Case studies

A Tale of Two Schools
Helping Learners Become More Independent
Burtonwood and Newchurch Community Primary Schools
Maureen Cain

Maureen qualified as a Primary teacher during the 60’s, training in London and specialising in music. A Plowden convert, she believes strongly that the child is at the centre of all educational processes, a philosophy that has continued throughout her career. After having three children in three years she completed her BEd and returned to teaching in a large Primary school, where she had responsibility for English and Maths. Seeking further advancement, she asked for a move from Year 6 to Infants and took Year 1 for one year – something she claims was a very steep learning curve. The experience helped her to gain a Deputy headship in an inner-city school and from there she moved to her current position where she has been for twelve years. During this time she has completed an MSc in Education Management, taught 4th grade in California for a year on a Fulbright teacher exchange programme and trained as a Master Practitioner in NLP.

Preface
During the last twelve years, in my role as a Primary Head, I have had the responsibility for leading and managing a plethora of initiatives and directives to improve the quality of our service. The school curriculum has undergone so many changes as we have introduced, implemented, internalised and embedded the National Curriculum and then later the Literacy and Numeracy strategies. We might assume that teachers would be glad; we are being told what to teach and to some degree we are being told how to teach it and yet, with all this documented support and advice, there has been a sense of withdrawal of energy, enthusiasm and fun. And if teachers cannot bring those qualities to their classrooms then it is a sad day for the children. I have now introduced Accelerated Learning strategies into two schools and I can see the return of the enthusiastic teacher who knows that the children learn best when they are fully engaged and involved in their learning. We can see the children changing before our eyes as they become more mature in their approach to learning and we know, not only that it works, but we also know why it works.

In July of 2002 I was asked by the Local Authority to become the Acting Headteacher of Burtonwood Primary, a school placed in Special Measures following an Ofsted Inspection. The Headteacher had left for health reasons and the position would be for two terms until a new Headteacher could be appointed. Four members of the teaching staff had resigned or were on long-term sick, including three senior management members. The staff remaining all worked hard and were keen to move the school forward, but lacked the leadership and management knowledge to implement the necessary developments. In addition, they had become de-motivated and lacked confidence in their abilities. This, I saw as my major challenge: to motivate all the staff, giving them a sense of belief in themselves and a greater understanding of purposeful teaching for learning.

There were some similarities between my own school, Newchurch, and Burtonwood:

• they are both one-form entry primary schools of approximately 200 children
• both are set on the outskirts of Warrington, with minimal social deprivation
• many children come to school with pre-school experience
• the ethnic background is largely white.

Parents at both schools were also supportive. At Newchurch, they had high aspirations for their children and were keen to engage in discussions with teachers regarding their children’s attainment. However, whilst Burtonwood’s parents were supportive, the school tended to be the one they had attended as children and expectations were related to their own childhood experiences.

Chapter 1 – School One
I was already interested in the work of Alistair Smith when I began at Burtonwood, and had implemented many of the ALPS recommendations into my own school. We had been using them for a year as a whole school when I was awarded a Best Practice Research Scholarship (BPRS) for a project to trial AL strategies to motivate under-achievers. Together with two other teachers who were using the strategies to good effect in their classroom, I examined the effect of mind-mapping, pole-bridging and visualisation on the group. We used self-esteem questionnaires at the beginning and end of the project and used children’s interviews of themselves as learners and of their belief in their ability to learn through mind-mapping to support the findings. It was a very worthwhile project, which yielded excellent results. Consequently, the teachers at Newchurch are continuing to use these methods successfully today. The BPRS ensured that the work continued in other classrooms, as I arranged for the other two teachers involved to frequently feed back their findings to the rest of the staff, the Governing Body and parents. We have now been awarded £3,600 to disseminate the research findings and I’m in the process of establishing networks to do this.

It had not been easy introducing these practices into Newchurch at first, as teachers do not always necessarily see the need for new ideas: “I’ve always done it like this and it’s generally worked; you’ll always get some children who are slower than others.” But, after encouraging them to step outside their comfort zone and consider new possibilities for their teaching, the practices have been firmly embedded. I have since had a conversation with a very traditional teacher, who was telling me of his plans to get more children answering interactively instead of the same few. I asked him how he proposed doing this and he said that he would ask the quieter ones to comment upon and respond to the answers that the more talkative and confident ones had shared with the class. They would do this with a partner before speaking to the larger group. I made the point to him that he would not have thought of doing this the year before and he agreed. We are all still able to change and adapt if we choose to.

Not long after beginning this work at Newchurch we held an evening for parents to describe the methods we were using. I gave an introduction and overview before the teachers each explained what they were doing differently in their classrooms. Again, it was an edge of the comfort zone event for them, but it was excellent that we were all delivering and listening to the same coherent message Now it is not unusual to hear teachers talking to parents about how best they could support their children at home using positive affirmations and strategies to build self-esteem. Since the introduction of the new techniques, I have experienced the growth of the teachers as they began to talk with confidence about the different styles of learning and the strategies they would use to teach to those differing styles. These methods were reaching out to all learners in the wider community and were raising our communal level of emotional intelligence.

Chapter 2 – School Two
I felt very strongly that these methods, ideas and practices used in one school successfully, would transfer equally well to another and provide a strong vehicle for change by raising awareness of teaching and learning and, ultimately, whole-school development. The staff at Burtonwood recognised the need for change and, when presented to them, there was a genuine desire to take on new ideas, particularly ones which they would enjoy using and for which they would see results, although it was more difficult to bring them ‘up to speed’ than it had been with the staff at my own school. I believed that a whole-school approach to teaching and learning, guided by the ALPS programme, was the way forward. This programme would improve the culture of the school by refreshing and renewing teachers’ interest in their profession and their desire to improve educational provision for all learners, children, teachers, teaching assistants and parents. At a variety of levels and with a variety of dynamics, it would provide the catalyst for change.

We also needed a language for common usage, so that in all meetings and discussions about children and the curriculum we could share the same words and phrases and have a shared understanding of the concepts. This language would include using positive affirmations of the children and their learning, the language of different learning styles and the language of different methods for teaching, mind-mapping, brain gym, pole-bridging, visualisation, etc.

Starting the two-term placement I became aware of the level of under-performance that was generated unwittingly throughout the school. A major reason for this was the lack of informed leadership and opportunities for staff to experience new ideas to share with others. I knew that the teachers were all hardworking but were not all aware of new developments in education and had not been encouraged to improve their practice. In the classroom this translated as:

• Teachers tending to work in isolation and not being aware of classroom practice or standards of work either side of their own year group
• Teaching methods being stuck and children not encouraged to voice opinions and enter into discussions
• Children, despite being valued, not being encouraged to see themselves as proactive in their own learning. Any investigational or problem-solving work, when it existed, was directed by teacher
• Creative writing being very limited, restricted by the children’s lack of opportunity for extended reading and writing
• Teaching sessions being longer than necessary and often not as productive as a shorter, focused session
• Many resources being tired and shabby, and curriculum books not supporting an interactive style of teaching and learning
• The school lacking pace and productivity and teachers selling these children, and themselves, short.

Chapter 3 - Starting the Ascent/Assent
In October, the month after I had started, I presented the ALPS model to the teaching staff only. I wanted them to feel confident and comfortable about introducing new ideas to their classes before the teaching assistants came on board. Although they were overwhelmed with new materials and resources which they were obliged to assimilate, I presented this new programme as a model of effective primary practice which would seem very familiar to them. I reminded the long-serving members of staff of the Plowden report of the ‘60s, with its emphasis on child-centred and relevant education. The younger teachers were encouraged to think about good courses they had attended and to relate the ALPS methods to those trainers’ messages.

So it was introduced not as something new, but as a programme that would build on the practices they were already using. When I began describing some of the methods there were some nods of recognition and comments along the lines of “I do that in my classroom.” They realised that the techniques would be eminently accessible and would shape their professional practice. Also, I was able to give the programme credibility, as I had already introduced many of the practices into my school with great success, particularly with reluctant learners. I told them of the children who had gained through mind-mapping and visualisation. One child had remarked, “All you have to do is look at the branches and you learn some more.” Another child, a boy with low self-esteem, had shown tremendous perseverance and had told his teacher that he had, “Closed his eyes and had the thoughts I wanted to write.”

Initially, we had a series of three staff meetings at Burtonwood, which focused on the new methods. In addition, the implementation programme was discussed at Senior Management Team meetings and I ensured that staff were reminded of the strategies in all curricular discussions either by myself or members of the SMT.

Although I encouraged teachers to explore as much as they wanted of the material presented to them, I started the programme of development with VAK. Because of my NLP training I focused very much on the need to address these different learning styles and so emphasised their importance for every lesson. In my own school, the use of VAK is shown in every teacher’s weekly plans. I also emphasised giving the big picture and the importance of chunking information. Much emphasis was placed on mind-mapping, which, it was stressed, was a useful tool for reviewing especially. At Newchurch many teachers liked to instigate a class mind-map at the beginning of the topic, where the children discussed what they already knew. This would stay on the wall and the children would add to it so that, at the end of the topic, they could see how much they had learned. Another teacher used this idea for children reviewing what they had learned in the week. These and other ideas were all passed on to the teachers at Burtonwood to help them take on board the practice of putting AL into action.

I wanted to support the teachers by recognising their value, not just as teachers, but also as people with the potential to raise their game. This would be the method through which they would be coached; it would sit alongside all curriculum development, under-pinning and re-enforcing their own good practice. It would also provide a whole-school culture of positive and achievable goals and I believed strongly that this method would provide them with the skills necessary to improve as a whole school.

Chapter 4 – Making Progress
All members of the teaching staff had been provided with the ALPS resource book and given sections to read in preparation for the staff meetings. This was a method I had used successfully before, identifying certain passages which could be discussed for implementation throughout the school. All the ideas were to be seen through the eyes of the children in each year group, so staff would come prepared for the meeting not only with the theory, but also with their ideas for implementation.

I was aware of a real turning point at Burtonwood one day during a staff meeting where everyone had been given the section to read on twenty positive strategies. It was thrilling to listen to them sharing their good practice with each other with a confidence that was a delight to witness. There was much laughter and encouragement of each other, and the energy and synergy at that meeting was tangible. I believe it was because everyone was coming from the same position of discovery; there was no hierarchy. There had been a gradual build-up of understanding, absorption and reinforcement so that everyone knew what we were talking about. It was particularly good to share this with the children. For example, in one of our celebration assemblies, teachers were giving stickers to children for good listening and good sitting. I decided to pretend that I didn’t understand what they were. A group of five year olds came to the front and explained and demonstrated to the whole school exactly what it meant. Even though every class had posters on the wall reminding the children how to listen and sit well, this display from little ones will have had far more impact. Teachers then built on that experience in their own classrooms.

Progress could also be seen in the re-framing of situations to give them a positive slant. “I can see you are just about to sit properly,” for example, had a noticeable effect on some children’s behaviour. Again my NLP work has contributed to discussions about reframing and positive messages to improve self-esteem.

I am particularly pleased that they are taking on all the ideas of positive language to affect behaviours as if they are their own. One teacher told me that she had been reluctant to order a new resource, but she said, “ It’s right what you say, because we keep telling the children to give it a go, we’re giving it a go too!” The change in language has happened on a multitude of levels in both schools. Discussions in the staffroom are more professional, as everyone talks about VAK learning, mind-maps and visualisation. They talk about giving the big picture and reviewing. However, it is fair to say that I have talked about these things a lot, constantly making reference and directing people’s thinking towards these outcomes.

Teachers at both Newchurch and Burtonwood are involved in the process of school self-evaluation and, in their roles as subject leaders, are observing how these lessons are being taught. The Science co-ordinators in both schools have been thrilled at the greater attention paid to allowing children to hypothesise with each other, think for themselves and design their own experiments. Again, AL strategies have helped teachers to ‘let go’ and this has given more responsibility to the children for their own learning. Staff meetings run by the co-ordinators have included the expectations that we will ‘of course’ be using AL in all that we do.

Evaluation sheets (see appendix) were used with the teachers at the end of the first term and with teaching assistants at the end of the two terms. Comments from the evaluations were fed back at staff meetings and SMT meetings for development opportunities. The teaching assistants made several observations, including:

• lessons were more interactive
• children were allowed to give their ideas more freely
• they felt more able to talk to their group about ideas rather than only to the teacher
• children were taking more responsibility for improving their work
• children were asking more questions
• less time was being taken up by time-wasting activities
• classrooms became better organised and children had to look after their own equipment
• low-level interactions were becoming fewer.

In both schools my own classroom observations would often focus on the teacher’s use of AL strategies to support all learners. Teachers knew what I wanted to see so they made sure I saw it. I set the expectation that VAK should be apparent in every lesson and teachers needed to think carefully about how this would happen.

Changes in Burtonwood’s culture, with children and parents now sharing higher expectations, have been brought about by the strategies that are diffused throughout both schools. These include:

• good listening and good sitting positions
• starting every day positively
• setting positive deadlines for outcomes
• using names of the children, particularly at the beginning of a question
• giving eye contact
• using VAK whenever possible
• using brain gym, pole-bridging and mind mapping.

Epilogue
Although I have now returned to Newchurch I expect the momentum and expectations that have built up in Burtonwood to continue in my absence. Accelerated Learning has reinvigorated the staff and injected enthusiasm back into everyone’s learning. The ALPS model has given the teachers of both schools a new framework for improvement within which they can discuss classroom environments, the classroom culture and ethos, and also their own pedagogical skills. All curriculum development and training is now set within the context of ‘what will make this a good learning experience for all the children and what do I want them to achieve?’ And that must be good for everyone involved in the learning.