September 2004

Accelerated Learning newsletter, September 2004

This month’s newsletter basks in the reflected glory of the Athens Olympics. We start with a short synopsis of children’s views on sport. Then we ask the question about mental toughness. A summary of recent research on walking and play, a case study on movement and learning and some research on the brain and maths completes the serious stuff. For those of you who prefer more obscure leisure activities we have a piece on the ninth annual Air Guitar World Championships.

Mental toughness: Paula and Kelly

Another school term gets underway. Teachers and students steel themselves for the challenge. It’s more a marathon than a sprint, more like heats and finals than sudden death. Good luck to you all. We hope your experience is more Kelly than Paula.

To be a successful classroom practitioner requires a form of mental toughness equivalent to top athletes. This is the sort of toughness which Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe have had over the years in abundance. It’s a toughness which is developed away from the public eye but which emerges and serves you when you’re in the limelight. Don’t doubt for a second that to perform at the top level you have to be mentally tough. But also remember it requires real mental toughness to manage yourself when you are on your own in a classroom and things aren’t going so well: walking off is not an option.

Kelly Holmes suffered a stress fracture of the left leg in 1996, torn Achilles in 1997, operation in 1998, shin and hip injuries 1999 and 2000, calf injuries 2001 and 2002, Epstein Barr virus 2001 and a trapped nerve in her calf in 2003. Always one step forward and two back. Thoughts of retirement only put aside by unswerving self-belief and the thought of a bigger goal. The capacity to persist, driven by a sense of unfinished business all came together in Athens.

Paula Radcliffe was 18th in the world junior cross country championships in 1993, watched the event on crutches the next year. She finished 5th and out of the medals in the 5,000 metres in Gothenburg in 1995, 4th in Atlanta in the same event in 1996. Out of the medals again in Sydney, she blasted the women’s marathon record apart in London in 2003. Paula has had a career characterised by phenomenal ‘stickability’ and staying power. Obviously, something went wrong in Athens.

The pressure to perform with the hopes of a nation forced onto you must be enormous. Two top women athletes faced with balancing their own expectations alongside those imposed by others. Cathy Freeman talks of just wanting her 400m final race in Sydney in front of her own people to be over so that the burden on her could be lifted: she took a year off and retired shortly afterwards. Kelly Holmes admits to crying before her 800m final and after she came back from it, crying during the 1500m heats and before and after the final. Paula Radcliffe said she was ‘crushed’ by her failure in the 10,000 metres. She has become a study in despair. Let’s hope its temporary. What’s to be made of this?

The classroom teacher gets the pressure and the demand to ‘perform’ but doesn’t get the limelight. The classroom teacher constantly has to place the everyday defeats in the context of a bigger and compelling but more obscure ‘goal’. The classroom teacher exhibits stickability and staying power in the face of high levels of unpredictability. We can learn to be even better at all these things from the athletes. Here’s how:

1. Prepare near to the real circumstances: don’t prepare for an ideal, prepare for the reality. How many marathons in 30 degrees of heat did Paula run in her preparatory phase?
2. Invest in recovery and rehabilitation: look after yourself mentally and physically. Top sports performers recover professionally. This doesn’t mean you have to sit in an iced bath after every lesson but it does mean you make weekends and holidays sacrosanct
3. Train for improvement: Paula Radcliffe has a legendary tolerance of pain. This allows her to stretch herself on a daily basis at the edge of her comfort zone. You don’t get better doing familiar routines – stretch yourself
4. Have a backroom team: Kelly Holmes has a team wrapped around her. She can offload the stresses of performance with this team and get professional support when she needs it
5. Remove ego from the experience: when something goes wrong does that make you less of a person? Does the experience of dropping out of the Athens Marathon diminish in any way Paula Radcliffe’s status as the world record holder? When a child shouts abuse in your face you are defined by your response
6. Space your events: the school season is longer than the athletics season, so pace yourself
7. Have a dream that helps you transcend disappointments: some lessons will cause you grief – fact. Having a bigger picture and a sense of your own worth in that picture helps put things into perspective. Kelly Holmes said, ‘twenty years is along time to hold onto a dream: it meant so much to me.’

Is there a mathematician’s brain?

A new study seems to sum up why maths whizzes are better with numbers than other people. The joint US-Australian study found that mathematically gifted teenagers performed better than their average-ability peers and college students on tests that required cooperation between the left and right sides of the brain. The study included 60 right-handed males. Eighteen (average age just under 14) were mathematically gifted, had average maths ability, and 24 were college students (average age 20).

Only males were selected for the study. Boys are six to 13 times more likely than girls to be mathematically gifted, according to the researchers.

The study participants viewed letter patterns flashed on the left or right sides of a computer screen. The boys had to indicate whether the patterns matched or not. These tests indicate which side of a person's brain processes different kinds of visual information and how well both sides of the brain work together. Mathematically gifted boys showed more interaction and cooperation between the two sides of the brain than the average teens and college students, who did better on tasks that required a single side of the brain to process information.

The results support the theory that the brains of mathematically gifted people are better at relaying and integrating information between the cerebral hemispheres.

"It's not that you have a special math module somewhere in your brain, but rather that the brain's particular functional organization -- which allows right-hemisphere contributions to be better integrated into the overall cognitive/behavioral equation predisposes it towards the use of high-level imagery and spatial skills, which in turn just happen to be very useful when it comes to doing math reasoning," says study co-author Michael O'Boyle of the University of Melbourne

SOURCE: American Psychological Association, news release, April 11 2004

Rocking all over the sofa

The ninth annual Air Guitar World Championships are being staged in Oulu,
Finland. The winner must follow some simple rules, entertain the audience and ‘carry the joyful tidings of the air guitar forward – thus promoting world peace’. For the uninitiated, air guitar is the art of pretending to play along to a rock solo or a chord sequence with nothing but an imaginary guitar and the appropriate facial expressions.

Amongst the favourites this year are the Belgian Ron "Bucketbutt" Van den Branden who wraps himself in cellophane and wears a rubber glove on his head, New Zealander Tarquin "The Tarkness" Keys and Holland's Michael "Destroyer" Heffels. This year's UK hopeful is 24-year-old Jeremy Chick, a music promoter and Led Zeppelin fan from Wimbledon, south-west London.

Air guitar rules

1. The instrument must be invisible - ie, air
2. An air guitarist may play an electric guitar or an acoustic one - or both
3. Personal air roadies are allowed, but backing groups (real or air) are not

"What air guitar is all about is to surrender to the music without having an actual instrument," says championship organiser Martika Lamberg. "Anyone can taste rock stardom by playing the air guitar. No equipment is needed, and there is no requirement for any specific place or special skills. "In air guitar playing, all people are equal regardless of race, gender, age, social status or sexual orientation."

Finalists must perform a compulsory one-minute song - which they do not hear until just before the final - as well as a song of their own choice. There is no dress code and extra props, such as a guitar pick, may be used. Contestants can strum or finger pick.

Winners get a (real) handmade Flying Finn electric guitar worth 2,500 euros (£1,650) and the contest is streamed live on the internet. It is rumoured that an air guitar was recently and successfully auctioned on e-bay – so if you are out there…

Children and Sport

In a report on 5-16 year old children and sport produced by SportsWise earlier this year the key findings were:

1. the vast majority of children have a favourite sport, but football dominates across age and gender
2. football has grown significantly as a favourite sport since 2001
3. girls have a wider repertoire of favourites, including swimming, horse riding and netball
4. athletics, tennis Formula One and Rugby all have their enthusiasts but to a lesser extent than football
5. cricket lines up with horse racing in its limited appeal

Some curious findings were:

6. the popularity of football amongst boys shows a marked decline after age 13
7. only 5% of all children considered all sports to be dull and boring
8. more than half of all children could name a Formula One driver
9. Nike and Adidas are popular brands up until age 13-14 but decline dramatically after

Some frightening findings included:

10. 44% of all children aged 5-16 own a football club replica shirt
11. On average children watch 2.7 hours of television a day with higher viewing behaviour amongst older children
12. 72% of 11-16 year old boys watch Sky Sports
13. 96% of children have either a computer or a games console at home
14. 7 out of 10 children could name a sports clothing brand

Alf Tupper: Tough of the Track

Breakthroughs in Learning

Julie Bradley and Dawn Forshaw of St. Leonard’s C of E Primary School, Burnley describe how physical activity has helped learning in their school.
It’s ironic that government pressure on primary schools to focus on literacy, numeracy and science often results in time for sport and physical activity being squeezed when it is these very aspects that can support and enhance the ‘academic’ curriculum. A child’s attainment can be raised with increased physical activity. Balance and coordination, basic skills learned and developed through sport and PE activities, increase a child’s capacity to learn, as they promote natural neural growth in the brain. Exercise is the best ‘brain food’. So how do we take this knowledge and apply it to the school setting? This is precisely the question we asked ourselves when setting out to make breakthroughs in learning at St Leonard’s.

The Raw Material
St Leonard’s is a school serving an area of high social deprivation. In September 2000 SATs results were languishing in the 30%s and the school was deemed to be educationally weak. Discipline was poor, there were few policies, procedures or schemes of work, less than a third of pupils were in school uniform and the children themselves were sad, lacking in self-esteem and devoid of confidence. Staff expectations of the learners were low.

Yet between 2000 and 2003 St Leonard’s moved from Serious Educational Weaknesses to The Most Improved School in Lancashire and the 35th most improved school in the country. We have recently undergone an Ofsted inspection where many areas were reported as being ‘outstanding’. The improvements at the school are largely thanks to a comprehensive programme of Physical and Health Education developed over the last three to four years, which has had a huge impact on children’s self-esteem and, ultimately, attainment.

On the Starting Blocks
When I was appointed Headteacher in September 2000 we decided to start, not with the curriculum, but with the children. We needed to build their self-esteem; they needed the confidence to believe in themselves. Consequently, these past three years have seen a series of programmes introduced to this end and to improve the pupils’ health and learning. Initiatives have included the introduction of a breakfast club, aerobics, brain breaks in lessons, yoga-type activities after lunch and two hours of PE for each child per week.

Our reasoning was informed by beliefs that:

1. The focus in schools must be to develop the Whole Child if a child is to fulfil his/her full potential academically, socially, mentally and physically
2. Children in many schools do not reach their physical education potential
3. Skills, and the ability to utilise them, will develop more rapidly if children are taught by someone with specific knowledge and expertise in PE

   Taken from Sport and PE in Primary Schools Paper, St Leonard’s
   Primary School

However, in small Primary schools such as ours, with fewer staff, specialists in the Core subjects are needed and therefore there is neither the money nor the positions for expert teachers of Physical Education. Aware of the need for expert coaching and training in this area, we decided that we needed to find a way of taking advantage of schemes run by outside organisations in order to fulfil everything that we wanted to do.

And They’re Off!
Funding was acquired through Awards for All, allowing us to pay £10 per hour to all the coaches we brought in. These were identified through recommendation and then recruited after checking their qualification, experience and completing a CRB check. The school has worked in partnership with the county governing body development officers for cricket and athletics, St Helen’s Rugby League Club and Lancashire Sport. Our work with gymnast Craig Heap (Commonwealth gold medal winner) stemmed from attending an exhibition and through making a direct approach to Craig, who now supports the programme within the school.

The key features of the framework, within which we applied our ideas, are set out below. Our main tenet, though, was that every child would receive at least two hours PE per week.

1. Programme Framework:
   Concentration on one major sport per half-term from:

             Football     Cricket     Athletics
   
   
                      Rugby      Netball 
   
              Hockey     Gymnastics     Tennis

2. Coaches would deliver the sports programme in school alongside the teacher for 3-4 weeks (and run an INSET day with them prior to delivering within the lessons)
3. After that time the teacher would be left to continue with a programme set by the coach in his/her absence
4. Extra-curricular clubs would reflect programmes used in curriculum time
5. Gymnastics and Dance would be delivered alternately throughout the year, i.e. half-term Gymnastics, followed by half-term Dance every term
6. FUNdamentals would be taught at Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1
7. Core skills would be taught at Key Stage 2

The programme has been running successfully on an ongoing basis for the last three years, but this is only one part of the process for developing children within school. St Leonard’s have also introduced healthy eating and activity within the timetable to ensure that the children are motivated and learning throughout the day.

Maintaining Momentum
A typical day at St Leonard’s includes the following:

Breakfast Club
The children were weary and tired with low concentration levels before the programme started. Research was required. A survey was carried out with the children on what they did in the mornings. One of the main findings was that they were not eating breakfast. Our response to this was to introduce a Breakfast Club, which opens at 8.15am and leads into the start of the school day at 8.55am. The children are provided with toast, cereal and drinks and they can also participate in a table tennis club, table football league, indoor hockey league, ICT, reading, or an opportunity to do their homework. This is funded through £9,500 secured through NOF over a three-year period to support staffing and resources required.

Aerobics
At the beginning of the day all of the children have an aerobics session, supported by teachers who have been on the related INSET. During this time the classroom assistants take the register. Throughout this there are jugs of water available to which the children can help themselves.

Brain Breaks
The children then go into their lessons energised. We have introduced brain breaks during lesson time. The children stop their lesson and take part in activity (e.g. focusing on wiggling their toes or moving around the classroom in a particular way) to break their state, re-energise and refocus them, ready to carry on with their lesson. The idea for using this originated from Alistair Smith and Nicola Call’s ALPS book, and it’s proving highly successful.

All break time and lunch times are managed activity. We have recently invested in multi-sport markings on the playground, so the children can now play games such as snakes and ladders, hockey or rugby in a supervised environment. Teachers and Lunchtime Supervisors manage the activity and there is a quiet corner for those children who do not wish to take part.

After Lunch
Afternoons begin with relaxation exercises for five minutes, which calm the children down and prepare them for their afternoon lessons. The lessons are then managed with the brain breaks as an integral part.

Approaching Hurdles
One of the challenges originally facing the revised timetable was time constraint. We wanted to ensure that we covered the curriculum, yet still had time for our all-important activities such as morning aerobics. Extending the school day by five minutes and restructuring the lesson times in relation have now resolved this. Consequently, we have created six extra teaching periods; the traditional timetable of two lessons in a morning, typically Maths and English, has now changed to three lessons.

Another potential hurdle that we are often asked about is resistance to change from staff. This one was removed from the track before we began. All ideas from staff are welcomed and many are trialled, tweaked if necessary and implemented if successful. In this way we have created an atmosphere of innovation that is open to everyone. Nothing is imposed and we have never had any opposition from staff.

Across the Line
St Leonard’s has proved the success of the revised timetable and managed programme of both PE and activity. I’ve had no need to exclude any pupil in this time, as the children’s behaviour has improved dramatically through this process of management. Classroom doors are never shut, as noise levels are now managed and there is not need to contain excessive noise. This in turn has added to the whole positive buzz of the school. St Leonard’s has worked hard, ensuring that managing our timetable in a child-centred way has developed trust, pride, self-esteem, confidence and improved expectations. The SATs results have also improved to consistent 80%s, leading to our school being cited as the most improved school in Lancashire and the 35th most improved school in the country.

We’re justifiably pleased with our improved SATs results but, more importantly, what we now have are happy, clean, healthy, proud children: children who are proud to come to school and who can’t wait to get here in the morning. We now have children who believe they can reach for the stars and aren’t afraid to have a go. And, of course, they’re all superstars in their own right.

Making it Happen

MiH is a personal insight programme designed for those who want to revive their enthusiasm, restore their sense of self-worth, and make positive changes in their professional life.

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.
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

Build your school’s self-belief and confidence – it starts with you!

For more details or to reserve your place, please email: debbie@alite.co.uk

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 a Networked Learning Community, if you are an Advanced Skills Teacher or in a school with Leading Edge status then this programme is for you.Please contact the Alite office on 01628 810700 or email events@alite.co.uk for further details.

‘Now I can plan better lessons more easily’

Would you like to be able to create professional schemes of learning which can be converted into a fully linked website with the click of a button? PlanEasy2 allows you to do just that. It’s based on Alite’s model of learning, and is easy to use, allowing you to plan media-rich lessons without duplicating effort. The software tracks coverage of your chosen curriculum specification, thinking skills, learning styles, VAK, and assessment for learning. We haven’t yet been able to programme it to make the tea…
To see a demo lesson, visit www.alite.co.uk