Philosophy for Children: intergenerational dialogue

scameron — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:55:40 +0100

What is P4C?

Linking self-awareness to improved behaviour

scameron — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:14:43 +0000

Developing self-awareness is an aid to enabling young people to further their understanding of themselves. Understanding how they learn, and that feelings, thoughts and emotions have an impact on their behaviour, is central to being able to set realistic goals.

It is vitally important to also include the self-awareness of adults working in the teaching and learning environments. Being aware of triggers and early warning signs is an essential component of being able to subsequently manage those feelings and emotions appropriately.

Learning logs to encourage reflective learning

scameron — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:15:57 +0000

For a number of years, schools have utilised homework diaries for children to organise their out-of-lesson learning and to assist parents in monitoring the completion of tasks. However, although the homework diary provides an excellent aide-memoire for children to remember what they are required to do at home, I became increasingly concerned about how children recalled what they’d actually achieved while at school.

Deep learning: structuring a coherent approach

scameron — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:10:56 +0000

For the past six years, I have been working with a range of secondary schools throughout the UK, trying to help them make sense of learning in order to support teachers’ understanding and broaden students’ achievement. In every school, I initially ask school leaders and teachers to describe the nature of their students as learners. Invariably, I am told ‘they do like to be spoon-fed’. I wonder if this is the case; or have they come to expect to be spoon-fed, by hard-working teachers who are driven by the understandable need to ratchet up standards?

Cooperative learning approaches for developing team workers

jlee — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:00:00 +0000

So far in our series on ‘Team Workers’ we have looked at procedures involving:

Learning to learn: one school's journey

scameron — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:36:10 +0000

Learning to learn is at best a vague term. It seems to describe a plethora of ideas ranging from learning styles, mind-friendly learning, project work, learning dispositions, Brain Gym, learner logs, formative assessment, collaborative learning, etc. Our venture into this area began some six years ago. From the start we were determined to focus upon those ideas that were most closely linked to day-to-day classroom practice and could point to convincing evidence that they made a difference.

Learning together: how collaborative research can benefit students and teachers

scameron — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:10:13 +0000

The ‘Learning Together’ project

Enquiry skills activity: What is learning?

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:28:27 +0100

Activity on 'What is learning?'

Written by Anne de A'Echevarria

This teaching resource is taken from the winner of the BESA Educational Resources Book Award 2007 - Thinking Through School.

Worksheets to record pupils' learning journeys

sara — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:28:25 +0100

Worksheets to record learning experiences of pupils

Written by Margaret Sutherland and Colin Sutherland

Thinking skills in action

scameron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:56 +0100

‘Children, if left to their own impulses, fill the air with perpetual questionings, every new thing being a mystery to them. Children should not be stinted, rebuked or dispirited, but allowed to develop a continuous elastic spirit, ever enquiring and ever extending to others the fullness of their own aspirations.’*

In 1816 Robert Owen presented this strong image of the thinking child. It neatly captures how adults should view young children who are learning to think and thinking to learn.

Creative thinking: a personal, learning and thinking skill

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:51 +0100

The latest manifestation of cross-curricular skills, as most of you will have registered, is personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS). The six are:

Learning to learn: changing the curriculum

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:51 +0100

Towards the end of last academic year, faced with a multitude of curriculum changes, the senior management team (SMT) and staff at my school, the Grammar School for Girls, Wilmington, in Kent, decided that it was also time for change.

The 'lesson study' model of classroom enquiry

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:49 +0100

The Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) project ‘Learning How to Learn in Classrooms, Schools and Networks’ ran from 2003 to 2005. It studied how teacher practice in the use of assessment for learning strategies could be developed and transferred between practitioners in and across 45 schools. Part of the project involved studying a specific approach to professional learning and practice transfer called lesson study.

The research is ongoing but the pilot phase has been completed and is the subject of this article, which describes:

Behind the buzzwords: Learning (how) to learn

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:48 +0100

Learning to learn is one of those terms which, having been used in various forms for over 30 years, now has become prevalent in common discourse about schools, education and employability. It is probably only because of its alliterative qualities that we use learning to learn rather than learning to think, learning to study, thinking about thinking, thinking for learning or many other possible variants which exist out in the world. Even on this page there are several which appear in the discourse as interchangeable though we will discuss how they are in some ways distinctive.

Learning and thinking skills through drama

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:47 +0100

Mantle of the Expert was devised by Dorothy Heathcote, one of the world’s leading drama teachers, and is currently being introduced in schools throughout the country, with support from the QCA. The approach involves pupils in developing a particular point of view, as people running a fictional ‘enterprise.’ For example, they might be running a library, factory or shop; they might be scientists in a laboratory. They undertake a range of different tasks in running their enterprise, building up a collective sense of expertise.

Guy Claxton's character curriculum for the learning age

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:45 +0100

We seem to live in a morally bashful age. Perish the thought that anyone might try to ‘impose their values’ on anyone else. Education colludes with this squeamishness by pretending that the only serious questions it faces are technical ones. How are we going to raise standards? What are the most appropriate methods for testing students, and when, and how much? Should we have 14-16 diplomas, or a six-term year? But words like ‘standards’ and ‘appropriate’ merely finesse the underlying moral questions.

Learning detectives: learning to learn

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:42 +0100

In 2006, three advanced skills teachers for assessment for learning (Linda Baines, Lucy Watts and myself), from three Leading Edge secondary schools in Cornwall, planned a joint project on learning. We wanted to investigate how students saw their learning and how they could have a say in their learning. We planned an outline which would be cross-phase and cross-school spread over three years.

Opening minds: a competency based curriculum at Campion School

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:39 +0100

Campion School is a large, successful 11-18 comprehensive school in the heart of Northamptonshire. Campion has had Learning to Learn (L2L) lessons since 1999 and the SLT wanted to extend the impact and raise standards at KS3. Developing a competency-based curriculum with L2L at its heart seemed an excellent way forward. However, in a school with long-serving subject staff, major curriculum change needed to be approached with caution. This needed to be radical transformation of the way teachers teach and students learn.

Learning to learn: a competency based curriculum

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:38 +0100

Jackie Beere was headteacher of Campion School, a specialist 11-18 language college in Northamptonshire with 1,500 students on roll. She now works as a school improvement partner and L2L consultant for the Campaign for Learning. Campion School has been involved in research into transforming learning since 2001 as part of the Campaign for Learning L2L project. This article reflects how ideas on ‘Learning to Learn’ have developed.

read more

The learning journey for maths

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:37 +0100
The education journey from Foundation stage to GCSE should indeed be a journey of excitement and exploration and a route once travelled never forgotten. The enjoyment of what you tried, how you tackled it and who shared the experiences with you should be memorable. But what is the reality of the journey through some of our educational establishments? One that is engaging, interesting and fulfilling or a journey inadvertently forgotten, like a drive through a dull and lifeless landscape?
read more

Pedagogy and personalisation: new guidance

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:29 +0100

It is now several years since the old CPD working group in the DfES was told that the government thought it was about time that teachers were reintroduced to pedagogy. Of course, you might say that it never went away; that teachers have always talked to each other about what should be taught and how they should do it and about what should be assessed and how they should do that as well. The trouble is that since at least 1988 teachers have largely received official wisdom and not generated it for themselves.
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Learning to learn: improving the quality of teaching

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:28 +0100

The Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation was a three-year project investigating practical approaches to improve learning and teaching in classrooms and to foster positive dispositions towards learning. It built on findings from earlier phases of research. Phase 3 started in 2003 and involved 33 schools from three local authorities (Cheshire, Cornwall and Enfield). It aimed to investigate:
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Lessons from Learning to Learn

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:28 +0100

Also on this site is an extensive summary of the three-year Learning to Learn (L2L) in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation funded by the Campaign for Learning. One can think of the project as a range of opportunities and resources offered with a relatively loose dispositions framework – the 5Rs (resourcefulness, readiness, resilience, reflection, remembering).
read more

Top tips for test success

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:24 +0100

Coping well with the demands of examinations and attaining optimum personal performance are key factors in achieving success at school and university.
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Implementing the Thinking Through School approach at Corbridge Middle School

ewtemp — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:22 +0100

Corbridge Middle School, near Hexham, Northumberland is a 9-13 mixed comprehensive with approximately 350 on roll. Pupil attainment on entry to the school is generally above the national average, although the full range is present. In this case study, the process of trialling Thinking Through School is exemplified and the lessons learned are outlined.
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Thinking Through School: building a learning community

ewtemp — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:22 +0100

Thinking Through School was published in October 2006 by Chris Kington Publishing and is currently being trialled in schools across the UK. Addressed to pupils in Year 7, this book does three important things:
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Encouraging communication, curiosity and creativity

ewtemp — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:19 +0100

Opportunities for communication
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Howard Gardner: more than multiple intelligences

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:18 +0100

Howard Gardner has mixed news for the would-be genius: we can’t all be exceptional – but we can still learn a lot from those who are. Indeed, he believes it is the duty of educators to draw their students’ attention to the lives of exceptional individuals. In his book Extraordinary Minds he examines the lives of four such individuals, seeking to understand the nature of genius and draw lessons for the rest of us.

A science of extraordinariness
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Guy Claxton and 'learning to learn'

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:18 +0100

Professor Guy Claxton’s interest in ‘learning to learn’ goes back to his own schooldays. After obtaining mediocre O-level results he began to pay attention to his study habits, strengthening the most effective ones. Academic success in the form of a double first from Cambridge and a doctorate in psychology from Oxford ensued. Subsequently, over more than 25 years, he has brought together his interests in learning skills and psychology in numerous books, lectures, workshops and research projects.
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Assessment for learning and cooperative learning strategies

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:16 +0100

This case study exemplifies how Fallibroome High School has completed an enquiry into the combination of cooperative learning strategies and assessment for learning with the aim of promoting feedback loops relating to assessment and reflective learning in the classroom.

The school
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A new language for learning

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:12 +0100

Many readers of Raising Achievement Update will be familiar with ELLI – the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory – that provides teachers with a new language for understanding, explaining and improving the way people learn. One exciting research study used ELLI in conjunction with Antidote’s School Emotional Environment for Learning Survey (SEELS) to show that learning power – the qualities that support good learning – grows best in an ‘ecology’ that includes the school being emotionally literate.
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Child abuse and its affect on brain development (part two)

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:11 +0100

The first part of this article (click here) addressed a growing body of research about how childhood abuse can bring about physical changes in the way that the brain functions. Research shows that repeated experiences of abuse will cause a child to develop coping mechanisms as an act of survival. It suggests that the regions of the brain that deal with anxiety and fear responses may be overdeveloped in people who have been subjected to abuse.
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Investigating underachievement

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:08 +0100

Underachievement has been an issue in schools as long as there have been schools. As Younger and Warrington asserted as recently as 2005, ‘The underachievement of girls and boys is a complex and multi-dimensional problem.’ Numerous studies have addressed what is seen as an increasingly urgent problem. Millions of pounds have been spent by a succession of governments trying to alleviate the problem. And have any of the initiatives worked?
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Making working memory work in the classroom

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:07 +0100

What is ‘working memory’?
Psychologists use the term ‘working memory’ to refer to the ability we have to hold and manipulate information in the mind over short periods of time.
Why is working memory important?

read more

Peer feedback and self-assessment

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

We became interested in assessment for learning (AfL) when our school joined a local schools network called ‘Learning to Learn’, which focuses on using strategies in the classroom. Through the network we have attended conferences, Inset training and have participated in observations in different schools.
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Piaget and the development of intelligence

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:20:06 +0100

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) researched the development of intelligence in children. Although many of his theories have been contested by subsequent psychologists, they have strongly influenced educational practice for nearly a hundred years.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
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Teaching pupils how to learn

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:44 +0100
It was while I was running the Campaign for Learning that I began to realise just how unimportant many of the current educational initiatives are. First there was the 'standards agenda'; an attempt to help pupils do better at exams (as if any teacher ever tried to help them do worse!). Close on the heels of this came new approaches to literacy and numeracy; special 'hours', lots of additional training and 'strategies' bearing their names.
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Encouraging independent learning

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:41 +0100
You may have heard the saying, 'Give a man grain and he will feed his family for a week. Give him the tools and he will feed his family for life'. In the context of education, how much of our time in school is spent aiming at providing grain, and how much at providing learning tools that will serve the person for life?
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Raising levels of thinking through questioning

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:41 +0100
What is the main difference between the following two questions:
1. What did you learn today?

2. What was the most useful thing you learned today?
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Learning how to learn

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:19 +0100

Extensive research carried out in many parts of the world has shown with all clarity that employers are now looking for different qualities in their employees than they used to in the not so distant past. Most of the jobs our children will be doing haven’t yet been invented! What businesses now look for in the people they employ, is their ability to:
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From thinking skills to thinking schools

jlee — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:19 +0100

AAlthough I am not a scientist, Philip Adey's work on CASE inspired me in the early 1990s when I was a PGCE tutor. Three things mark out his work for me:
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Book review: Making the Most of Your Abilities

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:19:15 +0100

Making the Most of Your Abilities
George Dr D.
ISBN 1901444066

Dr David George is without a doubt the activities knight in shining armour for teachers of gifted and talented students. If you are looking for resources and ideas I cannot recommend a better place to start than Dr David George’s books.

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Learning To Learn

Helping young people to become ‘effective participators’

Heuristic play for toddlers

Reflective learners: helping learners make sense of their learning

Child initiated learning

How to develop independent student learning

Philosophy for Children (P4C)

Philosophy for Children: intergenerational dialogue

Linking self-awareness to improved behaviour

Learning logs to encourage reflective learning

Deep learning: structuring a coherent approach

Cooperative learning approaches for developing team workers

Learning to learn: one school's journey

Learning together: how collaborative research can benefit students and teachers

Enquiry skills activity: What is learning?

Worksheets to record pupils' learning journeys

Thinking skills in action

Creative thinking: a personal, learning and thinking skill

Learning to learn: changing the curriculum

The 'lesson study' model of classroom enquiry

Behind the buzzwords: Learning (how) to learn

Learning and thinking skills through drama

Guy Claxton's character curriculum for the learning age

Learning detectives: learning to learn

Opening minds: a competency based curriculum at Campion School

Learning to learn: a competency based curriculum

The learning journey for maths

Pedagogy and personalisation: new guidance

Learning to learn: improving the quality of teaching

Lessons from Learning to Learn

Top tips for test success

Implementing the Thinking Through School approach at Corbridge Middle School

Thinking Through School: building a learning community

Encouraging communication, curiosity and creativity

Howard Gardner: more than multiple intelligences

Guy Claxton and 'learning to learn'

Assessment for learning and cooperative learning strategies

A new language for learning

Child abuse and its affect on brain development (part two)

Investigating underachievement

Making working memory work in the classroom

Peer feedback and self-assessment

Piaget and the development of intelligence

Teaching pupils how to learn

Encouraging independent learning

Raising levels of thinking through questioning

Learning how to learn

From thinking skills to thinking schools

Book review: Making the Most of Your Abilities