December 2002
Accelerated Learning newsletter, 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…'
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