LEARNING

The theory of Marginal Learning Gains is inspired by the philosophy that underpinned the extraordinary success of Team GB Cycling at the Beijing and London Olympics and of the Team Sky Pro Cycling Team at the 2012 Tour de France. The philosophy is simple: focus on doing a number of few small things really well. Once you do this, aggregating the gains you make will become part of a bigger impact on learning. For students, for teachers and schools.

Having accumulated plentiful experience in both the classroom and the education-based private sector, Nicole Ponsford considers how teachers can make the most of the current education sector.

How can you be an outstanding teacher in 2014, against strikes, changing school forms and new curriculums? How can you be, and why would you want to be, outstanding all of the time? I have been graded at this level several times in my profession, but I started teaching well over a decade a go. I suppose my question is… since leaving the classroom in 2011, would I be ‘outstanding’ today and what would I change?

As a school improvement coach and consultant, my heart always goes out to teachers ‘in the field’. I know of the pressures – I have been there – but feel that there is more of an edge in 2014 than there was at the start of the Millennium. Today, there seems to be a shift in morale in schools as a result of the changes in education – politically, digitally and as a professional generally. I don’t recall ever really feeling a huge impact of outside forces, nor watched the news to find out what I would be teaching in September.

House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, True Detective… For adults, there are a huge amount of must-see television programmes available at the moment, and it’s getting much easier to miss giving yourself some time to read. For younger viewers, the same problem applies, with a bevy of kids-programming channels (not to mention Netflix) easily accessible. Recent research has shown that reading is on the decline, and Elliot Simmonds can’t stress enough how important reading is for growing minds.

Last week, new research was published by Booktrust (and later featured by the Guardian and the BBC among others) which suggests that Britain is a nation divided on reading habits. At this point, in the interest of full-disclosure, I should say that I am a voracious reader. I read anything, and I read a lot – despite recently being asked if I was a ’14 year old girl’ because I’m halfway through The Hunger Games.

For this reason, I found it quite distressing that almost half the nation would prefer to watch television than read a book and that even more (56%) said that the internet and computers will replace books within two decades. Reading is exercise for the brain; utilising memory, imagination and generally increasing vocabulary and improving the way in which people express themselves. Reading books is a great way to step away from work and school, which involves an increasing amount of time spent looking at screens for many of us.

Whatever a person’s profession, self-reflection is an important part of making sure you’re doing the best with your work-hours. Teachers, of course, are developing the minds of the future, so it’s important that they can really examine the pros and cons of their work ethic. Adam Lewis, English teacher at Cramlington Learning Village, Northumberland, very much recommends recording yourself in the classroom.

We’ve all been observed whilst teaching, whether it’s by mentors, mentees, colleagues, SMT or even the dreaded OFSTED. We’re given feedback and we try and implement changes to improve our teaching. However, it is often difficult to remember which part of the lesson the observer is referring to, or which student in particular is being criticised for not being focused enough.

Videoing yourself teaching can change all that. Either by setting up a camera at the back of the classroom, asking a colleague to film it for you or investing in more professional hardware designed for schools, you can transform the way you approach professional development.

A year after writing an article for our magazine, Sue Dixon of P4C and Thinking Child returns with a piece on how best to teach the art of listening to pupils. After all, a lot of fun can be had...

When I was little and chattered too much, my mum used to say “Susan Ellen! (She always used my ‘Sunday name’ when I was in trouble) You know it’s no accident that you have two ears and only one mouth. Do shush and listen for a moment.”

And then, by no surprise, I became a teacher: traditionally a role perceived as more about talking than listening. Listening isn’t something that is overtly taught in teacher training college, but I believe it should be.

Homework is often an emotive and divisive issue in primary schools. How much is appropriate for a certain year group? What forms should it take? How much parent involvement is required? To what extent should it be tailored to individual children? And so on.

As evidenced by Adele Devine’s superb piece on teaching Shakespeare, there’s clearly something about the playwright’s work that gets teachers all fired up. With the birthday of William Shakespeare getting closer, teacher and manager of Arts on the Move Alison Chaplin brings us her finest tips on enthralling your class in this world, and having a great time while you’re at it.

This April we commemorate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, and hundreds of primary school children across the country will join in this momentous occasion by taking part in organised celebrations. However, a great number of primary school teachers already celebrate Shakespeare in their own way. Schemes of work that explore Macbeth or Romeo & Juliet are already fully integrated into the Primary Framework for Literacy objectives in many primary schools, with teachers attacking the stories, characters and themes with gusto. But for every teacher who loves tackling Shakespeare, there are many who don’t. The literary experiences we have as children, when we first encounter the beautiful Bard, can either make us or break us for life. But, fear not, for help is out there…

My advice when approaching Shakespeare in the primary school is to introduce it by stealth. Find ways of catching the attention of the children and drawing them in to the whole story. For example, describe a specific setting for a scene from a play – a good one is Act 3 Scene 3 from Macbeth - the murder scene*. As far as setting descriptions go there isn’t much information to be found in the text, but some clues are there and what isn’t specified you can surmise (or make up!): it’s night time; a faint torch light can be seen, held by an unseen hand; the setting is a park near the palace, there are trees casting shadows, low bushes and rocky outcrops; the sky is full of rain clouds; it’s spooky.

Plenty of pupils love to write - why wouldn’t they? However, many of the UK’s schoolchildren have what David Mitchell, deputy head of Heathfield Primary School, aren’t getting anywhere near the audience that they should be.

As published in the September 2013 edition of our magazine.

After a grueling week with your wonderful Year 6 class surpassing their non-chronological reports, you think you have aced it! They have chosen their topic of choice, and it’s 10:50am on a Friday – it’s BIG writing time! The candle is burning… or more realistically, the interactive whiteboard is displaying the faint flicker of a candle flame. If you silence the class, you can hear the calming tones of Mozart tickling away at thought processes. It’s then, just as the children pick up their Big Writing pens that you utter those important words: “Don’t forget... consider your audience!”

Rosemary Dewan of the Human Values Foundation returns to discuss the 5-star education system, and how it can help both teachers and students get the most out of the teaching process.

Learning is engaging when children and young people are stimulated and excited by it and see the relevance of it. They are constantly making decisions and it’s helpful for them to begin to understand and become aware of the drivers for their choices. Take for a moment, what it was that made you decide to get out of bed this morning! You will probably soon find that there were some key factors – things that you personally value and consider important. So, how can we help young citizens enjoy making connections while they are learning so that they can develop a consistent approach to their thinking, decision-making, choices and behaviour – and ultimately feel happy and achieve their full potential?

Following on from his concise article published published 19/02, Dominic Norrish delivers a follow-up piece on 1:1 learning.

In my first post in this series, I spent some time talking about the reasons why more and more schools are choosing tablets as the tool through which to achieve their vision of giving every student access to their own mobile computer. In summary, it's because tablets are highly effective at enabling pupils to demonstrate their learning in creative ways, as well as being fun, reliable and easy to use.

That post ended by asking a question which often gets ignored; are tablets truly the best device to tackle the specific challenges which face GCSE and A Level students?

Page 14 of 16

In order to make our website better for you, we use cookies!

Some firefox users may experience missing content, to fix this, click the shield in the top left and "disable tracking protection"