December 2002
In this newsletter we anticipate the season of good cheer, so what better than laughter and learning special. We start by looking at some recent research on teacher stress and later explore some of the research on laughter and learning. There are also two case studies – one First School and one Secondary – plus our usual round up of news and the latest radical and not so radical suggestions from our 20/20 Vision feature.
Teacher stress
A study conducted at Cambridge University and led by Dr Tony Bowers has found that age and not workload is the main cause of teacher stress in the profession. The controversial findings have established that older teachers are more susceptible to stress and that stress related illnesses are increasing because the workforce is getting older. There is now a 45plus age bulge in the profession, with 50% of male teachers and 44% of female teachers aged 45 or over in 2000. The study found that 71% of male teachers and 58% of female teachers who had been absent for at least 20 days suffered stress related illness. The research aligns with findings in the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, Finland and Singapore which point to age rather than workload as the determining factor.
The ultimate stocking filler
Beat It 2 – More Music to Accelerate Learning is now complete and will – we hope - be available for Christmas! Help Santa down the chimney with tracks like Number Bonds, Healthy Eating, Plants, The Seasons, Forces and the much loved One Minute Timed Challenge!
Campaign for Learning
Phase Three of the Campaign for Learning’s Learning to Learn Project is about to begin. The Campaign will work on research projects into different ways of Learning to learn with the schools of three nominated Local Education Authorities. In Phases One and Two schools undertook individual action research projects with support from CFL Mentors and national training events.
Knowing Me - Knowing Chapel Break - Ah Ha!
Where’s a good school to see Key Stage One and Foundation Stage Accelerated Learning in action? Answer – Norwich. Chapel Break First is in Bowthorpe, Norwich. Their declared approach is whole school, whole curriculum, teachers and children as learners together. As part of an extended planning process the school thought long and hard about creating a climate for, and a culture of learning and is now delivering.
Weekly and daily learning outcomes are shared. A lot of work goes into teasing out children’s aspirations; work is done on positive contemporary role models. Young children ‘learn to learn’ through projects such as the learning garden, the overt teaching of pole bridging, the creation of fictional learning characters who have their own learning styles, valuing mistakes and learning from them, memory training, visualisation techniques and self and peer review. They even have an activity called the metacognitive spelling quiz!
Headteacher Jane Rolph and Deputy Angela Moore are enthusiasts. We are hoping they will join us in London for our national conference, Alite 2003. If you cannot wait until then, leave the M25 at Junction 27 head up the M11, turn off onto the A11 keep going…
What are the best conditions for learning?
Answer: when you feel safe to take a risk. All meaningful learning involves negotiating risk. The risk of getting it wrong, of finding out you don’t know, the risk of peer disapproval or even the risk of putting your hand up in a crowded classroom. Don’t believe all of that stuff about hothousing: long term it doesn’t work! The best conditions are when the individual elects into the experience. What helps? A sense of security. What contributes to that? One thing that contributes is a shared positive experience for example, laughter.
There is a whole body of scientific research behind laughter. Not only into its purpose but also into its effects, its duration, topicality and universality. So here’s some stuff that if it wasn’t so serious could be laughable really.
- The average joke contains forty words but the funniest jokes contain about one hundred and thirty words
- The Inuit use the word laugh to mean love-making. To laugh with someone is to make love with them.
- Laughter produces endorphins which helps handle pain and reduce stress.
- Research with rheumatoid arthritis sufferers has shown that laughter relieves the intensity of pain and the extent to which sufferers find it bothersome.
- Research shows that every country in the world tell jokes at the expense of other countries, often smaller or less economically wealthy.
- People who laugh more tend to be liked more by their friends
- Teachers who use humour are liked more by their pupils
- Fake smiles differ from real smiles. When people find a joke funny, the zygomatic muscles around their mouths pull their lips upwards, their eyes ‘crinkle’ creating lots of tiny crows feet. A fake smile lasts longer, stops abruptly and only involves the mouth. There are no raised cheeks and no crinkling around the eyes.
All of the above information comes from a University research Project called Laughlab. It was an attempt to find the world’s funniest jokes and, in doing so find out more about humour and its effects. The Laughlab ran in 2001 as part of Science Year. Within the first day there were 500 jokes submitted and within a week over 10,000 visitors to the site. By the end of the project over 300,000 people had submitted jokes. Visitors were asked to vote on the best and the worst. The worst joke collected 1% of the vote, the best 48%. Here are some of the findings!
Worst joke
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“To get to the other side.”
Most frequently submitted joke
“What’s brown and sticky?”
“A stick.”
Men found this joke funnier than women
“This day holds a lot of meaning for me. It was on this day that I lost my dear wife and children. I’ll never forget that game of cards.”
The Laughlab explanation is that a lot of male humour emphasises superiority! Males enjoy more aggressive humour and also humour with a bleak perspective on life.
Women found this joke funnier than men
A man walks into a bar with a piece of tarmac under his arm. He says, “ a pint for me and one for the road.”
The Laughlab explanation for this is that women are more linguistically skilled and with a better ear for puns and wordplay!
Top UK joke
A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says “that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen. Ugh!’
The woman sits down fuming and says to the man next to her. “I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. The driver just insulted me.”
The man says, “You go right on up there and tell him off. Go on, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”
Top US joke
At the parade the Colonel noticed something unusual going on and asked the Major: “Major Barry, what’s up with Sergeant Jones’s platoon? They seem to be all twitching and jumping about.”
“Well sir” says Major Barry, after thinking about it. “There seems to be a weasel chomping on his privates.”
So there you are. At the foot of the page we give the best joke of all. Humour not only helps you live longer and stay healthy but it wins you friends, it makes you a better teacher and it gives you an excuse for belittling your neighbours. Pass that cracker!
Some thoughts on laughter and the classroom
- Humour is highly individualised. What you find funny is not necessarily what the members of your class find funny.
- The more positive and enduring a relationship you have with the class, the more ‘risks’ can be taken with humour. Trust is crucial.
- Avoid nicknames or any form of mimicry.
- Avoid ‘in-jokes’ as, in all likelihood, you are one, two or even three generations out of touch!”
- Have a running theme! A good way is to have a different ‘How many … does it take to change a light bulb?’ for each lesson.
- Children laugh at visual, auditory and kinaesthetic jokes.
- Self-deprecation seems to me a safe way of using humour but you must have a very positive relationship with your class before starting to expose yourself to a degree of ‘ribbing’.
- There is great security in ritual. Doing the same things, in the same way at the same time. Ending the week on a joke session for example.
- Children take their emotional cues from what they experience in and around the classroom. In this, you are the principal orchestrator. They adopt your mood as the prevailing mood for the day!
- Because much humour relies on pointing up difference, using it in any classroom is therefore potentially problematic. Up to their late teens, most children spend their school hours trying very hard not to be different!
- Skilfully handled humour is, nevertheless, a great way into learning about difference and about tolerance of difference. Analysing the mechanics of a joke or voting on the joke helps pupils begin to understand how we do this.
Alite for Numeracy
Ex-professional footballer and mathematics genius Chris Tomlinson has worked with Alite to create an Accelerated Learning-based numeracy course. Drawing on his extraordinary success using AL to teach maths, Chris shares a wealth of innovative and effective ways to develop and improve your numeracy strategy. The course in Leeds on 13th January will focus on secondary schools, whilst on 3rd March in London Chris will deal with numeracy in the primary school. The course may also be booked as an INSET. For more details, contact the Alite office on 01628 810700 or via email: office@alite.co.uk.
Never ill? Except on the first day of the holidays?
Researchers have coined a name for it. You’ve probably had it. Here’s how it works. You worked through most of the Autumn half term knowing that the day after you broke up for the Christmas Holidays you would be off with the partner for two blissful weeks in the Caribbean. Bliss! Except it wasn’t bliss because for the first five days you had the worst flu/migraine/virus/sickness/vomiting or whatever is particularly nasty, unexpected and … disabling. Personally, I’ve been violently ill on day one in four continents. So what’s it called, this syndrome? They call it leisure sickness!
Professor Ad Vingerhoets of Tilburg University surveyed 1,128 mean and 765 women across Holland between the ages of 16 and 87. He estimates that around 3% of us suffer from it. This seems a conservative estimate to us but nevertheless, he points out that those most likely to be affected share certain characteristics: a high workload, perfectionism, the view that no-one else can do their work, eagerness to achieve and over-developed sense of responsibility. They can’t switch off!
What causes leisure sickness? There are a number of explanations. The first is that your body represses its own data when competing data from the outside world is more stimulating so that you do not attend to physiological signals. Warning signs are ignored. The other possibility is that of mind over matter. We postpone illness until we are ready for it. This is similar to well-documented patterns of behaviour amongst the terminally ill. Death is sometimes delayed to await the arrival of a grandchild, or a marriage or a similar special family occasion. The final explanation is that when you work, your body is in a state of defence. Responses are sharper, you are more focused and your defence mechanisms – including your immune system – is working more efficiently. Then you go off duty, relax and catch whatever is available.
Any cures? Of those who recovered some 85% had either changed job or had a fundamental change in attitude towards work or life in general. Other ideas include making the transition to leisure mode more gradual – exercise or a (healthy) social activity - on a Friday for example. Otherwise, see you on the beach. I’m the one with the Kleenex.
Heading a football causes brain damage
Those of you over the age of forty and familiar with the hurt of heading a heavy leather football will know that a lot of pain can be suffered. It now emerges that there was more than just a superficial danger of a dull headache and lace lash involved. Successive blows to the head, endured over years (not surprisingly) contribute to localised damage. A post mortem on Jeff Astle, a former England football international with five caps, who died at 59 found that heading the ball had ‘traumatised the front of his brain’. Astle played for West Bromwich Albion in the 60’s and 70’s, scoring 174 goals in 361 games. The consultant neuro-pathologist at Queen’s Medical Centre, Derek Robson, told an inquest that Astle was suffering from a brain condition which was likely to have been exacerbated by heading heavy leather footballs. The professional Footballer’s Association and the English Football Association have now launched a ten year research project into the consequences for young footballers of heading a ball.
Record sales for HYCS
Help Your Child Succeed, the book for parents written by Alistair Smith and Bill Lucas has sold 16,000 copies in the first seven weeks. This makes it the UK’s fastest selling education book ever. The phenomenal success is due in part to schools buying multiple sets, in many cases upwards of 200, in order to give or sell at cost to parents. The easy to read well-illustrated format was very carefully planned to be accessible to a wider variety of readers.
Finally, Chris Woodhead changes his mind
Pat Preedy and Chris Lees are Head and Deputy of Knowle Primary School, Solihull. They have recently made two remarkable achievements. The first, and most important, is to utilise a range of methodologies, including accelerated learning, to develop what OFSTED called an ‘outstanding school’. The second, no less remarkable, is to have Chris Woodhead, former Chief Inspector, change his mind about accelerated learning. In a Daily Telegraph piece entitled ‘For once – jargon that really works’ the scion of the Campaign for Learning admits he got it wrong. For the full story see our news Cuttings Section.
Liverpool’s national exemplar in ‘whole brain learning’
Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School is a Specialist Sports College in Liverpool. They have recently developed a range of what they call whole brain learning initiatives for PE and are enthusiasts of the accelerated learning model. Cath Daley, Advanced Skills Teacher, listed some of the changes for us:
- Widespread use of video for review
- Self and peer group review and assessment
- Positive language and esteem boards used in all lessons
- Lots of chunking of content within lessons
- Schemes of work audited for VAK
- Video used to demonstrate AL concepts: questioning,reviewing, big picture, connecting
- PE Department to act as ‘leading lights’
The work at Cardinal Heenan is to be part of a national case study and will be presented at the National Sports College Conference.
Turnaround Primary
What do you do when Ofsted labels your school as having ‘serious weaknesses?’ Bruce Potts knew. Three years later Ofsted returned and announced that he ran a successful and effective school.
The school was transformed through a series of initiatives. In addition to focusing on the structures and systems in the school, the many initiatives included changing people’s perceptions of Bevendean through publicising sports and arts achievements, introducing a uniform and promoting car stickers such as ‘I learned to read at Bevendean’; making the school the hub of community activity (it is open from 8am to 10pm six days a week); and ensuring that the needs of parents were met as well as the pupils. Successes at the school include a 90% reduction in exclusions, a 500% increase in the number of children learning a musical instrument and 100% of Key Stage 2 children attending extra curricular clubs.
To read a full case study about the Bevendean experience, and other examples of innovative practice from around the UK, visit the website at www.alite.co.uk and click on ‘case studies’.
Train the Trainer with Alistair Smith
This three-day package is unique to Alite. Participants are given the opportunity to develop their training and presentation skills whilst experiencing accelerated learning techniques. If you work for a Local Education Authority in a support or training role, if you are part of an Education Action Zone, if you are an Advanced Skills Teacher in a school with Beacon status then this programme is for you.
The March dates are sold out, but a few places remain on the May course in Buckinghamshire.
Please contact the Alite office on 01628 810700, or email office@alite.co.uk for further details.
How to Create an Accelerated Learning School
How to Create an Accelerated Learning School is a one day course that reveals how a large 13-18 High School took the ideas from training led by Alistair Smith and put them into practice as a coherent and schoolwide strategy. Led by Mark Lovatt, this course is highly practical and will be presented in the context of a real school which is managing to change the nature of learning across the board on a daily basis. How to Create an Accelerated Learning School will take place on 14 January in Manchester and 11 February in Derby. For more details please visit the website at www.alite.co.uk and click on ‘courses’.
20/20 Vision is where we offer some radical and not so radical ideas to transform your school. Don’t take them all too seriously!
20/20 Vision: the second 20 ideas for transforming motivation, teaching and learning
- Offer the – soon to be cheaply available - technology to convert the family television into a PC and link it into the school’s intranet for learning thus revolutionising home-school links
- Have a resident pupil DJ of the week in the dining hall
- Allocate every teacher an additional non-teaching period for the purpose of peer observation. Support this with the appointment of a teaching and learning coach and on-site resources for staff development
- Invite in a well known local sports personality to talk about his or her favourite reading and provide copies of readers to take home and read for pleasure
- Use smart cards for registration and for access to the school via turnstiles
- Collaborate with local schools to share teacher(s) in shortage subjects, with these teachers working across schools on enhanced conditions
- Bid for and join a Networked Learning Community
- Stagger the start of the day for older learners
- Refurbish one classroom as a development classroom with fixed video cameras in place to record lessons for subsequent review
- Provide masterclasses in the school led by acknowledged ‘experts’ from outside
- Double class sizes in years 10 and 11 and support with independent learner skills programme and a one to one tutorial system
- Take everyone directly in the employ of the school for an awayday to a theme park
- Teach your own thinking skills and creativity course, get sponsorship via a local employer and validation through a higher education institution
- Start transition from primaries earlier via transition units
- Knock two classrooms into one; teach larger groups for some of the time
- Go abroad for staff development: create small bursaries to help staff attend international conferences in their holiday time
- Introduce 'neuroscience of learning' courses
- Use networked television sets throughout the school to communicate information
- Have a high-esteem week where there is a deliberate effort to reinforce positive and meaningful messages to all pupils, including those who are the most vulnerable to self-doubt
- Introduce early bird clubs with free breakfast for those attending
For all 400 suggestions go to 20/20 Vision at the Alite website.
Best Laughlab joke of all
The famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr Watson go camping, and pitch their tent under the stars. During the night Holmes wakes his companion and says: 'Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.' Watson says, "I see millions of stars and, even if only a few of those have planets, it's quite likely that there are some planets like Earth and, if there are a few planets like earth out there, there might also be life.' Holmes replies: 'Watson you idiot. Somebody stole our tent…'