November 2003

Groupthink

Learners often lack the skills of being able to co-operate in groups. Such skills are best taught through group tasks and by de-briefing on group tasks.

It is easier to de-brief the contribution of individuals to a group if they have been given specific roles. Amongst the group roles are:

Co-ordinator
Makes sure everyone in the group understands the task in hand, becomes involved in decision making and takes on a role in the generation of solutions or outcomes.

Collector
Obtains any resources or assistance which will be needed.

Checker
Checks the time and ensures that what is planned actually occurs

Communicator
Writes down any decisions, talking to other groups and summarising findings at the end

Good questions to ask when in a group include:

What do we need to do?
What will we need to help us?
Where should we go to obtain help?
When must it be done by?
Who needs to do what?
How will we know we've done a good job?
What methods are best?
What will we have learned by doing this?

Before working in groups, have learners agree how they will do so. Record these as protocols. The task you give a group will shape its success. There is a continuum between tight specification and openness. With younger children and more naïve groups start with unambiguous outcomes: ïdo this, in this way, by this time and with this outcome'. With older or more mature groups build in more decision-making.

Sourced from the course notes to Moving On with Accelerated Learning . © Alistair Smith and Alite Ltd

Book up for parent's evening

Getting involved in your child's education has a bigger effect on their achievement than your social background or choice of school.

A study by Professor Charles Desforges concludes that where parents get involved in education at home this has "a significant positive effect on children's achievement, even after all other factors have been taken out of the equation". Prof Desforges says this positive impact is true for all social classes and all ethnic groups.

And, for primary school children, the impact of different levels of parental involvement is "much bigger than differences associated with variations in the quality of schools".

One specific piece of research even goes so far as to measure the impact of parental involvement. Work carried out by Leon Feinstein and James Symons, using an index of examination success ranging from 0 to 100, found that 16 year olds whose parents had showed the highest level of parental involvement achieved at a level 24 points higher than those whose parents had showed no interest. The report did not find a significant difference between children with mothers who worked full-time and those who did not. They key was whether or not they showed an interest, rather than how much of the time they were present.

While the scale of this difference is probably surprising to most of us, education researchers have long argued that parental involvement is a key factor in children's educational success. Way back in 1967, the Plowden Report surveyed 3,000 children in primary schools and concluded that lack of parental interest was the main reason some children fail at school.

The biggest factors in stopping parents getting involved seemed to be a lack of confidence and a lack of knowledge of how to help. Some, apparently, were put off by feeling "put down" by schools or teachers. Many of these parents did not themselves have a happy time at school.

So what should be done about this? Experts recommend two main ways of helping parents to help their children. The first is parenting classes which both help parents with their own skills and teach them techniques for teaching their children.

The second method is improved home-school links, with a better flow of information from teacher to parent, promoting a sense of partnership.

Breathe new life through coaching'

Advisory head Michael Harbour has introduced coaching techniques at Mayfield School with some success.

In May 1999 the Mayfield School, a mixed comprehensive in North End, was placed in "special measures" after an Ofsted inspection said it was failing to provide an acceptable standard of education. There was also a staffing crisis to contend with. By the end of 2001, there were 12 vacancies due to long-term sickness or permanently unfilled posts.

The school was forced to work on a reduced timetable, with students losing up to one day's schooling per week. More than 30% of the students at Mayfield have special educational needs - the national average is about 20%. It all added up to very "challenging circumstances".

Michael Harbour, the advisory head teacher who has worked with the school since November 2000, said: "When schools are put in special measures, they can become tense, frightened places because of inspection overload. We had to develop strategies to restore teacher confidence."

Training became an immediate priority. During 2002-3, the school took on 17 untrained teachers, aiming to support them through the graduate teacher training programme to achieve qualified teacher status. A staff training room was set up, where regular training sessions were held for new and existing members of staff on all aspects of teaching and learning. Consultancy work at a school in Dominica, in the Caribbean, inspired Mr Harbour to make use of peer coaching and mentoring.

He said: "Coaching is all about helping people to find ways to develop their skills. For teachers, that means looking at their practices, with the help of sympathetic colleagues, and modifying them to improve their performance. In Dominica, I'd seen how very small adjustments could make a huge difference to teachers' practice and thought 'why not try it here?' "

Teachers at Mayfield are organised into "coaching trios" of colleagues from different subject areas, with varying levels of experience, to work together on teaching and learning. Mr Harbour said: "We don't want teachers to feel they are being assessed or inspected, which is one of the reasons why the trios are made up of teachers from different subject areas. It's a non-threatening way of developing good practice across the curriculum."

Coaching trios meet formally and informally to develop their practice, working together in a variety of ways, including observing one another using a specific skill in the classroom.

Wanda Barnes, a newly-qualified English teacher who completed the graduate training programme at Mayfield last year, said: "It's been great to receive structured support from a well-organised training programme. The training and the coaching programme is designed to create confident classroom teachers."

The impact of coaching on the school has been noted. HMI inspectors revisited the school and withdrew the special measures in November 2002. Four years on, Mayfield is fully staffed and continues to make significant improvements. Advisory head Michael Harbour said: "It will be several years before the full impact of coaching is fully reflected in examination results, but improvements have already been made. What we do have now are confident classroom teachers who are continually improving their skills. Good teachers never stop learning."

Modelling Behaviour

Alite trainer Ian Berry, from Laurence Jackson School, North Yorkshire discusses the importance of Neuro Linguistic Programming in the classroom.

I've been a teacher of English for 21 years. For 14 of those years I've enjoyed the daily benefits of using the methodology, guiding principles and techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

Teaching has taught me many things, but one lesson reigns supreme: theories of teaching and learning are only useful when they produce effective and replicable classroom ïtechniques' and skills. Fortunately, NLP practice has provided me with a whole array of ïtechniques' and classroom behaviours, e.g. VAK model and rapport model skills. However, I have gained something more than just a collection of useful techniques; I've developed what Richard Bandler (NLP's co-creator) calls an ñattitude of curiosityî about how teaching and learning works. Along with this attitude, I've also enjoyed exploring how the craft of creating a positive learning environment can be improved immeasurably by using the ïstrategy elicitation' methodology of NLP, sometimes referred to as ïmodelling'.

What is Strategy Elicitation?
Some teachers have specific, special skills, e.g. motivating unmotivated students, turning Shakespeare into a ïmust read', or controlling a group of teenagers with just a smile and a soft voice. They do what they do consistently, and without apparent effort. Just as many drivers drive without always having to pay constant attention to every single aspect of the driving process, so many skilled teachers do what they do in a classroom without knowing what and how they are doing what they are doing.

ïStrategy elicitation' is a means of finding out the internal and external actions used by such individuals, even if the person is not consciously aware of their own behaviour. Some people carry out a set of specific mental and physical actions and produce remarkable effects in the classroom. In strategy elicitation, the aim is to identify and then reproduce the same set of actions, thereby creating the same, or very similar, results.

A crucial element of a person's strategy is the syntax , or sequence, of the mental and physical actions. You must know the components and the sequence of the internal and external actions in someone's strategy and reproduce it exactly. ïMirror, signal, manoeuvre' is a useful sequence of actions when you are driving; ïmanoeuvre, mirror, signal' may produce more dangerous consequences!

A Classroom Example
An NLP practitioner in our school wanted to know how a particular Drama teacher always managed to quieten a new class whenever she wanted to. Another colleague had already observed this Drama teacher had elicited the ïquietening method', and tried to use it. He failed spectacularly. The NLP practitioner observed the physical actions of the Drama teacher and noticed a particular sequence of eye movements which seemed to relate to ïtaking in', in a set pattern, four particular students in the class. The colleague had seen the same eye movements but had not noticed the sequence, and so produced a merely random scan of the class. By asking about the choice of students and the scanning sequence, the NLP practitioner discovered that the teacher ïbelieved' that the students she'd chosen to ïscan' were group leaders/influencers (how she knew exactly who to ïscan' is a whole ïsubset' of the strategy). She believed that if she gained ïquiet control' over those students, the rest of the class would follow their lead. It never occurred to her that the class wouldn't respond as she expected. The strategy worked every time that the NLP practitioner observed this teacher; he tried it for himself, it worked for him. He then taught it to interested colleagues (including the original ïobserver'). It worked for them too!

Implications
This has been a very brief introduction to one important aspect of NLP, but I hope you're beginning to wonder about its implications for education. Strategy elicitation can be learned, and I think it's an essential tool for all teachers. It can be used to discover and share the structure of the skills of so-called ïsuperteachers'. It can be used to discover and share students' successful study methods, or self-motivation techniques. Strategy elicitation could even be taught as a specific skill so that students can gain even more control of their own learning. This ïtechnology' has already produced the VAK model of learning that has become an important element of accelerated learning methods. We've only just begun to scratch the surface!

Take a Break, Have a Workout

Need some exercise? No sweat! Put down the weights, stumble from your running machines and take a seat because the University of Warwick are singing the praises of a chair that gives a safe all-body workout.

The Exten Fitness System may well soon be appearing in a gym near you and is already being used by some physiotherapists. Its claim to be of benefit to those who are unfit, elderly, overweight or simply daunted by the prospect of the local gym's cross training machines are supported by the university. Researchers have already noted that the 30-minute workout improves mobility, circulation and coordination, as well as increasing muscle tone and decreasing the waistline. Rumours that the government plans to put a whole new slant on cross-curricular education by equipping classrooms with the chair are believed to be unfoundedƒ

Phantoms in the Brain

Robert Pritchard Deputy Headteacher of Holy Family High School, North Yorks is also an Alite Trainer. Here he turns his mind

For the auditory learners among you here are a series of lectures to revisit if you missed them the first time round. The five lectures are given by the noted neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California (San Diego). They are available as sound files for you to listen to on line. Give them a go, they are a great way to learn!

The overarching title of the five 35 minute lectures is "The Emerging Mind". Over the next few months I will be reviewing the lectures and hope that you give the web site above a look, and listen to the lectures or print out the text.

Until recently, neuroscientists confined themselves to specialized research in well-defined areas. But now they have started to think more broadly and to develop conceptual links across disciplines. The science is filled with a fresh spirit of adventure and discovery. Scientists need no longer be afraid to ask the big questions about what it means to be human. Current research on the brain should prepare us all for the unexpected and the surprising.

As examples, Ramachandran considers three neurological syndromes: Phantom limbs, Capgras' delusion and pain asymbolia. Phantom limbs are well known - when an amputee can feel pain and other sensation in a lost limb. However, he describes an experiment where he touches parts of an amputee's face with a Q tip and the amputee feels it as his elbow or shoulder. He goes on to explain that the entire skin surface, touch signals, all the skin surface on the left side of the body is mapped on to the right cerebral hemisphere on a vertical strip of cortical tissue called the post-central gyrus. Now this a faithful representation of the entire body surface. It's almost as though you have a little person draped on the surface of the brain. There is one peculiarity: the representation of the face on this map on the surface of the brain is right next to the representation of the hand on this map, instead of being near the neck where it should be, so it's dislocated. So what happens is the sensory input from the face skin now invades the vacated territory corresponding to the missing hand, and that then is misinterpreted by higher centres in the brain and arising from the missing phantom hand. And that's why the patient says, every time you touch his face ïoh that's my phantom thumb you're touching, that's my phantom index finger, that's my phantom pinkie'. So this tells us even more about the plasticity of the brain, and its adaptability.

Please give this site a look. Once you start to listen I am sure you will be engrossed. The syndromes he considers are fascinating and he tells the story well. How does this link into learning? Well, the more you look into brain based research, the more you need to know! And as I said at the start, people are looking across disciplines to find answers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/

Next month I will review another of the five programmes.

The School of the Future

Ruth Dunn and Ashleigh Arbuthnot tell us about developments at Chafford Hundred Campus, described by some as the school of the future.

Walking through the doors of Chafford Hundred Campus is like walking into the school of the future today. Sure, it has the technology that most associate with such claims ¿ the interactive whiteboards, wireless and broadband technology, laptops for all and electronic registration ¿ but it has more than just the hardware of tomorrow's schools; it has the thinking that goes with it.

The Campus opened in September 2001 with its first intake of Year 7 students and the full range of Nursery and Primary-age students, mainly drawn from the immediate vicinity. The term ïCampus' alone signals its uniqueness as an institution, as it brings together under one roof a nursery, a primary school, a secondary, adult education, a public library and facilities for the community at large. Its opening attracted national acclaim and we believe it will be the model for many to follow.

The ethos of Chafford Hundred Campus is to meet the needs of the individual in the 21 st Century, and personal tutoring is just one of the ways we achieve this. Every student is entitled to a 1:1 day with his/her tutor. In this weekly session, beginning before school at 8.30am, a student can sit down and spend quality time with the tutor and Learning Support Tutor (LST). It is a chance for the tutor to deal with personal issues that arise, a chance to check on progress and, most importantly, a chance to get to know each tutee. No other pastoral system is planned, therefore the personal tutor and the LST are the central focus for their students. Each tutor has no more than twenty tutees.

Tutors are also playing an important part in the development of Personal Learning Plans (PLPs). All students have laptop computers, allowing the use of ICT to be central to this process. Building on the good practice developed with the additional need individual education plan, the PLP's format is evolving continuously as tutors use it week to week, together with other data held on the student, which can be downloaded into their plan. The tutor has the responsibility of interpreting all of the data for their tutees, giving them a realistic view of their future and challenging them to move forward. Students will be able to detail their achievements in a cumulative way and a record of behaviour can be added if required. Finally, the tutee will negotiate targets and review them on a regular basis. This record will be held by both tutor and tutee and printed off or e-mailed to parents. With the support of Monsoon Malabar, an ICT company working with the Campus, a graphical representation of each individual's progress is being developed.

The tutor is not only the main point of pastoral contact for the student, but also his/her teacher for a large part of the curriculum. Certainly many children and their parents are very positive about this aspect, which has benefited a number of students, particularly those with additional needs, both academic and emotional or behavioural difficulties. The opportunity to work closely with one teacher to overcome obstacles and to reach targets has been of benefit to most students, as one teacher can get to know the learners' needs thoroughly. Progress has also been enhanced through lessons on Learning to Learn and regular reflection on progress, which is logged in the students' Learning Journals, and the use of PRAISE points for Progress, Responsibility, Achievement, Initiative, Showcase and Effort when these are demonstrated.

Encouraging students to take responsibility for their learning will only work if they can see a point to it all and the links between different aspects of the curriculum. To this end the Campus is developing an integrated curriculum which marries in with competences for the 21 st century. Although well planned, rarely do things on paper seem to work out the same in practice. Consequently, this year has been a steep learning curve for the Year 7 team.

During the Campus's first year, areas of the curriculum were loosely linked together while a KS3 plan was developed. Initially there were large chunks of subject material, but this was tedious to deliver and even more tedious to learn. Both Science and Art had been totally integrated with specialists inputting to staff and students. In the subsequent terms, Science skills have been taught discretely. Maths is now setted with dedicated time. Both planning ahead to accommodate envisaged problems and altering retrospectively have been time consuming but certainly interesting and challenging!

Despite some subject areas being taught separately, the Campus is not moving away from integration but refining it. The aim has been to develop themes, with specialists contributing to the development of resources, ïenskilling' the tutors and being involved directly with students. Much of the curriculum lends itself to this approach. At the moment technology, performing arts and PE are not integrated. Next year drama will be.

The benefits of this approach have yet to be fully evaluated, but two partner schools from a Person Centered Education Alliance, set up with Sussex University and consisting of six schools altogether, have observed students working and made some interesting positive comments about the boys' engagement in learning, which will be eagerly followed up.

The Person Centred Education Alliance was formed to encourage schools to work together and share good practice and ideas with each other. Unlike many other such consortia, however, this group consists of students as well as teachers. The main aim of the alliance is to create schools that concentrate on the LEARNER, and not just on subjects and teachers. Who better to involve than the learners themselves? Often students' views can be overlooked in the decision-making processes that affect them, but because the Campus's ethos is about the individual, we believe it is crucial that the students have a voice in their learning. The process helps the students to make that connection between learning and life, and thus education can become self-sustaining and linked with active citizenship and empowerment in the 21 st century. Those at the Campus who have attended the alliance's conferences have found them both enjoyable and rewarding.

Chafford Hundred Campus is also one of the first eight schools to work with the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) to pilot a new curriculum, the aim being to redefine schooling and open the minds of young people in the 21 st Century. It has been generally accepted by many, particularly employers, that the National Curriculum does not equip young people with the skills essential for everyday life. One of the most influential advocates of this argument is Howard Gardner, whose book The Unschooled Mind presents an impressive body of information indicating that people with apparently sophisticated knowledge of a subject often fail to apply it effectively when they encounter problems whose form or context is unknown to them. The RSA Curriculum, on the other hand, is founded on five competences that will equip young people with the essential life skills. These are:

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 and the student's progress is logged in his/her Learning Journal. The Campus will soon offer a unique KS4 curriculum to suit the individual student. 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.

So it is not only technology that makes a ïschool of the future'; it is the ability and willingness to look critically at the old, accepted ways; it is being willing to take on board new knowledge to deal with old (and new) problems. The core of every initiative here is the individual. At Chafford Hundred Campus these are the trails we are blazing. And we're hoping that others will follow shortly.

Making it Happen - happens!

MiH is a personal insight programme designed for those who want to revive their enthusiasm and restore their sense of self-worth.

Teachers: MiH helps you be positive about the worth of your role, strong in the face of challenge and a source of energy for others.

Parents: MiH helps you seek and secure balance and space in your life.

Managers: MiH helps you with the wisdom to identify your vision and the purpose to achieve it.

Performers: MiH gives you goal-setting, affirmation and visualisation techniques, and tools for self-discipline

For those of you who are just curious, MiH will give you insights into the habits of mind of yourself and others and leave you smarter as a result

Making it Happen is a modular development experience of nine units. You learn in small groups using video case studies and written exercises. MiH starts in January 2004. Places are strictly limited on each programme, so please book your place early.

For more details, please email events@alite.co.uk or visit the website at www.alite.co.uk and click on Making it Happen

ïThe Jamie Oliver of Maths'

Our favourite mathematics genius Chris Tomlinson was recently described as ïThe Jamie Oliver of Maths'. Chris certainly brings his own special blend of creativity to his work. An ex-professional footballer and inspirational trainer, Chris 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 i nnovative and effective ways to develop and improve your numeracy strategy. He will be running courses in Manchester, London and Dunblane later in the year. The course may also be booked as an INSET. For more details, please email events@alite.co.uk or visit the website at www.alite.co.uk