July 2004

Accelerated Learning newsletter, July 2004

This month's newsletter starts with a tale of two 17 year old champions and asks some questions about role models. It offers some research findings about eating and the brain. We provide a review of Alite 2004 Meeting the Challenge and three pieces in which readers share their ideas.

A world of confusion: what's happening to our role models?

If you are 14 years of age, where are your role models? In order: parents or parent, family unit, peer group then others including teachers and icons. Two new icons emerged at the weekend. Will they woo the 14 year olds?

Takeru Kobayashi is not nicknamed "Tsunami" or "Big Wave" for nothing. He is 17, Japanese and is the world speed-eating champion

On Saturday 3rd July he swallowed a total of 53 and a half hot dogs, and their accompanying buns, in just 12 minutes. He broke last year's record during the event, which has been running since 1916 at New York's Coney Island. Mr Kobayashi used his trademark "Solomon technique" - splitting the sausage in two before wolfing it down and moving on to the next one.

Without a trace of irony, the spokesman for the contest, Richard Shea said "I think he has proven, once again, that he is one of the finest athletes of any sport in the world"

Mr Kobayashi competes on the international circuit of competitive eating. There are 23 such grand slam events organised by the International Federation of Competitive Eating which include:

Chips
London, England
February

Onions
Hawaii
February

Jalapeno Peppers
Texas
March

Quail Eggs
Texas
April

Cabbage
Alaska
August

Pelemeni
Brighton Beach
October

Fish
Fife, Scotland
December

The same day as "Big Wave" achieved athletic glory, another 17 year old won her first grand slam at Wimbledon. Maria Sharapova probably had a harder journey to the top but she will reap rewards for her sacrifice. It is a sign of the times and of a generation that within minutes of the final shot landing the right side of the line, she was on a mobile phone trying to contact her mother who was watching on an aeroplane somewhere over Florida. The Duke of Kent kept waiting in quiet disbelief. Her estimated earnings are in the region of £50 million and, if precedent is anything to go by she won't even need to keep winning. Anna Kournikova's earnings for 2003 were in the region of £23million. She won no title, did not compete beyond a quarter final and was not in the world's top 100.

Making sense of role models is partly what the teacher helps the teenager do. Keep at it. The times they are a changing"

Eat your way out of depression

People need to eat more foods high in nutrients for their own mental wellbeing,
say experts at a conference in Brighton, England. Research suggests foods rich in omega-3, like fish and eggs, can prevent depression and promote learning. People who eat a lot of fish are generally healthier, mentally and physically, than non-fish eaters says Dr Ray Rice from the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids. Their children were also less likely to develop behavioural problems and learning difficulties.

A study of 14,500 pregnant women by Dr Joseph Hibbeln from the US National Institutes of Health found those who ate fish throughout their pregnancy were less likely to suffer from depression. Other researchers found children with low levels of omega-3 at the age of seven were more prone to depression as adults than those with higher levels of omega-3.

People in the UK have lower levels of omega-3 now than in previous years.
Professor Michael Crawford, from the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human
Nutrition at the University of North London said: "We are facing a mental health crisis of monumental proportions that far outstretches, in my opinion, the problem of obesity. This is a major issue."

According to the Food Standards Agency, on average, people in the UK eat a third
of a portion (about 47g) of oily fish a week. Seven out of ten don't eat any at
all. It says people should eat at least two portions of fish a week, and that one
should be oily.

The Alite 2004 Conference: Meeting the Challenge

Potatoes were first on the menu at London's Café Royal for this year's Alite conference. Titled Meeting the Challenge, the conference offered educators real examples from schools, LEAs and EAZs that had faced and overcome a range of challenges in striving for their goals. Enter Alistair Smith with a bag of potatoes to open the conference.

With the help of four volunteers he demonstrated how cultural, physical, intellectual, social and technological "potato thinking" can impede progress in institutions. The challenge of pushing a paper straw through an uncooked baking potato would leave some people instantly giving up on the "impossible": "How can I get a hollow paper implement through a dense, heavy object? The straw will crumple under pressure." Focus too much on the barrier and that will indeed happen, he told us; focus beyond it and the straw passes through intact, as those on the stage duly modelled. Urging delegates to be "solutions-focussed" was a positive introduction to the 16 case study presenters who offered their own experiences as examples of how to avoid the blight of potato thinking.

The second keynote of the day was from Lady Marie Stubbs, who came out of retirement to take on the challenge of saving Maida Vale School from closure. After the tragic stabbing of its former Head, Philip Lawrence, and an attack on his successor, many may have wondered why she chose to take on the job. They were soon answered; an enthusiasm for education and her "robustness of spirit" seemed to make the challenge difficult to refuse. With the audience she shared this passion, drawing on her own inspirations and sharing advice from 30 years of teaching.

When we emerged from sharing Bear's incredible journey, blinking in the brightness, it was with a sense of awe at what he had accomplished. He hadn't focussed on the problems he'd faced or the lives the mountain had taken; he'd achieved one of the greatest human feats by focussing on the summit and what it would be like to stand there looking around him. From that peak he could see the journey he'd taken. In that hour he took us with him and we imagined what it would be like to look back on our own successful journeys, then forward to our next challenge. The view to our next goal might not be clear of obstacles, but we would see challenges to be met and solved rather than barriers to stop us. And there wouldn't be a potato in sight.

Planning for a Climate of Change ( Part Two)

In this second excerpt from a case study presented at the Alite 2004 Conference, Teresa Tunnadine, Headteacher at The Compton School describes how she has helped create a Climate for Change. This month Teresa describes how her school focused on learning and teaching.

A whole school commitment to effective teaching and learning
To support improvement in the quality of teaching and learning staff agreed an extensive process of classroom observations being introduced. The Head observes every member of staff teach at least one lesson through the year, senior and middle leaders observe all the staff they link with and their departments. The observation focus changes half termly and allows the opportunity for formal, structured and constructive feedback. This involved up to 20 lessons of observation a week across the school.

Addressing equality of opportunity in the classroom
A whole staff INSET launched the rationale for seating plans, and provided staff with the confidence to use them in every lesson. The focus on proximal learning and how this could raise achievement and improve the working climate was also made explicit.

Seating plans ensured that every student worked with every other student in the class. This broke down many of the dynamics that were not conducive to an effective learning environment. Unproductive friendship groupings could not dominate a lesson, "in-groups" could not flourish and the "fear of person X" did not make students feel uncomfortable. There is less conflict as students learn to interact positively with everyone in their class.

To discuss an idea before writing means things are more likely to be understood and remembered. This is particularly the case for boys. It is more fun to work with someone else and easier to have two people working on one task. The students really enjoy it. Student consultation allows us to regularly review our practice. One reported back that:

The initial implementation of seating plans was supported with middle and senior staff supporting colleagues in putting seating plans into action and within three days, the system was embedded into student expectations of the school.

The outcome of this strategy has significantly impacted upon learning and the working climate in school - this reflects a genuine and progressive commitment to equal opportunities.

Switching on the switched off students
In addition to the work on teaching and learning and developing the learning climate, staff agreed a process to identify individual students who were underachieving. This process of identification would take place throughout key stage four and involved:

• Analysing prior and current attainment data
• Monitoring through the reporting and assessment cycle

These students were identified under three categories:

1. The more able underachievers - those identified by Yellis predictions as capable of achieving 5 or more A*- C grades at GCSE but whose subject profile indicated that they were performing below this
2. The target concerns group - those identified by the interim and subject reports as underachieving or not focused on learning in three or more subjects
3. The C/D borderline group - those students whose predicted grades indicated that they were currently achieving 4 or 5 C or D grades and with an extra push may be able to achieve 5 C grades (or above) at GCSE

Initially we found that boys dominated the first two groups. Now that we have expanded this monitoring across the school, we have found that more boys dominate the more able underachieving groups, but that the target concerns and the C/D borderline group have equal numbers of girls and boys. We have therefore found that targeting individual students switches on the switched off boys and girls and we have kept anti-learning numbers to an absolute minimum.

And the results speak for themselves:

• Our 2003 cohort - also our most challenging year group to date - achieved 62% 5+ A*-C grades; our best exam results yet! Our new target is now 70% of students gaining 5+ A*-C
• 89% of the more able underachieving group achieved at least 5 A*-C grades at GCSE. The year 10 exam results indicated that 46% would achieve this.
• 82% of the C/D borderline group achieved 5 or more A-C grades at GCSE. The year 11 mock exam results indicated that 37% would achieve this.

Conclusion
To focus on teaching and learning allows us to continue to improve our working climate, to raise achievement and improve examination results.

This year we are moving from developing excellent teaching to developing excellent learning, and accelerated learning is a focus for us. We are equipping students to take responsibility for their own learning; we are committed to developing the "student voice", including listening to what helps students learn best. In this way we can strive to do our best for all the students in our care - which is, after all, what it's really all about.

Our very own maths star

Congratulations to maths guru Chris Tomlinson for catching the attention of the media with his fun, creative and highly effective AL teaching. His feature in the Independent led to a star performance (with his students of course!) on Newsround, and an interview with Radio 4's You and Yours due to be broadcast later this week.

Read the Independent article

"That were good that were, Miss"

Julie Goddard describes how she uses Accelerated Learning and thinking styles techniques to deepen children's learning

A Taster...

We're on the map and not one that you'd need to blow the dust of first to see. In fact any A-Z could point you in the right direction. Erdington is a town roughly three miles from Birmingham City Centre. Our pupils have been described as "challenging" but we prefer to look at them as rough-cut diamonds.

Our problem was simple; our diamonds believed they were Cubic Zirconia. We needed to change their perspective.

We underpinned our pilot scheme with positive thinking. We developed a system of what we called sound feedback:

Sends clear advice about what to improve
Only talks about the work and not the person
Understands we need more than praise to improve
Never just says what was wrong but how we can do it better
Demonstrates how we can improve

We also needed to find a model for our thinking which would diffuse our pupils' innate desire to batten down the hatches and man the machine guns rather than listen to their peers' comments.

We found what we were looking for in Edward De Bono's six thinking hats system - we removed the ego. We all thought in the same way and at the same time and as a result our learning has been transformed.

Every single one of the pupil questionnaires returned revealed the story of how these techniques had helped them - and here's the important point. It helped them NOT just in the classroom, but outside of school. We're now setting up a working party to spread the techniques whole school. How can we ignore results such as pupils going home and teaching their families how to use the hats to solve arguments about what programmes to watch on TV?

Let me know what you think! julie.goddard@kingsbury.bham.sch.uk

Coaching the FA way

Alistair Smith has written a series of articles for the FA Learning e-magazine on football coaching. The messages are of use to all coaches. To see the latest magazine click on the link below.

See the latest FA Learning e-magazine

Team Teaching, the third way to visualise success

Melissa Gardner, Sally Heppenstall and Sarah Todd share ideas on developing team teaching in geography. See the full article, which includes all the research data and diagrams of the room and its layout, click on the link below

A year ago our Head teacher at Stanchester Community School proposed that the Geography Department should set up a team teaching room. This would accommodate up to 60 students, 2 teachers and at times learning support assistants. We also had to allow for the fact that we are an inclusive school and sometimes we can have up to 3 students that are physically disabled and in wheelchairs in one class. We had one of the largest classrooms on the school site and space was needed.

We are a team of three geography specialists; a Head of Department, an Advanced Skills Teacher and at that time an NQT. In January 2003 we all had our own rooms with data projectors and were relatively well resourced. The designated team teaching room was already equipped with a mobile interactive whiteboard. As a Department we had to consider a number of issues, predominantly how would it work?

How did we organise ourselves?

We made a wish list of the perfect classroom. Like all good geographers we undertook a mini enquiry. We investigated what children thought of the current classroom. To do this we carried out an Environmental Quality Survey of the current learning space

Feedback was very interesting. As the room owner, Sarah, the AST, thought the room was well displayed. However, students made both negative and positive comments:-

Positive comments included:- You know this room is about places and people, lots of our work is on display; the interactive boards good; colourful; carpeted; nice blue tables and chairs; lots of pictures to think about; plenty of space to move about in; tidy; neat.

Negative comments were very telling:- Dangling things stop me seeing the board, the board is nice shame we cannot see it; the room is too light to see the projector's pictures; paper things hit my head when I walk around; its too busy; it distracts me; I cannot look at it all!; Hot and stuffy; horrid windows; damp walls.

Research on emotional intelligence tells us as teachers that the correct learning environment is crucial before we can begin learning. In fact the accelerated learning/ teaching cycle began with Create a supportive Learning Environment . Here it was clearly not quite right. It was distracting and it needed to change. Now the AST was going to share her classroom the room had to change.

So how were we going to achieve this in the team teaching room?

A small budget was available to change the room and the changes had to be carefully considered. We had to plan for and implement: resourcing, new furniture, pigeonholes for class resource management, ICT equipment and access all within 4 months. We love a BIG challenge!

We wanted to limit the loss of time at the beginning and endings of lesson - with 60 pupils to enter and dismiss we wanted sharp starts. To this we created desktop resource boxes - these contain pencils, coloured pencils, scissors, glue, whiteboards, etc. They minimise disruption from disorganised students and also help in practical lessons. Each box would have a checklist to ensure resources are returned.

Piloting the Room

As geographers are very spatial people we wanted to see how the students and teachers would cope in this environment. We carried out pilot studies with 60 students entering and exiting the classroom.

After the pilot was complete, we re-addressed the room layout, wall mounted the interactive board, ceiling mounted the data projector and created formal seating plans for each team teaching group.

Ensuring Effective Learning

To ensure effective learning we produced an introductory powerpoint for the students which focused on expectations for the room, and published the seating plans. It was imperative that we got to know the students early as we had to bond and know our designated classes as well as the other teacher's students.

The lessons within our current schemes of work were designed to follow the four part learning cycle (connect, activate, demonstrate and consolidate/review/reflect). Our department ethos is to empower all learners by providing a range of activities to suit different (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic). This was not going to change with team teaching.

As a department we have been constantly assessing the teaching and learning that has taken place as a result of team teaching and used SWOT analysis:

We have also been very aware of the students' opinions of team teaching and have regularly asked for their feedback.

The geography team at Stanchester Community School have had a fun, yet tiring year and will be continuing with team teaching for 2004-2005. Ideas are still flowing and through evaluation team teaching can only get better.

If you are interested in team teaching, or require any further information please do not hesitate to contact us. Our details, and the full article with all our research, can be found on the alite case study site

Training and development opportunities

If you are turning your thoughts to training for next year, here are some of the programmes Alite will be offering in the Autumn:

The Alite Masterclass with Alistair Smith and Paul Ginnis - two of the UK's most influential educationalists lead a one-day intensive programme focussing on best practice

Performance Coaching - an inspiring one-day course designed to train lead learners to help their students or colleagues to improve their performance

How to Reach the Hard to Teach - how to ensure good learning takes place in spite of challenging behaviour

Train the Trainer with Alistair Smith - develop your training and presentation skills whilst experiencing accelerated learning techniques

Making it Happen - a powerful training programme designed to give each participant the tools and the confidence to achieve their full potential

Starting out with Accelerated Learning - All you need to know to start the Accelerated Learning journey.

Moving on with Accelerated Learning - a fresh look at the essentials of the Accelerated Learning approach

Alite for Numeracy - Innovative and effective ways to develop and improve your numeracy strategy.

How to Create an Accelerated Learning Primary School - a one day conference bringing together a panel of keynote speakers with first hand experience of transforming learning through the use of Accelerated Learning in their schools

Some of these programmes are also available as INSET, and we are delighted to offer coaching or consulting to help you to follow up the training and embed the learning.

To find out more about any of these programmes please visit www.alite.co.uk