February
2004
February
comes and with it a newsletter to sharpen your wits, restore
your creativity and look after your brain. We have items on
brain research, creativity, the use of drama and the usual
update on what we are doing and where.
Have
a brain break
Playing
games
University College London research published in 2003 found
that adults who regularly engaged in logic and memory games
such as cards, chess and backgammon performed better on short-term
memory, mathematical reasoning and vocabulary tests than those
who did not. There were also some gains shown for those who
regularly played bingo: presumably two fat ladies?
Balancing
Balancing exercises are better than treadmill running if you
are a rodent. 1990 research at the University of Illinois
found that coordinated movements such as running pencil-wide
balance beams, ropes and see-saws and other movement which
required some concentration increased neural connectivity
by 25%.
Juggling
Learning to juggle can cause changes in the brain. Using brain
scans, researchers from the University of Regensburg, Germany
showed that in 12 people who had learnt to juggle, certain
brain areas had grown. But three months later, during which
time people stopped juggling, the brain had gone back to its
normal size.
The team
studied 24 people who had no juggling ability. They were scanned
using voxel-based morphometry, a technique which measures
concentrations of brain tissue. Half were then asked to teach
themselves to juggle for at least 60 seconds using the traditional
three-ball cascade routine, and given three months to practise.
All 24 were then scanned again. There was no change in the
brains of the non-juggling group. But brain scans of those
who had learnt to juggle showed two areas had increased in
size. Jugglers had more grey matter - which consists largely
of the nerve cells - in the mid-temporal area and the left
posterior intraparietal sulcus, which both process visual
motion information. But after a further three months, in the
people who had stopped juggling, the increase in grey matter
had reduced.
Dr Vanessa
Sluming, a senior lecturer in medical imaging at the University
of Liverpool, UK, has previously studied musicians and found
they retain more brain cells than non-players. She feels the
research was interesting because it had been carried out amongst
adults learning a new skill, rather than looking at people
who had learnt a skill as a child. It had also shown a temporary
increase. At what point can this acquired grey matter be retained?
"Does
it mean you need to continuously practise the acquired skill
to retain it, or at some point have you done enough to retain
it? It shows that what we do in everyday life might have an
impact not just on how our brains function but on the structure
at a macroscopic level."
Source:
Reuters and BBC news
Have
a brain break
Playing
games
University College London research published in 2003 found
that adults who regularly engaged in logic and memory games
such as cards, chess and backgammon performed better on short-term
memory, mathematical reasoning and vocabulary tests than those
who did not. There were also some gains shown for those who
regularly played bingo: presumably two fat ladies?
Balancing
Balancing exercises are better than treadmill running if you
are a rodent. 1990 research at the University of Illinois
found that coordinated movements such as running pencil-wide
balance beams, ropes and see-saws and other movement which
required some concentration increased neural connectivity
by 25%.
Juggling
Learning to juggle can cause changes in the brain. Using brain
scans, researchers from the University of Regensburg, Germany
showed that in 12 people who had learnt to juggle, certain
brain areas had grown. But three months later, during which
time people stopped juggling, the brain had gone back to its
normal size.
The team
studied 24 people who had no juggling ability. They were scanned
using voxel-based morphometry, a technique which measures
concentrations of brain tissue. Half were then asked to teach
themselves to juggle for at least 60 seconds using the traditional
three-ball cascade routine, and given three months to practise.
All 24 were then scanned again. There was no change in the
brains of the non-juggling group. But brain scans of those
who had learnt to juggle showed two areas had increased in
size. Jugglers had more grey matter - which consists largely
of the nerve cells - in the mid-temporal area and the left
posterior intraparietal sulcus, which both process visual
motion information. But after a further three months, in the
people who had stopped juggling, the increase in grey matter
had reduced.
Dr Vanessa
Sluming, a senior lecturer in medical imaging at the University
of Liverpool, UK, has previously studied musicians and found
they retain more brain cells than non-players. She feels the
research was interesting because it had been carried out amongst
adults learning a new skill, rather than looking at people
who had learnt a skill as a child. It had also shown a temporary
increase. At what point can this acquired grey matter be retained?
"Does
it mean you need to continuously practise the acquired skill
to retain it, or at some point have you done enough to retain
it? It shows that what we do in everyday life might have an
impact not just on how our brains function but on the structure
at a macroscopic level."
Source:
Reuters and BBC news
Food
for the Brain
In 2002
US consumers spent more than $210 million dollars on brain-boosting
supplements. After the BBC Television programme A Child of
Our Time with Professor Sir Robert Winston, sales of Omega
3 fish oil in the UK sky-rocketed. The programme described
research conducted by the University of Durham and Durham
LEA Educational Psychologist Madeline Portwood on the use
of the food supplement as part of a treatment for learning
difficulties including ADHD, Dyspraxia and Dyslexia.
Sales
of other supplements in the US include:
Gingko Biloba $130million
Plant and Fish Oils $14million
Multivitamins $33million
Next month
look out for our special feature on the research on Omega
3 fish oil supplements.
Being
creative
A clear,
unequivocal answer to the question 'can creativity be enhanced?'
is not to be found in any research literature (Sternberg 1999).
There is no incontrovertible, enduring and tested example
of the successful teaching of creativity in a classroom context!
However there are things which can be said about creative
people. Creative people:
- have
basic skills especially in communication, language, imaginative
thought and self-management
- know
their own field
- have
a strong sense of purpose.
- are
curious
- are
risk takers and not frightened by setbacks
- want
to get better for its own sake
- endeavour
to explain their own thinking
- develop
their own problem solving tools
What
helps and hinders being creative?
If you wish to foster creativity in your school, some of the
following guidelines may help:
- give
licence to innovate only when learning is well led, delivered
and understood: to be able to flaunt the rules you need
to know them and be able to operate within them first.
- minimise
the preoccupation with end result. as the football manager
says 'high risk games get low risk strategies'
- anxiety
and approval seeking stifles any possibility of creativity
from the outset. once you give licence to innovate, leave
it alone.
- encouraging
a fresh look: creativity involves taking the familiar and
making it unfamiliar or taking the unfamiliar and making
it familiar
- genuine
creativity is exhausting - focus down on specific projects
- stop
thinking its only the arts that foster creativity!
- support
the mental, physical and spiritual well-being of staff in
your school: go beyond being an institution
What
could you do next?
- use
Focus Improvement Teams with a mixed membership, to look
at a specific school issue and then dissolve them once they've
done so
- ask
the 'what if?' question and then vary it - 'what if we did
nothing?' 'what if we did the opposite?' 'what if we couldn't
fail?'
- see
things from multiple perspectives - take 5 very different
people you know or know about and ask 'how would they each
solve the problem?'
- steal
from other walks of life - think of cats eyes, teflon, velcro
and post-it notes!
- don't
be too dismissive: 'Engelbert Humperdinck' is a stupid name
(but its been a memorable one for forty years!)
- see
things through: Samuel Beckett wrote, 'fail, fail again,
fail better'
- have
a 2:1 school - for every problem you bring to me, come with
two possible solutions
- use
more time, lots of metaphors, encourage absurd comparisons
and tolerate silence in the planning and ideas stage
- for
children, teach relaxation techniques and practise them
- express
ideas but in a different medium - the cartoon of you doing
the maths problem, the dance performance on how we learn,
the installation on our school of the future.
VAK Learning
through Drama and Imagined Experience
Patrice
Baldwin gives her thoughts on how drama supports Accelerated
Learning methodology, thinking skills and is the best medium
for the development of affective development.
Drama
engages children cognitively and affectively and one piece
of research claims
(Harland et.al 2000) that drama is the most motivational subject
of all in secondary schools.
Imitation
and mimicry are amongst the first learning styles and the
genesis of drama. In dramatic play children pretend to be
someone else. They naturally take on roles as adults eg children
surviving alone, they empower themselves by pretending to
be someone else, use imaginary objects together, use real
objects as something other than what they are, and play and
talk with imaginary people and creatures in fictitious places
created and shared. In dramatic play they are practicing the
skills needed for adulthood and rehearsing being successful
adults. In every culture in the world, dramatic play is natural
and necessary to cognitive and affective development. Teachers
using drama as a creative learning medium recognise the potential
of shared pretend worlds as a creative forum for scaffolding
learning experiences that interest children.
Drama
lessons are constructed through the use of strategies and
conventions and can act as thinking frames that enable moments
of significance to develop or be held still for processing
and reflection.
Drama
enables children to access learning visually, auditorily and
kinaesthetically. It enables
children to use their imaginations to experience and emotionally
engage with "as if" and then to process and communicate
their understandings through VAK and sometimes through theatre
and performance that demands empathy from its audience. The
affective experience ensures that learning in and through
drama is memorable. Drama engages the children with learning
in a multi-sensory and multi-intelligent way. It gives compelling
contextual reasons for dialogic talk in imagined worlds. It
enables and supports children to develop socially, physically,
emotionally and cognitively within in a mutually supportive
class group. It also supports moral, spiritual, cultural and
aesthetic development.
And
a few more thoughts.......
Recent
research on mirror neurons suggests that when one monkey sees
another monkey carrying out an action, the corresponding neurons
are fired in the brain of the monkey that is only observing.
If the same were true of humans observing actions, what does
this suggest in relation to theatre?
The importance
of adults as mediators of learning is well documented in the
work of Feuerstein who developed Instruments of Enrichment.
Can drama strategies be considered to be Instruments of Enrichment?
Philosophy
for Children (P4C) uses story and picture books to approach
philosophical questioning. So does drama.
Circle
time is based on the work of Jacob Moreno, the founder of
psychodrama. The whole class contract is almost identical
to that used in drama. However in drama the children operate
in role and are maybe more free
to try out attitudes and viewpoints, safely distanced by role.
National
Drama, the largest professional association of drama educators
in the UK is holding a conference at the University of Kent
in Canterbury this Easter 2004 (April 13 - 17th), called "Thinking
Drama" at which it is bringing together key practitioners
and theorists from the worlds of thinking for learning and
drama to share and bridge ideas and practice.
Visit
www.nationaldrama.co.uk
for further details and booking information.
Patrice
Baldwin
Adviser for the Promotion of the Arts in Schools (Norfolk
LEA) Vice Chair, National Drama
The Education
Show, NEC Birmingham, 11th - 13th March
Alistair
Smith will be delivering the Alite Keynote Lecture at the
Education Show on 11th March. Visit Alite at our stand to
find out more about our courses and to browse our range of
books and resources. Enter our free prize draw to win valuable
prizes including a fully-funded delegate pass to Alite 2004
Meeting the Challenge.
Lady
Marie Stubbs speaks at Alite 2004
In 1995
St George's Roman Catholic School in Maida Vale hit the headlines
when Headmaster Philip Lawrence was stabbed whilst trying
to break up a fight between one of his own students and a
student from a neighbouring school. In 1998 the school was
put into special measures, and in 2000 St George's was closed
for a week after the Head was attacked going to help a fellow
teacher. She retired.
Marie
Stubbs was asked to take over. She spent a year at St George's
where her inspired leadership, her determination and sheer
hard work turned the school around. But why, with the prospect
of a pleasant retirement on the horizon, did she agree to
take it on? How did she rise to this extraordinary challenge,
and to what does she accredit her success?
We are
delighted that Marie will be a keynote speaker at this year's
annual conference, 'Meeting the Challenge'. Our other keynote
speakers are 'Mr Motivator' Alistair Smith, and the explorer
Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
Again
we will have a series of case studies from practitioners who
are really making a difference. The case study presentations
will run in strands and you will have the chance to choose
from sixteen Case Studies, representing some of the best from
around the country who are really 'Meeting the Challenge'.
The conference
will again be held in the prestigious surroundings of the
Café Royal, London on 25th June 2004.
To register
for the conference, please email events@alite.co.uk
or visit the website at www.alite.co.uk
How to
Create an Accelerated Learning Primary School
This is
a one day conference bringing together 6 keynote speakers
with first hand experience of transforming learning through
the use of Accelerated Learning in their schools.
The conference
will be of value to those with responsibility for influencing
teaching and learning in their schools, those who are accelerated
learning enthusiasts and those who want to improve their professional
practice.
During
the course of the day you will
- Receive
numerous practical ideas to support the ongoing development
of accelerated learning in your school
- Hear,
first hand, what to do and what to avoid in order to sustain
improvements in teaching and learning
- Discover
'how to take staff with you'
- Hear
about the latest research on music, movement and learning
and be shown practical ways to apply these ideas in your
classroom
- Learn
how best to use goals and targets to support the learning
of pupils and staff
Based on a firm foundation of Accelerated Learning theory,
the day will provide a wealth of practical tips and techniques,
and will be presented in the context of real schools which
are changing the nature of learning on a daily basis.
To register
for the conference, please email events@alite.co.uk
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