For her dissertation, Tracy-Jayne Underhill, a final-year BEd student at Cheltenham and Gloucester College, is investigating pupil responses to working independently during the literacy hour. Readers’ opinions welcome. Address: 80 Lawnsdown Road, Quarry Bank, Brierley Hill, West Midlands DY5 2EN.

OPEN-AIR SCHOOLS (1907-1960s)

Did you sit in open-sided classrooms where ink froze in inkwells, lessons were interrupted by exercises to keep warm, tuberculosis and malnutrition were rife and were you fed “body-building” meals of porridge, suet and bread and dripping? Frances Wilmot is following up her book, A Breath of Fresh Air: Birmingham’s Open Air Schools 1911-1970, with one on open-air schools throughout Britain and is appealing for information. Reminiscences particularly welcome about teaching difficulties, curriculum, discipline and the positive and negative effects of this spartan environment. Address: 41 Helsdale Road, Lillington, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire CV32 7DN.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Peter Jeans needs help in tracing Iris Reeves and Bob Brewster, former teaching colleagues in the 1960s at St George’s Secondary Modern School, Maida Vale, London. Bob is from England and Iris from Belmullet in Eire. Address: PO Box 117, Bindoon, Western Australia 6502; e-mail: jeans@webace.com.au What do educationists Michael Marland and Ian Beer have in common besides their CBEs? They have both been recipients of English-Speaking Union educational exchange scholarships, which the ESU has been administering since 1926. A dedicated alumni co-ordinator has now been appointed to run the ESU’s alumni development programme and details were sent out in August 1998 and March 1999. If you were an ESU scholar and have not received a mailing, please contact Lindsey Chamberlain, 0171 493 3328; e-mail: lindsey_chamberlain@esu.org SCHOOL ITEMS WANTED

An educational charity working in Ghana, West Africa, needs books for students aged 12 upwards. Details: Patrick Heinecke, The Sandema Project, 0181 838 2561 Students Manuh Kwabena and Frank Oppong Kyekyeku, from Ghana, are appealing for pocket dictionaries, pens and pencils. Their respective addresses are: USTJSS, PO Box 639, Kuma-Ashanti, Ghana and PO Box 2565, Ashtown, Kumasi, Ghana.

MEMORIES WANTED

Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury is planning a Millennium Exhibition, which will give a picture of life over the last 100 years using memories, stories and objects. Whether you are nine or 90, they invite you to tell them about your object or memory. Details: 01296 3331441.