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August 2003

Accelerated Learning newsletter, August 2003

In respect of the hottest summer in the UK for many years we provide a lifestyle special. This month some wisdom about gym classes, holding your breath, school meal trauma and top tips for leaving teaching behind (temporarily). We provide a case study for those who cannot leave work alone and explain why it's better to be a nun than an Arts graduate.

Who do you think you're looking at?

Apparently the mirror is to blame. Women who look at their reflections during a workout feel more tired and less relaxed than those whose eyes are trained elsewhere. They are also much more likely to have negative thoughts about themselves.

Dr Kathleen Ginis and colleagues at McMaster University in Canada based their recent findings on a study of 58 women. These women were not regular gym goers. They were asked to cycle a stationary bike at a moderate pace for 20 minutes. The researchers found that women who cycled in front of a mirror felt worse after their workout. They felt less energized, less relaxed and less upbeat compared to those who trained without having to watch their own reflections. They were also more likely to say they felt exhausted after the 20-minute routine.

The researchers said the findings could explain why some women stop going to the gym. "Certainly, if a women leaves the gym feeling even worse than when she arrived, she will not be particularly motivated to continue exercising in the future," said Dr Ginis. So if you needed an excuse….

Meanwhile, down at the deep end

Tanya Streeter can hold her breath for five and a half minutes. In that time she turns blue and has blood oxygen levels only seen in people who have had cardiac arrest. It took Tanya three minutes and thirty eight seconds to descend to a depth of 400ft below sea level before returning to the surface unaided. She holds the world record for this feat with no-one else getting anywhere near. She is the Paula Radcliffe of free diving.

Try holding your breath and your body will gasp for air because of three things: a shortage of oxygen, a build up of carbon dioxide and the demands of stretch receptors around the lungs. These work together to sense each intake of breath and tell the brain when another is due. The secret of not breathing is to blunt the impact of the stretch receptors. One way of doing this is to take long slow breaths through tightly pursed lips - like you do when you catch your child doing something they shouldn't. In laboratory tests Tanya Streeter was connected to a machine which measured blood oxygen levels. Most people have around 98%. Anything below 80% is considered dangerous. After five and a half minutes Tanya's went much lower to below 50%, which was off the machine's scale and a level considered incompatible with human life. Bet she doesn't train in front of a mirror…

Close encounters of the spam fritter kind…

Traumatised by tapioca, haunted by lumpy custard and stressed by semolina? A whole generation of adults have eating habits shaped by memories of school dinners. Did your cooks prepare the Smash with a plunger in the sink? Did you ever put your spam fritter on someone else's plate? Did you regularly eat out at the ice cream van?

Many adults still refuse to eat certain foods or even look at them after being force-fed at school, according to the poll of over 2,000 BBC Good Food magazine readers and users of the website Friends Reunited.

Half of those questioned who cited school meat as a problem had become vegetarian as a direct result of their canteen nightmares. Being forced to eat their school dinner was endured by 53% of those polled. One in three said they had come up with ways to get rid of their meal when the dinner ladies were not watching, such as wrapping it in a hankie, dropping it on the floor or putting it on someone else's plate.

Tapioca, cabbage and overcooked vegetables were the most hated school dinner dishes, with lumpy mashed potatoes coming in at number four. The top five favourite school dinners were fish and chips, ice cream, sponge pudding, jam roly poly and jelly.

The top ten 'don't bring that near me' list
1. Tapioca
2. Cabbage
3. Overcooked veg
4. Lumpy mash
5. Lumpy custard
6. Liver
7. Semolina
8. Gristly meat
9. Blancmange
10. Beetroot

And if you are an Arts graduate you've had it anyway

The university course you pick may be related to the length of your life ahead and the way you die, say researchers. Although the precise cause is unclear, a study of thousands of former students of Glasgow University found that arts and law students were most likely to die early. Science, engineering and medical students lived longer, although medics were most likely to die from alcohol-related causes.

Arts students were most likely to die from lung cancer or other forms of respiratory disease.
Medics, on the other hand, were more likely to die as a result of accidents, suicide and violence. Also conforming to stereotypes were divinity students - who tended to have much lower blood pressure than other types of graduate.

The study was carried out by researchers in Belfast, Glasgow and Bristol, and published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Innovatory Approaches to Supporting Schools

Ivan Pegg is Project Director of the Wakefield Education Action Zone. He has been working with Alite on innovatory ways to improve learning in the Yorkshire schools.

Wakefield EAZ consists of 16 schools across the whole of the Wakefield Metropolitan District, 11 Primary schools and five High schools, all of which serve deprived areas of the district. The schools were selected on the basis of the areas they served. Consequently, around half of all High school feeder schools are in the Zone. As the schools are geographically quite a distance from each other, our activities have had to build a partnership which in some cases never existed. In the early stages of the Zone it was important to identify key activities that would impact on achievement and draw schools into what was then a disparate relationship. Accelerated Learning was one such activity.

The EAZ strategy is to focus on just two strands: leadership and learning. We believe that these two major strands are the key to progress. Our rationale was that schools which are well-led and unashamedly focused on learning will make progress. Our training budget reflects this commitment and our investment in Accelerated Learning is a deliberate part of the process.

After the launch, schools were invited to nominate two teachers each to attend the six-day training course over the year, led by Nicky Anastasiou. The course was divided into two days per term and the schools committed to cover the supply costs, whilst the EAZ funded the training, bought books for each school and hired the pleasant learning environment of a local hotel.

Twenty teachers completed the course in the first year and it began to have significant effects in their schools. We were impressed by both the quality of the training and the impact the teachers were able to have in their classrooms as a consequence. In some cases the impact was more significant for the whole school, than in others. This was particularly the case where the two teachers trained represented 25% of the staff. In other cases the impact was initially felt only in a department or one classroom. In one High school it has led to the teacher becoming an AST and leading the school on teaching and learning linked to the Key Stage 3 TLF strategy. She and I later had the privilege of seeing the AL principles being applied on a visit to Russia. This took place in a Saturday morning class led by a Russian colleague in the heart of Samara - she hadn't been to any of Alistair's presentations, but clearly good practice is appreciated the world over!

Work in other schools includes:

Reframing the language of Year 4 and 5 pupils to encourage a more positive attitude
Exuding high aspirations and using positive affirmations with the disaffected and the underconfident at a Junior school
Applying a range of AL strategies to promote resilience and responsibility amongst Primary school children
Using the AL Cycle for INSET
Rewriting the delivery of a GNVQ course to incorporate more AL strategies
Auditing a Year 10 class's opinions and needs in Science and then adapting the teaching style to take account of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners
Applying for a Best Practice Research Scholarship to consider the use of music in teaching literature with a focus on recall.

The second year of training led to even greater benefits:

Additional teachers have been trained in some schools and other schools have been brought into the process
The LEA Maths Advisor and the second Zone Learning Manager have been trained alongside the teachers
Lesson observation schedules have been developed for a whole school using the Accelerated Learning model
Primary and Secondary Lead Learner groups have been set up and supported by Zone Learning Managers.

As a result of the work undertaken in the first year, negotiations took place with Leeds Metropolitan University to accredit this training for the Zone's teachers. Consequently, we now have that accreditation, which means that teachers can earn 40 points (which is more than 20%) towards an MA. Academic requirements are fully met by incorporating a reflective journal of 6000 words into their action research projects that explore at least one aspect of Accelerated Learning. Non-graduate participants in the training (e.g. Teaching Assistants) are also catered for with 45 points towards a degree by submitting an 8000 word assignment. The training is known as the Professional Diploma in Education (Accelerated Learning).

As an EAZ we have committed ourselves heart and soul to this training in Accelerated Learning - and already we are beginning to see positive outcomes with the learning in each of the three key stages we work. Last year Key Stage 4 results in the Zone were the best ever, and this year has seen results in Key Stages 2 and 3 reach new levels, requiring us to consider new raised targets for the future. We are seeing our commitment beginning to pay off for the learners, but we all know that it is not just about results; our next step will be to complement the work we have already done with training on Emotional Intelligence.

Stimulated Brains Second to Nun

Want to promote a healthy brain? Advocate a lifetime of cognitively stimulating activities to your pupils. Research carried out at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago has added further weight to the 'use-it-or-lose-it' hypothesis, finding that everyday activities such as reading and doing crosswords may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's Disease. The findings, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are the result of a study of aging among 700 dementia-free Catholic nuns, brothers and priests aged 65 and older across the US.

Each participant was asked at the initial assessment about the time they spent doing activities that significantly involved information processing, such as reading, listening to the radio, visiting museums, playing games and completing crosswords. The frequency of participation was rated on a five-point scale. Cognitive tests were then carried out annually to assess aspects such as memory, language and attention. When the activity-frequency scores of those who eventually developed Alzheimer's Disease were compared to the rest of the group the researchers found a correlation between less time spent on stimulating activities and developing the disease. On average, the risk of Alzheimer's was reduced by 47 percent among those who participated more often in cognitively stimulating activities when compared to someone of the lowest activity level.

The Ride of His Life

Congratulations to the incredible Lance Armstrong on his fifth consecutive win of the Tour de France. Beating the odds has become something of a habit for this American cyclist who was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer in 1996.

Through a combination of operations, chemotherapy and Lance's determination to remain positive he survived the cancer, which had spread to his lungs and brain. Even now his work continues through the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which seeks to support those affected by cancer and fund projects that "promote the optimal physical, psychological, and social recovery and care of cancer survivors and their loved ones." One area in which the foundation is particularly interested is the use of exercise as part of treatment, a programme that Lance himself followed during his own battle. His road to recovery must be one of the great motivational stories and you can read all about it in his book, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.

Schools Directory

Have you had success with modern learning methods, and would you be prepared to share your success by hosting visits from other practitioners? Alite is compiling a directory of AL schools who want to share their experiences. To be listed in the directory, please send your name, your school's name and address, and a 50 - 100 word summary of your work with modern learning methods to: directory@alite.co.uk.

And here's one reason why…

St Bede's Junior School in Surrey is hoping to introduce Peer Mediation in their playground from the Autumn term and would be interested in hearing from any schools in the area who have used this practice in their school. If you can help, please contact Marian Loy via the above email address and we will forward your correspondence on to her.

Affective Learning

Alite trainer Cath Corrie recounts a story of a teacher's self-realisation.

During a Lead Learner training course on Emotional Intelligence in London this year the teachers were working through an exercise where they examine their thoughts about the individuals in their classes. One Year 6 teacher was unhappy with what she thought about some of her children, especially when she realised how these thoughts were affecting her responses to them and her expectations of those pupils.

When she returned to school she and her support assistant worked out something positive and nurturing about every child in her class, something a child could live up to and into. She then made laminated name cards for each of them and on the back she wrote what she and her assistant had come up with for that individual. The next day she gave them out. She told the children that when she thought of them this was what she thought. She told them that even when she was cross, in a bad mood or having to tell them off, this was still what she thought of them.

Several weeks later the children had their SATs, and when she asked them on the first day to get their equipment and go down to the hall, every child took their name card. Throughout that week, whenever they got stuck doing their tests, they would pick up their card, read what she had written about them, look up at her, smile and then continue.

Not a dry eye remained when she had finished telling us this story.

MiH Making it Happen: the Personal Insight Programme

MiH is a powerful insight programme designed to give each participant the tools and the confidence to make changes in their lives. The programme is built upon an in-depth understanding of human motivation and learning and is enriched by a team of experts who have brought a range of perspectives to the programme. MiH offers personal insights from individuals who have managed moments of significant change in their lives. Through video excerpts they tell their stories and we learn from their experiences. MiH is based on a modern approach to self development, is multicultural and underpinned by the most recent research findings into human motivation. If you are interested in what makes you tick then this programme is for you.

MiH takes place as an open course from January 2004 at Moor Hall, Cookham, Berkshire. For more details or to reserve your place, please email: MiH@alite.co.uk

Coaching for Performance

This one-day programme develops one to one coaching skills. Coaching for Performance is of professional value to teachers and educational leaders who want to improve the performance of students or colleagues. The course runs at different venues throughout the UK during the school year, and may also be booked as an INSET. For full details, please email events@alite.co.uk, or call our events team on 01628 810700 ext. 21.

Essential Accelerated Learning with Alistair Smith

Essential Accelerated Learning is the updated public programme led by Alistair Smith. In this programme he introduces the revised four stage learning cycle. The programme links the science of The Brain's Behind It with new thinking around the best learning environments, whole school thinking strategies, formative assessment and group problem solving. Alistair runs a small number of one-day programmes during the year. The next event will be in London on 10th November, followed by Leeds on 28th November. For full details, please email events@alite.co.uk, or call our events team on 01628 810700 ext. 21.

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