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WP_Query Object ( [query] => Array ( [paged] => 2 [pagename] => blog ) [query_vars] => Array ( [paged] => 2 [pagename] => blog [error] => [m] => [p] => 0 [post_parent] => [subpost] => [subpost_id] => [attachment] => [attachment_id] => 0 [name] => [static] => [page_id] => 0 [second] => [minute] => [hour] => [day] => 0 [monthnum] => 0 [year] => 0 [w] => 0 [category_name] => [tag] => [cat] => [tag_id] => [author] => [author_name] => [feed] => [tb] => [meta_key] => [meta_value] => [preview] => [s] => [sentence] => [title] => [fields] => [menu_order] => [embed] => [category__in] => Array ( ) [category__not_in] => Array ( ) [category__and] => Array ( ) [post__in] => Array ( ) [post__not_in] => Array ( ) [post_name__in] => Array ( ) [tag__in] => Array ( ) [tag__not_in] => Array ( ) [tag__and] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__in] => Array ( ) [tag_slug__and] => Array ( ) [post_parent__in] => Array ( ) [post_parent__not_in] => Array ( ) [author__in] => Array ( ) [author__not_in] => Array ( ) [ignore_sticky_posts] => [suppress_filters] => [cache_results] => 1 [update_post_term_cache] => 1 [lazy_load_term_meta] => 1 [update_post_meta_cache] => 1 [post_type] => [posts_per_page] => 10 [nopaging] => [comments_per_page] => 50 [no_found_rows] => [order] => DESC ) [tax_query] => WP_Tax_Query Object ( [queries] => Array ( ) [relation] => AND [table_aliases:protected] => Array ( ) [queried_terms] => Array ( ) [primary_table] => ltss_posts [primary_id_column] => ID ) [meta_query] => WP_Meta_Query Object ( [queries] => Array ( ) [relation] => [meta_table] => [meta_id_column] => [primary_table] => [primary_id_column] => [table_aliases:protected] => Array ( ) [clauses:protected] => Array ( ) [has_or_relation:protected] => ) [date_query] => [queried_object] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 40 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 2014-04-01 19:08:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2014-04-01 18:08:41 [post_content] => [post_title] => Blog [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => blog [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-02-19 14:50:34 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-02-19 14:50:34 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://jamjarhosting.co.uk/clients/ltss/?page_id=40 [menu_order] => 5 [post_type] => page [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [queried_object_id] => 40 [request] => SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS ltss_posts.ID FROM ltss_posts WHERE 1=1 AND ltss_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (ltss_posts.post_status = 'publish') ORDER BY ltss_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 10, 10 [posts] => Array ( [0] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 958 [post_author] => 93 [post_date] => 2018-01-26 09:05:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-01-26 09:05:57 [post_content] => In November, I was lucky enough to pay a second visit to Japan to observe teaching and learning.  And I was reminded of the strengths of the Japanese approach to learning. I observed a science lesson with Year 4 about wind power.  In the previous lesson, children had planned an experiment to test wind power, using a toy car with a sail attached and a blower with two speeds.  Each group had planned their own experiment and these plans were on display.  The teacher had deliberately not given feedback on these plans, because he wanted them to look at each other's plans and decide which plan was the best one to guide their experiments.  In this lesson, they chose the plan they wanted to follow, they carried out the experiment and they evaluated their methodology. What was interesting to me in this lesson was the focus on asking questions and not answering them.  The pupils were not told by their teacher whose plan for the experiment was the best.  They could judge for themselves and test their theory out by conducting their own experiment.  The experiment was not followed by a technical discussion about wind power and what they had learnt about forces, but by a discussion about which conditions would ensure that the experiment was valid, and what questions still remained for them at the end of the experiment: what was unanswered.  And again, no attempt was made to answer these questions: the children left the lesson pondering the questions that were raised. What was it that enabled this teacher to feel so comfortable with nurturing the asking of questions, instead of focusing on answering questions?  For me, key to this is the design of the Japanese curriculum, which has around 60% of the content of our primary national curriculum.  This leaves space for teachers to focus on developing a deep understanding of concepts.  So, in this particular unit on forces, the lesson I watched was one of a series of 7 lessons on wind power in a 13 lesson unit, which would be followed by a 6 week unit on elastic bands.  A 13 lesson unit on forces in the UK for a Year 4 class would expect significantly more content coverage and therefore by implication, considerably less depth of understanding.  And this makes UK teachers feel they have to answer children's questions and deal with children's misconceptions before the lesson ends. Let’s Think lessons don't work this way.  They often end with questions unanswered and it's ok to let children leave without an answer.  They often enable teachers to uncover misconceptions and don't require teachers to address these misconceptions before the end of the lesson: and that's ok too.  When children walk away with questions, they will carry on thinking about these questions, during break time, once they get home, over the weekend.  That’s got to be a good thing, right? If children walk away with a misconception, the teacher didn't create that misconception, it was already there.  And there are plenty more lessons in which these misconceptions can be properly tackled in a way that ensures deep understanding.  In fact, addressing misconceptions in a hurried way during the lesson, is likely to result in assimilation, not accommodation. And what about the entirely logical and understandable fear that teachers have about the need to move on with the coverage of curriculum content: 'No time to answer that question or tackle that misconception.  We have to move on!' What we do know is that by taking the time to ensure deep understanding of early concepts, children's ability to understand and apply these concepts to new material and to acquire a deep understanding of later concepts is enhanced and later learning will be accelerated.  This is one of the principles of a mastery curriculum, and it works. So teachers, free yourselves of the shackles of curriculum coverage and ask for questions, not answers.  Confusion, misconception and puzzlement are powerful tools for learning. [post_title] => Fear of the unknown: how the need to cover content negatively affects learning [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => fear-of-the-unknown-how-the-need-to-cover-content-negatively-affects-learning [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-01-26 09:06:20 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-01-26 09:06:20 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=958 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 953 [post_author] => 18 [post_date] => 2017-12-14 12:14:25 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-12-14 12:14:25 [post_content] => I became aware lately that my understanding of cognitive development has become the lens by which I frame everything in which I engage. Not only in schools or with relatives, but with any human interaction: this could be quite boring to people if I am not careful! Perhaps that is a natural affliction for any old professional who sticks with a field. Especially since my field is maths, still a feared, or at least a weird subject. This cognitive outlook is, due in my case, to 24 years work on one of the Cognitive Acceleration projects, CAME, and to the previous 18 years of teaching in London schools during which I was always looking for keys to unlock children's minds, and to help solve teachers' predicaments. It is also due to aging, with which comes the need to summarize and synthesize experience, to find what is common in diverse fields of interest. So I seem to fall back on the cognitive, or thinking levels, in puzzling out Trump and the ultra-nationalists in Europe, and why Africa and Arabia keep stumbling half a century after independence, and why our young keep drowning in the Mediterranean sea. It all seems related to the cognitive levels of governments, the media, and traditional society, alongside nasty power politics and greed. Similarly it aligns with the progress of the rapidly expanding third industrial revolution of the Nano-technology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Technology (NBIC) quartet. Back to earth and the Let's Think Approach which seems much more tangible and manageable than nano and artificial intelligence. Let’s look at how varied and wide this approach really is. It actually means different things to different people, and has something to offer to children/students, to teachers/tutors, to curriculum/assessment, and to cognition, education and leadership research. It seems a good idea to list things in some of these domains, meaning it is advantageous to pick and choose when working with the approach: For pupils and students of all ages:

• A growing set of specimen classroom thinking activities. Each of these allow pupils across a wide range of ability, to reconstruct, and adjust their minds to key concepts in key school subjects.
• The same activities include challenging interactive scenes that go deeper and wider than the concepts covered by developing reasoning powers, which is another way of saying raising general intelligence, i.e. empowering learners to work things out for themselves from scratch, or to handle pre-packaged ideas critically and collaboratively.

For teachers and tutors:

• A way of teaching that combines handling given worthwhile content with particular pupils' engagement and collaboration. The specimen lesson becomes a skeletal script for a classic play which ends up different each time ‘performed’ by a different cast/class. Often different things emerge in the classroom to the delight of the teacher and the pupils. The teacher orchestrates or directs, and pupils discover and formulate things in steps, or are left puzzled and thinking further on their own till next time they meet.
• This way of teaching can only be assimilated or adopted by the teacher through sessions with other teachers in which they work on the same activities as learners, putting themselves in the position of their pupils. Tutors who organize these interactive collaborative PD sessions act in the same orchestrating way the teachers are expected to try and improvise in their own classrooms. What emerges in the PD sessions is again different each time, and fruitful to the teachers and tutors alike.

For curriculum development

• A way of handling the current, evolving curriculum in a cognitive developmental trajectory. This addresses the fact that the traditional or transmission based force-feeding of pre-packaged knowledge often prevents the development of pupils own powers of thinking. So activities need to be created, or modified to ensure engagement of pupils in reconstructing and deconstructing the formalized parts of the curriculum.
• This way of handling the curriculum seems only accessible to educators who combine classroom practice using specimen lessons, or similar activities, with theoretical interests along Piagetian/new-Piagetian and Vygotskyan/social constructivist lines. That is because of the need for the match between the demand of any particular classroom task, with the range of ability in the range of age group. This is different from interactive pedagogy, and relies on the subtle grading of difficulty of any step of thinking. In my experience these colleagues may be intuitive, with innate dispositions, as much as interested in academic studies as classroom practice.

For research and development 

• Long-term and lasting add-on effects of CA programmes in a single school subject on pupils' achievement across subjects has been rigorous since the 1980s. But it does require a lot of dedication, time, and skill, since one needs to look 3 years further down the road from having some significant work with particular learners, while much changes occur meanwhile for the students concerned and their schools . The time and funding are sadly lacking in the current climate of quick-fix, headline-motivated, business-practices-inspired official requirements of educational innovations, with conclusions of variable trustworthiness. Few people are like Michael Shayer, who perseveres with analysis of trends and effects cognitive advanced statistical methods since 1974, before starting the CA research.
• Currently Michael Shayer is continuing to work with James Flynn on data for the continuing significant decline of thinking ability for the higher quartile of ability in the advanced countries. He is also working with Andreas Demetriou on data for newer models of intelligence. There is much to be done in school to measure short term signals following CA work, that are correlated with longer term effects. But the official spot-light is hardly on such matters now, while all agree that the third industrial revolution. (These names are worth looking up online.)
• Then there is the emergence of the field of leadership, spanning a wide range of skills, predispositions and models in the classroom( students and teachers), PD and school levels. This too is bound with sensitivity to cognitive levels and cognitive developments of students and teachers and the relationships between content, ability and modes of collaboration.

No sane person could engage with all of these domains of work in the CA /Let's Think approach. And they are differently relevant and attractive to different people, but any one domain is strongly and organically linked to all the others, with the individual classroom activity at the base of a sort-of hierarchy! So picking and choosing is best – which is important to you in your context?   [post_title] => ‘Picking-and-Choosing’ for teaching innovation [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => picking-and-choosing-for-teaching-innovation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-12-14 12:15:14 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-12-14 12:15:14 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=953 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 941 [post_author] => 60 [post_date] => 2017-11-10 10:30:59 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-11-10 10:30:59 [post_content] => Since 2008 the Government has accepted two important truths about education in England’s schools, but has decided to inform schools about only one of them. The first is that attainment in our schools hasn’t risen since the 1990s. This is shown by all three of the main international education surveys: PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS. These surveys can be criticised, but when all three show the same – that, overall, standards in England’s schools have flatlined for 20+ years – they can’t be ignored. This diagram and the next are from Robert Coe’s brilliant paper Improving education: a triumph of hope over experience http://www.cem.org/attachments/publications/ImprovingEducation2013.pdf As Coe shows, this lack of improvement was disguised by GCSE results which showed a year on year increase of A – C grades (subsequently A* – C) from 29.9 per cent in 1988 when GCSE began to 81.1 per cent in 2012, a rise not remotely paralleled anywhere else in the world. This was caused mainly by the Exam Boards competing for market share – each anxious not to set exams that were more demanding than the other Boards, causing grade inflation. By 2008 the Government accepted that the mismatch between the international surveys and the GCSE results was unacceptable and created Ofqual, first to research the extent of grade inflation and then with statutory powers to control the Exam Boards. By 2010 the Coalition Government declared two overarching policies: to raise attainment in England’s schools to match the world’s highest-achieving education systems and to raise attainment by students leaving school with poor qualifications or none - see The Importance of Teaching White Paper (2010) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/175429/CM-7980.pdf These are cross-party policies – Labour supports them and the other practical policies brought in to support them: pupil premium, Progress 8 and investment of £125 million in research on raising attainment through the Education Endowment Foundation. So far so good. The second truth, unmentioned by governments, is that, since the 90s, teachers have been required to work harder than ever before but this has had no effect on overall attainment in schools. Two major causes of increased workload were the National Strategies (1997 - 2011) which developed a formulaic teacher-led style of teaching (learning objectives, starter, episodes evidenced in writing, plenary) rolled out nationally by a private company, Capita; and Ofsted’s demand for evidence of frequent assessment of pupils’ work in relation to target National Curriculum levels or GCSE grades and its requirement that every pupil should visibly make progress in every lesson. These policies were introduced without any research evidence that they would raise attainment and they didn’t. In 2008, faced with the evidence of flatlining attainment the Government decided to discontinue the strategies in 2011 when Capita’s contract expired and Ofsted quietly withdrew its requirements about frequent assessment and progress in every lesson. But the Government has never made clear to schools that the National Strategies and Ofsted’s earlier policies failed to raise standards – Labour from embarrassment at spending millions on the Strategies without effect and the Coalition and Conservatives because decisions on teaching and learning are devolved wholly to schools. As a result, SLTs in many schools continue policies that were discredited nearly 10 years ago, requiring teachers to teach and assess in time-consuming ways which don’t raise attainment, because they have never been informed otherwise. This has several unfortunate effects. First, excessive workload is leading to recruitment problems with rising staff turnover, burn-out, and more early retirements. The DfE has recognised this - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-teachers-workload/reducing-teachers-workload - and Ofsted now says it will ask headteachers how they plan to reduce staff workload - https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-ofsted-ask-headteachers-how-they-plan-reduce-teachers Second, the primary curriculum has narrowed over the years brought about by the pressures of external assessment and accountability, and an effective Key Stage 3 curriculum is being weakened as more schools begin GCSE courses earlier than Year 10 and start assessing students by GCSE Assessment Objectives. Ofsted is now starting to focus on this - https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/hmcis-commentary-october-2017 The full report won’t be out until next Spring but, under Amanda Spielman the new HMCI, Ofsted is already making it clear that they expect to see not simply a “broad and balanced” curriculum, but one that ensures depth and quality of learning. It seems that Ofsted intends to concern itself at last with the actual quality of teaching and learning, not just the appearance of it. So how do we raise attainment without further increasing workload? The EEF has commissioned researchers at the University of Durham to summarise the international research on 34 possible ways of raising attainment in schools, relating their effectiveness to their cost. This is published as a Teaching and Learning Toolkit to encourage an evidence-based approach to raising attainment https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit Here is Robert Coe’s visual summary of the Toolkit. It will be seen that the most effective approaches all relate to practical aspects of teaching: feedback, metacognition, peer-tutoring, collaboration (i.e. groupwork) and, in secondary schools, well-designed homework. These approaches also feature high in John Hattie’s book Visible Learning for Teachers (2012). There is strong overlap with Dialogic Teaching developed by Robin Alexander and Neil Mercer. So how should schools raise attainment by all their pupils by improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning? And how can SLTs be persuaded (as international evidence has shown for 20 years) that repeated assessment against targets leads to teaching-to-the-test, not higher attainment? A good way would be to adopt a programme which:

• requires pupils to think. As Coe and many others point out: “Learning happens when people have to think hard.”
• incorporates the features that the EEF Toolkit shows raise attainment most: effective feedback, metacognition, peer-tutoring and collaboration leading to well-designed homework
• provides a large number of high-interest model lessons and a programme of support to help teachers implement the programme effectively
• is based on rigorous research to convince sceptical SLTs of the need for change.

It won’t surprise you that the programme which best fulfils all these requirements is Adey and Shayer’s Cognitive Acceleration (CA), now renamed Let’s Think. This was devised at King’s College London for Science in the 1970s and 80s, for Maths in the 1990s and for English since 2009. Other programmes like Philosophy for Children and Dialogic Teaching incorporate some of the four elements, but only CA/LT provides all four.     [post_title] => Raising attainment and reducing teacher workload [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => raising-attainment-and-reducing-workload [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-11-17 16:49:57 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-11-17 16:49:57 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=941 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 938 [post_author] => 93 [post_date] => 2017-10-10 14:38:16 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-10-10 13:38:16 [post_content] => I’ve often felt in my work with teachers, that concrete preparation was the least well understood of the Let’s Think principles. Social construction has experienced a recent boom in popularity, aligning with work on dialogic teaching (Alexander, 2008) and supporting the move towards partner and group work in classrooms. Metacognition is now a buzz word in the education world, since being flagged up by the Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit for Teachers (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit/meta-cognition-and-self-regulation/) and John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2008) as one of the top hitters for adding value to pupil learning. Cognitive conflict has a large body of research behind it, including studies flagging up the importance of ‘productive failure’ (Kapur, 2008), and increasingly popular approaches like Singapore maths push problem solving as a key strategy to improve reasoning. Concrete preparation on the other hand, does not have a body of popular interest behind it, nor a vast body of corroborative research, and yet, when watching teachers teach Let’s Think maths lessons with primary pupils, it’s crucial to the development of mathematical thinking. The essential principle behind the concept of concrete preparation is that pupils need to be given a starter experience for the task that is accessible to them all, even though the task itself may be aimed at a more advanced Piagetian stage. So, it is an early activity in a Let’s Think lesson in which, in the context of the challenge to come, the majority of pupils can be engaged without the need for accommodation. Perhaps we could describe it as accessible preparation. The lesson presents a context that allows a range of levels of cognitive demand AND successful performance by all the pupils in the class (given the expected range of cognitive levels for the relevant age group). Exploring the concept of concrete preparation with teachers draws their attention to important precursors necessary for the pupils' future response to the cognitive conflict.  Firstly, concrete preparation presents a context for the learning with which pupils can engage and in which they will be motivated to solve the problem (what we sometimes call the ‘hook’). This may be a real life context, or an imaginary context but its role is largely to engage the pupils and so that the cognitive conflict that will emerge is not one of unfamiliarity, but of conceptual demand. So, when exploring decimal notation with Year 4 pupils, we talk about a giant and pixies building a castle using their feet as units of measure (the pixie feet conveniently being 1/10 of a giant’s foot). When sorting and classifying pictures of types of adult and baby animals in different colours, we talk about the need to tidy up a mess created by a naughty group of pupils. Concrete preparation also involves some activity that serves to activate the pupil's ideas about an emerging problem, giving them something to 'get a grip on' when, as is usually the case, the problem becomes 'slippy'. Pupils need to ‘see’ some of the problem in a concrete way. So, when exploring measures, pupils look at at a series of rulers with missing or duplicate numbers, which do not all start on zero. When exploring ratio, pupils begin by creating multiple written descriptions of visual images of ratios in the form of jelly babies with differently proportioned heads and bodies. The words that later may be useful thinking tools begin to emerge, both agreed terminology and schema-specific vocabulary. When working with very young pupils this largely involves handling and describing the equipment, checking the pupils have the necessary vocabulary as a group, and agreeing the ‘rules for the game’. This cues pupils in to the nature of the task and helps them create a bridge with current ideas and terms that may be useful for the challenge to come. When we say ‘big’, do we mean length, breadth, height, volume or weight? Do we all know the names of the colours or the vehicles? Planning for concrete preparation requires the teacher to consider how the pupil and the problem can be prepared to engage with each other. It is here that the teacher is also making their early diagnosis about the gulf between the reasoning currently available to students currently and the reasoning that will be required as the lesson unfolds. So, when introducing a simple block graph, do the pupils understand that the blocks should be coloured in to represent each item in the picture, or does that need to be discussed in order for them to begin the task? When watching primary teachers new to Let’s Think Maths, there are a couple of common pitfalls we observe in the concrete preparation section of the lesson:

1. Teachers sometimes dwell on the ‘hook’ or story that frames the concrete preparation, because it is often very motivating for the pupils and all pupils in the class can access it easily. However, spending 20 minutes on the concrete preparation means the teacher is unlikely to have enough time in the lesson to really challenge pupils’ thinking, especially that of the highest attainers.
2. When teachers try to counter this by rushing through the concrete preparation the shared vocabulary required for the task is not agreed and pupils’ understanding of the ‘rules for the game’ is too shallow. This limits the depth with which pupils can tackle the cognitive conflict. When pupils are not given sufficient time to explore and physically handle the lesson resources (and this is especially the case with very young pupils), their understanding of the task is reduced and they often focus on grabbing attractive equipment for themselves instead of engaging in social construction to use it to solve the cognitive conflict .

It’s a tricky balance to get right – go too fast and solutions to the cognitive conflict remain out of reach; go too slow and you never get to the cognitive conflict that really pushes the thinking of your class. The only way to get it right is to teach the lessons repeatedly, and to continuously reflect on the way you approached the concrete preparation. I always say, you never really feel like you have got a lesson licked until you have taught it four times! References Alexnder, R., 2008. Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy. In Barnes, D., Mercer, N. and Hodgkinson, S., 2008. Exploring talk in schools. Hattie, J., 2008. Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge. Kapur, M., 2008. Productive failure. Cognition and instruction, 26(3), pp.379-424.   [post_title] => Concrete preparation: fast or slow? [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => concrete-preparation-fast-or-slow [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-10-10 14:38:43 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-10-10 13:38:43 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=938 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [4] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 933 [post_author] => 68 [post_date] => 2017-09-04 10:44:53 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-09-04 09:44:53 [post_content] => Dr. Martina Lecky is the Headteacher of Ruislip High School. Martina has had a long involvement with Let's Think, one that resulted in a doctoral study supervised by Professor Philip Adey. In this post she shares her views on the ongoing value of Let's Think to her as a school leader. Each year my school has one of its seven core values as a theme for the year. This academic year it is integrity and I will use this as the basis for my first assembly of the year. My twenty-five years of involvement with CASE has been my one constant in a career of relentless change, most notably government-led curriculum and assessment reforms. I believe one of the tenets of the cognitive acceleration (CA) approach has been the moral purpose of the educationists involved to understand the classroom environment that promotes an authentic, long-term enhancement in students' powers of reasoning. Neuroscience continues to provide empirical evidence for the brain's plasticity; this supports Shayer and Adey's conjecture that the environment is one of the key factors that influences cognitive development. I therefore remain committed to encouraging and facilitating professional development in teachers that develops their understanding of the methodology that accelerates students' ability to form new constructs through an alteration in their brains' neurological functions. I believe this is a moral imperative, especially when too many debates are presented and argued on a dichotomous basis, relying on reasoning at a concrete level. I recently had to prepare for a conference which involved consideration of how metacognition is promoted in Let's Think lessons. It was an interesting journey to consider English, mathematics and science lessons and how they encourage students to consider consciously their cognitive journey with a specific reasoning pattern. Metacognition is hard and often slow thinking. It reminded me that I have often experienced the most fruitful reflective discussion with students on a reasoning pattern at the beginning of the next lesson when the previous one's context is a useful opening stimulus. One of my favourite CASE lessons is activity 18; with its high cognitive demand on the reasoning pattern of probability, I have found students benefit from a period of time to consider probability especially where the number of outcomes is not readily obvious. Metacognition allows students to articulate consciously the challenge and possible changes in their thinking; this cognitive activity is arguably one of the most important aspects of cognitive development. At a time of global uncertainty, I believe there is a moral imperative to educate our students to be conscious of the reasoning that underpins their beliefs and to be willing to be challenged on the preconceptions of our complex existence. I can express, however, with great certainty that CA and LT lessons will continue to provide the platform to facilitate and promote students' ability for self-regulation and willingness to engage in challenging discourse. [post_title] => Let's Think at Ruislip High School [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => lets-think-at-ruislip-high-school [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-09-04 14:09:23 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-09-04 13:09:23 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=933 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [5] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 931 [post_author] => 11 [post_date] => 2017-07-13 14:42:22 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-07-13 13:42:22 [post_content] => When teaching full-time in secondary education I always wondered what it would be like to be part of a school where all staff shared a common view on how best to help their pupils reach their potential. Indeed, as a parent you see the potential in your own children from the moment of birth, and recently having had a daughter leave school at 18 I am beginning to appreciate what it’s like for an individual. But a whole school community … Well on the 25^th April I had the great privilege to visit just such an institution. My colleague Sarah Seleznyov, had recommended that Hugh Myddleton Primary in Islington, was committed enough to be accredited as a Let’s Think School for their work in mathematics. What I did not know at the time was Ofsted inspectors would call after me. So with the benefit of hindsight I will include some of the extracts from their inspection report to give you a flavor of what I encountered that day. The school’s emphasis on pupils mastering key mathematical concepts and thinking deeply is having a very positive impact. It enables pupils, including the most able, to question, talk about their learning, work together and solve problems. 
 Throughout the school, pupils grapple with mathematical concepts and problems that require them to think deeply and articulate their ideas. Well-founded approaches are used in every classroom, supported very effectively by the mathematics leader, to ensure that all pupils have the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding to succeed. Leaders have worked exceptionally hard to emphasise and develop pupils’ thinking skills. This has been particularly successful in mathematics, where teachers plan very effectively to develop pupils’ problem-solving skills. The school has recently been recognised and received national accreditation for its work in this field. 
Teachers and teaching assistants are skilled at asking questions that extend pupils’ learning, giving pupils time to think for themselves and respond. The above is inspirational, with the school thoroughly deserving its ‘Outstanding’ judgment but what I saw that April day can best be described as a family; a collection of people all keen to share their learning with me. Over the years I have had the pleasure of visiting and teaching in many ‘Outstanding’ schools but at every level this community was striving to challenge themselves to be the best they could be. From the dining hall to the staff room, staff shared the importance of their Let’s Think Maths lessons. The walls were full of displays from lessons I love such as ‘Jelly Babies’ and the children I spoke to were keenly aware of how the Let’s Think lessons are just one, essential, part of their educational diet. Although I had a sort a script to focus on, our discussion diverged as the pupils shared their thinking experiences with me. One child spoke passionately about a lesson that had made them think in Year 2, despite now being two years older! At every level, from the Head to the support staff, this school is using the Let’s Think approach to develop a thinking dialogue that ensures learning is spoken about thought the day. They have found a professional tool that enables them to respond to the needs of their pupils as they all seek to reach out towards higher levels of attainment. For me it was so lovely to find, in Islington that day, what I had been looking for (sorry U2) but also not to get trapped into the circular argument of ‘We just do not have the time to allow them to think as there is too much content to teach’. In Hugh Myddleton they are focusing upon getting the conditions for learning right and with such a foundation in place everything else, as you can see for the inspection report, will fall into place. [post_title] => Agreeing with Ofsted! [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => agreeing-with-ofsted [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-07-13 14:42:22 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-07-13 13:42:22 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=931 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [6] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 929 [post_author] => 97 [post_date] => 2017-06-15 09:50:46 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-06-15 08:50:46 [post_content] => Let's Think is rooted in a subject. The subject provides the context within which pupils face challenges to their powers of reasoning. The challenges also arise from the essential requirements for a pupil's deep understanding of the subject. Thus in Let's Think Secondary Science we have a lesson, 'The P Word' which is set in the context of the pitch of a sound wave created within a set of tubes. In this lesson the student has to reason which of three variables has an effect on the pitch. They are faced with the challenge of identifying and then excluding variables by choosing pairs of tubes that differ only in one variable say, length, whilst variables of width and material remain the same. This is the same reasoning necessary to establish a controlled experiment to establish a proof of a relationship of cause and effect. Let's Think is also rooted in a pedagogy. The way the teacher interacts with the learners is particular to the Let's Think goal of engaging the majority of pupils with a higher learning demand than they might be expected to achieve on their own. The Let's Think teacher gains the skills necessary to quickly establish the context and to build with the learners a relevant vocabulary and concrete understanding of the situation and then present the challenge in such a way that the student can see clearly what is required even though they may not yet be able to puzzle their way to the solution. The Let's Think teacher's skills include an awareness of what is happening in the learning and of responding in ways that support peer to peer scaffolding and provide scaffolding for the whole class. The Let's Think teacher values and finds time for the reflection on learning that provides an opportunity to rehearse the reasoning as well as to consider the strategies they and others have used to arrive at the new meanings. Let's Think began as Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education, CASE at KS3 and this in turn spawned interventions in mathematics, technology, the creative arts and English across the primary and secondary age range. It seems possible therefore to attempt some small trials in other subjects. Geography for example. Where to start? Experienced teachers of geography are well aware of the challenges that their students face. They know when the subject is a struggle although they may not describe the nature of that struggle in terms that a Let's Think teacher might, as one of a type of reasoning and of reasoning mapped against Piagetian developmental stages. Thus the challenges that pupils face in understanding, using and making maps are well known to be difficult for pupils of all ages. They struggle to translate the 2D into 3D, to adjust the scale of the map to find the distances in reality and to understand and create symbols. They struggle with the absolute and relative orientations of the map and the place of something virtually moving across the map. If the students are challenged by the content and if the content is important to the teacher then this suggests that there is something that could possibly be the genesis of a Let's Think lesson. Over the last year and a half I have been working with 4 geography teachers to develop a small number of Let's Think geography lessons that we have trialled with classes in Y7 and Y8. We started with the curriculum and the teachers' intuitions about what is typically more challenging content. We then explored that content to identify and describe a reasoning pattern, something challenging in that content that the student has to get their head around, which some but few students are able to do but where others are likely to struggle. We developed 10 lessons in the context of maps and the flooding of the Somerset Levels. The lessons were geography lessons but had a Let's Think focus around a reasoning pattern such as the use of symbols, exploring scale as a ratio, translating 2D to 3D and vice versa, developing formal models, understanding effects based on combinations of causes. We then taught the lessons. Here we were faced with the issue of Let's Think pedagogy, the teachers had little iof any experience of Let's Think and were in fact interested in seeing another approach and another teacher. The lessons were therefore taught by me as a Let's Think tutor and observed by the geography teacher. We reflected at the end of each lesson trial on both the quality of reasoning and the quality of the the geography. Some lessons were too challenging for students, too long or not engaging but most were exciting, rewarding and as one pupil put it 'brain hemorrhaging' in their power to prompt thought. We have refined the less successful lessons, abandoned some initial ideas and have a small number of trial lessons that the teachers will now teach in what they consider to be the Let's Think way. So here lies a challenge for us. If, to be a Let's Think subject teacher, you need to have the subject expertise and the Let's Think pedagogy how does one develop a new Let's Think teacher in geography, or history, or PE? Perhaps a collaboration of Let's Think expertise and subject teacher's expertise is the way forward? [post_title] => Could there be such a thing as Let's Think Geography? How to use what we know about Let's Think in 'another' subject. [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => could-there-be-such-a-thing-as-lets-think-geography-how-to-use-what-we-know-about-lets-think-in-another-subject [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-06-15 09:51:50 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-06-15 08:51:50 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=929 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [7] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 923 [post_author] => 65 [post_date] => 2017-05-19 16:01:37 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-05-19 15:01:37 [post_content] => I have been a tutor for the Lets Think Maths courses for many years. Recently I have been responsible for the Yr 5 – Yr 9 course that has been organised in partnership with Ambler Primary School in Islington. One of the delights of the courses is the enthusiasm of the participants; their willingness to share their thoughts, ideas and experiences. This has been especially the case when teachers from primary and secondary schools work together. It provides the opportunity for everyone to develop their subject knowledge, further their understanding of how students learn and to experiment and practise different ways of teaching. All this in a safe environment where no-one is being judged and where it is safe to expose one’s misconceptions and fears. A crucial aspect of the course involves teaching lessons that they have experienced as simulated lessons led by the course tutor. During the simulations, there are opportunities to discuss the maths involved but more importantly, how the reasoning strands are developed. These are very rich sessions and the teachers make a significant contribution by asking questions, clarifying their own understanding about what is happing and thinking about how they will tackle the lessons with their own classes. Everyone is expected to teach each of the lessons at least once before the next session. They are encouraged to keep detailed notes about what happened for the students as well as themselves. We use these narratives at the start of subsequent days together. The discussions and observations enable us to reflect on many aspects of the lessons. But always, we look at how they enabled the students to develop their reasoning, rather than focusing on the mathematical skills and knowledge that form the content for the lesson. Many teachers find this very refreshing and quite often state that they feel ‘freed-up’ to try things out without the constraints they often feel in traditional maths lessons. Over the years, teachers have found interesting ways to capture the lessons they have taught. Some use photographs with comments from the students, often they include examples of the students’ work; some focus on the teacher’s role and their observations. Where possible teachers work together, one teaching and the other observing and making notes of what the students say and do. On a few occasions, teachers have made short videos to capture particularly interesting events. On the course last year, Kevin Groake, from St Joseph’s Primary School, Highgate set up his own Lets Think Maths Blog. Other participants on the course enjoyed his openness and honesty with which he told the story of the lessons. This year, Kevin has attended the Let’s Think Maths Level 2 course with Sarah Seleznyov, alongside other teachers from different introductory courses. He has continued to keep his blog and you can see examples of the lessons he has taught using the link below. letsthinkmaths.wordpress.com Lynda Maple - Lets Think Mathematics Tutor   [post_title] => Changing teachers' practices by Lynda Maple [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => changing-teachers-practices-by-lynda-maple [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-06-01 12:04:49 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-06-01 11:04:49 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=923 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [8] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 858 [post_author] => 1034 [post_date] => 2017-04-04 09:08:02 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-04-04 08:08:02 [post_content] => Here Is one of our Let’s Think in English teachers’ accounts of their development while teaching the lessons. Sarah Cunningham is a Year 6 teacher in Berrywood Primary School, Hampshire. She attended a 6 days training course led by Leah Crawford (Hampshire LTE Tutor) and Michael Walsh over 2 years and is leading her school in developing the approach this year. You can learn more about the programme at www.letsthinkinenglish.org.uk or by contacting Michael.walsh@letsthink.org.uk Having recently graduated from the two-year Let’s Think in English training programme,I have been astounded by the change in learning characteristics displayed by the pupils I have taught. I have noticed a shift from reserved children to children confident to make a contribution; from one-word answers to developed, well-reasoned responses; from accepting the first answer given as the ‘right one’ to challenging each other’s thinking; from teacher led discussions to child initiated talk; from passive learners to creative and critical thinkers who willingly want to make a contribution. This is the power of Let’s Think in English. My LTE journey started just over two years ago. At the time, I wondered what I was about to be part of. My colleague and I had been sent the course outline and I couldn’t help but notice a section titled, “What happened to Lulu?” We looked at each other in a puzzled manner. She was a 60’s popstar who went on to compete in Strictly Come Dancing, wasn’t she? Nevertheless we had been persuaded by our Headteacher that this course was a game-changer in education and that we were about to become part of something special. We brushed our thoughts of Lulu’s career aside and attended the launch day. Led by the inspiring Michael Walsh and Leah Crawford, at the launch day we were presented with the research base behind LTE and shown the statistics demonstrating the significant impact on results in classes and schools where LTE had been implemented. The different aspects of the lessons were explained to us and we were given the opportunity to be involved in a couple of simulated lessons for us to then take back to our classes to trial. By the end of the day, I was excited. Not only had we discussed what really might have happened to Lulu, (from the Charles Causley poem,) but most importantly I had been exposed to a way of educating children that made sense to me. As a child, I was always the one questioning “Why?” when introduced to new concepts. At the time, it was a case of learning by rote and therefore, on reflection, I spent much of my own education as a passive learner, who lacked a depth of understanding and just plugged through a list of maths equations and learnt the annotations of my poetry anthology and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ off by heart. I remember being highly frustrated by this. It didn’t mean anything to me. When I embarked on my teaching career, much of my time at university was spent having lightbulb moments as I made connections with concepts I had been exposed to, but didn’t understand, as a child. Having experienced Philosophy for Children in the school where I volunteered in my gap year, I became passionate about how it promoted the development of children’s higher-order thinking skills. Since then I have relished the opportunity to ensure the children who I teach do not feel like passive learners and I feel very fortunate to have embarked on my LTE journey from my NQT year. LTE has been central to my development as a teacher as it encompasses many of the aspects of P4C and encourages the children to find and formulate their own voice and ideas. One of the greatest impacts of LTE has been the development of critical and creative thinkers in my classroom. Children in each of the three classes I have taught over the past two and half years have developed their ability to formulate their ideas at a small group level and then been able to present their contribution to the whole class. What was perhaps most encouraging was the children’s interest and desire to listen to each other’s contributions. Even if they disagreed, they could refer to comments made several minutes before. Pupils become confident to respectfully and critically evaluate each other’s and their own contributions and over time, they begin to reflect on what caused the change in their thinking. Class discussions that were previously led and perhaps shut down by more confident children have been replaced with rich dialogue involving each class member and led by the children. It has also been interesting to note the children who make the contributions and to analyse what the children say in their responses. Quite surprisingly I found that many of my more vulnerable pupils, including children on the SEN register, were becoming highly involved in the discussions and providing well thought-through and linguistically developed ideas. Complex grammar develops through talk before it emerges in writing. At this point it is perhaps important for me to say that in our school we do not set or group the children by ability. The children sit in groups of 4-6 of mixed ability. I strongly believe that the exposure of children who would previously have been considered ‘lower ability’ to the high quality, rich texts and stimulus used in the LTE sessions has meant that they have made significant progress, especially within their analysis and responses to texts in reading sessions. LTE encourages struggle and challenge and the children rise to it. I recognise that being the cup-half-full-girl that I am, I have so far presented a very sunny picture of LTE. I am inspired by it and in awe of the impact it has had on many children’s education because of its underlying pedagogies. But it doesn’t mean that I haven’t experienced my own struggle along the way. I have referred to my LTE experience as a journey, which is exactly what it has been. I started it as a very new teacher and on a surface level learnt useful tips such as not choosing your most confident child to begin the discussion as it will then shut the rest of the dialogue down. I found it very difficult not to positively reinforce contributions and respond with a ‘well done’ and an excitable dance at the front of my classroom when the child I least expected shared a thought-provoking idea that changed the thinking of the class. Mastering the art of a poker-face has taken time. Equally, so has not leading the children in a certain direction. It’s very tempting from having simulated many of the lessons on the course to want to steer the children in a certain direction or to expect them to reach a certain point. On some occasions, I have had to learn to accept children not getting to where I was expecting them to get to or to accept that they have taken the course of discussion down a different route. Two years on, I’m now excited to see how the children steer the discussion and where they take it. As teachers we are so driven and pressured by feeling like we have to get the children to a certain point of understanding by a certain time that it is refreshing to adopt this approach. It has however, taken time to know when to draw the children back to the question and knowing when to intervene, when to probe and when to encourage generalisation. When I began teaching my first series of LTE sessions, my colleague and I were observed by the rest of our LTE cluster group. I was amazed by the quality of the dialogue and on this occasion, spent approximately half an hour on the social construction aspect of the lesson. It’s easy to get caught up by the quality of children’s responses and forget you are the guardian of the lesson shape. I often ran short of time for the meaty part of the lessons: cognitive conflict and metacognition. This was a learning curve for me. There are countless points that I could list detailing how LTE has impacted on my teaching practice.  Most importantly, my style of questioning has changed – my favourite question now being, “What led you to think that?” As a result of LTE, I have thought more carefully about how my questions can facilitate an open discussion, ensuring I am not leading, but encouraging speculation and challenge from the children. Soon after beginning the LTE course, it was apparent how many aspects, especially the cognitive conflict, could be applied to other areas of the curriculum. In maths we often begin the lesson with a reasoning starter. I approach this as I would LTE by giving the children time talk in their group to respond to the starter before opening it up into a class dialogue. I facilitate the discussion exactly as I would a LTE lesson. This leads to a range of responses and the children evaluating which answer is more likely and providing evidence to justify why. As well as this, I have planned English units in which I have used a LTE style lesson to present the text to the children. This worked effectively with the book ‘Window’ by Jeannie Baker and caused lots of rich discussion and ultimately resulted in some really high quality writing. One of the biggest changes we have made, only recently and as a result of LTE, is to the teaching of reading. We now expose the children to the text, or part of the text in the first session, depending on how we have planned the structure of the questioning that follows. We then facilitate a LTE style session to develop children’s responses to the text and gain a deeper understanding and allow children to bring their own experiences to the discussion. The natural way LTE supports children to infer from the text and refer to the text in their responses to justify their contribution has been central to developing their ability to respond to high quality texts. Following this, in the third session, the children write a written response to the questions discussed on the previous day. Since starting this way of teaching reading in September, children are writing developed, well-evidenced and reasoned answers. They are confident to explain why they have chosen to include a certain quote to support their response and are answering the questions more thoroughly and accurately than we have ever experienced before. It is only right to include the response of the children “Let’s Think has helped me expand my imagination, made think outside the box and when I am editing pieces of work.” “Let’s Think has helped me feel more confident in showing and giving my ideas.” “It’s helped me listen.” “The Let’s Think lessons have helped me to read through the text more carefully and look for clues in words I wouldn’t normally look at. Although sometimes I don’t want to answer the question, it has boosted my confidence to try.” “Let’s think has helped me think more deeply and try to find hidden meaning through texts. I say my answers in better ways and have more confidence to disagree with others opinions if my own are different.” “Let’s Think has helped me be more confident in giving thorough answers. It’s helped my memory and listening skills.” “Let’s Think has helped me to read in-between the lines and listen and concentrate better.” “I am confident with Let’s Think. It has helped me think more deeply about things and it gives me a better memory.” “Let’s Think helps me in my reading because it is making my writing more mature and it helps me to retrieve evidence from the text.” “I feel different since October but I still need to improve.” “Let’s Think has helped me with my inference skills and my skills for backing up my opinion. I have also learnt how to link other ideas to the conversation and plan out what to say before saying it.” It is exciting and rewarding to read these comments, knowing it has had a huge impact on the children’s learning; LTE goes far beyond delivering curriculum content. It has the power to engage learners, make them passionate about what they are discussing and be creative and critical when responding to both a stimulus and each other. As Nelson Mandela so famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world.” LTE empowers children to engage in their learning critically and creatively, children become passionate about the contributions they and their classmates make and be actively involved in leading their learning. At a time when teachers are hounded by pressures of ensuring each child makes enough progress, delivering a significantly more challenging curriculum and mounting paperwork pressures, there is potential to lose the sole purpose of education and to end up creating learners taught by numbers in a robotic fashion. LTE can be the difference. It supports the move from reserved children to children confident to make a contribution; from one-word answers to developed, well-reasoned responses; from accepting the first answer given as the ‘right one’ to challenging each other’s thinking; from teacher led discussions to child-initiated talk; from teacher to facilitator; from passive learners to creative and critical thinkers who willingly want to make a contribution. Sarah Cunningham Year 6 teacher Berrywood Primary School Hampshire [post_title] => The Power of Let's Think in English [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-power-of-lets-think-in-english [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-04-04 16:57:11 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-04-04 15:57:11 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=858 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [9] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 835 [post_author] => 11 [post_date] => 2017-03-10 11:31:41 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-03-10 11:31:41 [post_content] => Last year I was able to work with five teachers from the Compass Partnership of Schools in Greenwich. Our aim was to develop some new Let's Think Science lessons for the primary phase and I would like to share one of them with you here. It is called the Three Billy Goats and explores the relationship between the distance of the light and shadow size. Please have a look at our resources and try the lesson as we would love to receive your feedback as we seek to produce a new series of lessons to develop scientific reasoning across Years 2 - 6. 3 billy goats 8_shadows-1 The 3 Billy Goats Gruff [post_title] => A new science lesson for you to try [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => a-new-science-lesson-for-you-to-try [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-03-10 11:31:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-03-10 11:31:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.letsthink.org.uk/?p=835 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 10 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 958 [post_author] => 93 [post_date] => 2018-01-26 09:05:57 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-01-26 09:05:57 [post_content] => In November, I was lucky enough to pay a second visit to Japan to observe teaching and learning.  And I was reminded of the strengths of the Japanese approach to learning. I observed a science lesson with Year 4 about wind power.  In the previous lesson, children had planned an experiment to test wind power, using a toy car with a sail attached and a blower with two speeds.  Each group had planned their own experiment and these plans were on display.  The teacher had deliberately not given feedback on these plans, because he wanted them to look at each other's plans and decide which plan was the best one to guide their experiments.  In this lesson, they chose the plan they wanted to follow, they carried out the experiment and they evaluated their methodology. What was interesting to me in this lesson was the focus on asking questions and not answering them.  The pupils were not told by their teacher whose plan for the experiment was the best.  They could judge for themselves and test their theory out by conducting their own experiment.  The experiment was not followed by a technical discussion about wind power and what they had learnt about forces, but by a discussion about which conditions would ensure that the experiment was valid, and what questions still remained for them at the end of the experiment: what was unanswered.  And again, no attempt was made to answer these questions: the children left the lesson pondering the questions that were raised. What was it that enabled this teacher to feel so comfortable with nurturing the asking of questions, instead of focusing on answering questions?  For me, key to this is the design of the Japanese curriculum, which has around 60% of the content of our primary national curriculum.  This leaves space for teachers to focus on developing a deep understanding of concepts.  So, in this particular unit on forces, the lesson I watched was one of a series of 7 lessons on wind power in a 13 lesson unit, which would be followed by a 6 week unit on elastic bands.  A 13 lesson unit on forces in the UK for a Year 4 class would expect significantly more content coverage and therefore by implication, considerably less depth of understanding.  And this makes UK teachers feel they have to answer children's questions and deal with children's misconceptions before the lesson ends. Let’s Think lessons don't work this way.  They often end with questions unanswered and it's ok to let children leave without an answer.  They often enable teachers to uncover misconceptions and don't require teachers to address these misconceptions before the end of the lesson: and that's ok too.  When children walk away with questions, they will carry on thinking about these questions, during break time, once they get home, over the weekend.  That’s got to be a good thing, right? If children walk away with a misconception, the teacher didn't create that misconception, it was already there.  And there are plenty more lessons in which these misconceptions can be properly tackled in a way that ensures deep understanding.  In fact, addressing misconceptions in a hurried way during the lesson, is likely to result in assimilation, not accommodation. And what about the entirely logical and understandable fear that teachers have about the need to move on with the coverage of curriculum content: 'No time to answer that question or tackle that misconception.  We have to move on!' What we do know is that by taking the time to ensure deep understanding of early concepts, children's ability to understand and apply these concepts to new material and to acquire a deep understanding of later concepts is enhanced and later learning will be accelerated.  This is one of the principles of a mastery curriculum, and it works. So teachers, free yourselves of the shackles of curriculum coverage and ask for questions, not answers.  Confusion, misconception and puzzlement are powerful tools for learning. 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