April 2003
This month we take the theme of Making it Happen! This is our title for Alite 2003, our annual national conference taking place once again at the Café Royal, London on June 20th. Chris Tomlinson describes how Chafford Hundred Campus is striving to transform education beyond the technology that modernises the way we teach. Pam Scott tells us about her experiences of school transformation and Nicky Anastasiou asks the question: which teacher influenced you? There’s a short update on the Football Association Project. We conclude with the next in our muddled metaphors and 20/20 Vision Series.
A School of Today Creating Education for Tomorrow Chafford Hundred Campus - a Case Study
When you think about a school of the future it probably includes the most modern technology with interactive whiteboards, wireless and broadband technology, electronic registration and laptops for all. It is true that the Chafford Hundred Campus has all this plus many more technological facilities for a brand new school ready to transform education. It is also true that the Campus is a state-of-the-art building. But for me a school of the future is about trying to do things differently to overcome the possible and probable hurdles anyone could encounter in our education system. This is what I believe is at its very heart and is the prime objective and motive of the Campus.
The Campus is quite a unique school, with the primary and secondary sectors all under one roof. It provides an excellent start to easing the transition for students between Key Stages, a wonderful opportunity for staff development and for primary liaison to be at its most innovative. The basis of the KS3 curriculum is the Royal Society of Arts’ 21st Century Curriculum, founded on five competences:
Learning
Citizenship
Relating to people
Managing situations
Managing information
Each unit of work focuses on one or more of these competences in the context of the National Curriculum subjects. The Campus will soon offer a unique KS4 curriculum to suit the needs, abilities and career pathway of individual pupils. It will be innovative through developing fast track options and vocational placements, and by offering a vast number of GCSE courses to cover and develop all intelligences.
However, it is the individual who is important and the 1:1 day each student receives emphasises this. In this weekly session a student can sit down and spend quality time with his/her tutor and review the learning that has taken place. The aim is to maximise everyone’s potential and develop a unique education for all. It takes place before school, something not unusual at the Campus, as it is in operation much earlier than this with the ‘Grub Club’ in the cyber café opening at 8:15am. The Campus is keen to assist students of all ages in taking responsibility for their education and developing their knowledge of how they learn. One way of doing this is through awarding PRAISE points for Progress, Responsibility, Achievement, Initiative, Showcase and Effort when these are demonstrated. The core of every initiative places the individual at the centre and looks at how their education can be developed to maximise their skills and intelligences.
The Campus is building education in the community as well, seeing the whole population as lifelong learners. It is already developing a programme to meet the needs of all learners in the area particularly through opening its multi-facility public library for everyone to use. It is also trying to create a regional centre of excellence in Business Education, empowering through learning to learn, creativity and competences.
It takes a special collection of people to achieve such positive transformation in education and Chafford Hundred has that spirit and creativeness in their team. They are crossing so many lines of traditional educational norms together, trying to set new standards in making the education system better for the individual, that I am excited by the prospect of soon joining this team. I hope to play a significant role in encouraging further innovation and creativity in building a framework that other Schools and City Academies can adopt. The opportunity is there to transform education beyond merely the technology that modernises the way we teach. It is one that focuses on the art of delivery to every individual and helps to develop the education possibilities for the whole community.
Chris Tomlinson will soon be the new Deputy Headteacher of Chafford Hundred Campus. The Campus will be presenting a Case Study at Alite 2003, Making it Happen, on 20th June at the Café Royal, London.
Coppenhall become mindful of learning
Pam Scott is Headteacher at Coppenhall High School in Crewe. The newly formed Inclusion Team at the school is the latest manifestation of her belief that education should be for everyone.
Coppenhall is an 11-16 school with 700 pupils on roll, of whom 135 are on the Code of Practice. The Ofsted report in 1999 noted that the school had very good teaching in the top ability band and of the pupils with moderate learning difficulties (the school has a 60 place unit for pupils with MLD statements), but that it was not as good for the middle group of pupils. The school’s intake at that time was skewed towards the middle and bottom end of the range, so this observation represented the learning of a large percentage of the children. Over the last three years, however, results have improved across the school, with attainment rising at all levels, by all indicators. The trend of improvement is also more than the national trend. Pupil numbers have also risen and Coppenhall is now a fully subscribed and popular first choice for parents in the local and wider community.
Many teachers were caught in a vicious circle, believing that ‘good learning follows good behaviour’ and so inhibiting them from teaching in a more interesting way because the behaviour of the pupils would not allow it. The SMT wanted to encourage a change of mindset amongst staff to encourage them to think more creatively about how they could promote ‘good learning’ for their pupils. We were convinced that this adjustment of focus would impact positively on ‘good behaviour’.
It was at this time that the LEA was beginning its work on mind friendly learning. The core belief of this approach, based on the accelerated learning cycle, is that all children can learn. The SMT could see the potential for such an approach in the school. Two INSET sessions were held with the whole staff, then followed up by a pilot project in 2000-2001 where one member from each department looked at mind friendly learning, and undertook some action research. Each focused on one class throughout the year. This meant that a shared language about the concept of ‘mind friendly learning’ was being developed across the school.
The following year the work was developed further and the elements of mind friendly learning were incorporated into a revised schedule for classroom observation. The schedule was used with every teacher, who was observed twice. An hour was spent with each of them afterwards, giving feedback purely on the ‘learning’ in the classroom. At the end of each feedback session ideas for colleagues to develop around the framework were identified and agreed. Sometimes these would be common ones across a whole department, e.g. ‘effective reviewing at the end of lessons’. Another whole staff INSET day then followed, where each member of staff was given a menu of workshops on different strategies from the framework. Everyone was asked to attend one on an area that they wanted to develop. Most of the workshops were led by school staff.
One of the key principles underpinning this framework is the need for teachers to be self-conscious in their planning for different learning styles, which should then lead to more engagement from more pupils in lessons, with an associated positive impact on behaviour. A significant development as a result of this work has occurred in the action taken with pupils who present persistent discipline issues. For these individuals, the Year Team Leader routinely undertakes a ‘pupil pursuit’ and observes their behaviour in lessons. The process enables the Year Team Leader to see the range of teaching and mind friendly learning the particular pupil receives across all of his or her subjects, which then informs a conversation with the teacher who is having the difficulties. An individual learning plan, which contains detailed guidance about what strategies to use (because they are known to be effective with the individual concerned) and which to avoid, is then drawn up for all staff teaching the pupil. If the difficulties continue then one of the areas that is next investigated is the extent to which the teachers concerned have implemented the strategies in the individual learning plan.
We have now added an Inclusion team to assist our work, led by a Year Team Leader. Her role is to develop further the inclusion agenda in school by co-ordinating the in-house training of teachers, so that they work together to develop mind friendly strategies. In particular, they are trying to intervene much earlier with those who might be at risk, which includes working with the parents of these pupils. In this way, Coppenhall continues to address issues that may stand between a child and his or her learning, whatever their perceived ability, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn.
Find out more about Coppenhall High School at The Best on Motivation and Learning – Manchester, 11th April. For full details visit the Alite website at www.alite.co.uk.
More Learning the FA Way
The second phase of Alite’s involvement with the world’s best known football association is about to begin. In phase one Alite helped the FA develop a philosophy of learning. This was expressed through a statement of vision with accompanying values and behaviours. In phase two Alite helps the FA re-design the way it delivers coaching and training programmes. With 40,000 students each year this is no mean feat. Alite have designed a generic tutor training programme which will be piloted with some of the FA’s national coaches and trainers this April. The tutor training programme will help FA staff re-design current programmes. All divisions of the FA are involved – referees, the national game, sports medicine and fitness, psychology and child protection. Find out more at www.thefa.com
Who Influenced You?
Nicky Anastasiou recounts an amazing coincidence at Lead Learner training in Wakefield.
Coincidences are strange things that often just carry that “Really?” value when chatting to friends. Recently, though, I was working with Wakefield EAZ when a coincidence arose that was worth something more.
The teachers were engaged in an exercise sharing memorable learning moments, events in their lives that had influenced them as learners and that continue to affect them. This part of the programme encourages participants to explore what esteems learners and to consider the influence of the power of thought in shaping expectations and beliefs.
I begin this session by talking about the self esteem purse, a metaphor I use to illustrate that we each need to keep topped up with the pennies of self esteem in order for us to enter the learning experience. When our self esteem purse is full we can afford to spend some to take risks in the learning that sometimes may take us to the edge of our comfort zone. We do this with confidence because we know that if we lose some of these pennies then our purse will be topped up again from the affirmation, beliefs and trust significant people in our lives give us. The story ends with questions including:
“When did you last give pennies and to whom?”
“When did you last receive pennies and from whom?”
“How do you keep your own purse topped up?”
“How can teachers keep going in classrooms and give esteeming opportunities to their pupils if the teachers don’t keep their own self esteem purses full?”
“What happens in your school to esteem teachers and pupils?”
As the participants were working in pairs recalling their stories and experiences an amazing coincidence emerged: one of the pairs discovered that they had both been to the same high school, though at different times, and been taught by two memorable teachers in particular. Both teachers had significantly influenced their belief in themselves as learners, but in quite different ways. The first had lowered their self esteem with the same strategies and with the same negative effects; the second had believed in them, inspired them to love the subject and, consequently, had put many pennies in their self esteem purse. Both of these teachers before me, now in animated discussion, had been so influenced by this second teacher that they had gone on to study the subject at university and then both decided to become teachers. Until that moment they had not thought about the significance of what this teacher had done in shaping their lives.
Neither had met before the training days. They may have even chosen to work with another partner and perhaps never discovered this amazing story. But they did and, as a result, they wanted to put a few pennies back in their teacher’s self esteem purse. They wrote a joint letter to him during their lunch break to tell him of his importance in helping to shape their lives. Imagine his face when he opens the letter all these years later!
A remarkable story – yes – but the influence those teachers had on two different individuals is something that is repeated on a daily basis in classrooms across the world. How are you filling those purses of self-esteem? And who filled yours?
We would like to hear your own stories of who influenced you. Please send any submissions to newsletter@alite.co.uk. We hope to print a selection over the coming months, and reserve the right to edit what is received.
New books this month
Congratulations to Alite colleague and emotional intelligence trainer Cath Corrie. Cath’s first book, Becoming Emotionally Intelligent, is now out. It contains activities which take the theory of emotional intelligence into the classroom. The book suggests that not only can you change the lives of children but you can change your own.
Nicola Call, co-author with Alistair Smith of the ALPS Approach books has written a book called The Thinking Child: Brain-Based learning for the Foundation Stage. Alongside the theory, the book ‘gives clear and practical guidance for busy practitioners who want suggestions of ways to implement brain-based techniques’.
Terry Mahoney’s Words Work: how to change your language to improve behaviour in the classroom is amongst the first NLP books to relate language patterns directly to classroom teaching. A carefully thought through and well structured book which will extend your skills as a classroom practitioner.
Details of all three books can be found on www.alite.co.uk
Research Reminder
If you are busy working on educational research and want to communicate with a wider audience you can do so via the Alite newsletter. Where we can, we are happy to promote your work to our network and extend your contact base. Please email us at newsletter@alite.co.uk.
Muddled Metaphors of the Month
With thanks to Frank Burke and Alan Flinton. The following are taken from English language exam papers.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a
real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a
land mine or something.
It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had
ever seen before.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated
because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a
surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cash-point.
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating
electric fan set on medium.
It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with their power tools.