allotment and the piano, beyond a seasonal alternation: my garden labourer's  hands and forearms, (4 months of digging, shovelling, barrowing) feel much more capable on the keys, strength  giving sensitivity. And so, build up to an hour a day: keep practicing the scales, and get the Poacher on the LH first. So that's two and half more pieces to learn, and get ready for the aural and the sight reading. Then I should be good to go ...

This NW bed is a little less than 5 yards by (about) 18, and I'm halfway through digging it over and planting it with the winter field beans. It's the first time in years I've dug over a large-ish area. I keep hearing Dad's most repeated bit of allotmenteering wisdom, "Don't sicken yourself", (often accompanied by anecdotes of fellas he's known who take over a neglected allotment, and go at it for a fortnight "like mad men" and then get disillusioned and give up.  So, in an hour and a half of actual digging and planting, which is the usual amount of time I spend, I dig over an area about four or five feet, by fifteen, and plant out between three and five rows of field beans. The methodology is, dig it over, chopping up the soil with the spade (or fork on heavier bits). Some of it is light clay, a blue-ish earth I've never encountered before, the Tyneside clay being more orange (and heavier). A lot of the soil is stuff from the great mou...

REFS: Ajayi, L. (2015). High school teachers’ perspectives on the English language arts Common Core State Standards: an exploratory study. Educ Res Policy Prac . Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). 2011. Teaching Scotland’s future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland (The Donaldson Report). Edinburgh: Scottish Government.(2015).  THE ADULT ESOL STRATEGY FOR SCOTLAND, (2015).  "ESOL practitioners, in general, need to be better acquainted with the Scottish qualifications landscape and with wider educational priorities." (p12)  "The SQA is exploring strategies for measuring, accrediting and recording learner achievement through learning plans." (p13) Fillmore, L. (2014). English Language Learners at the Crossroads of Educational Reform. TESOL Q , 48(3), pp.624-632. Yvonne Foley , Pauline Sangster & Charles Anderson (2013) Examining EAL policy and practice in mainstream schools, Language and Education, 27:3, ...