Inspiring learning

1. Inspiring learning The “O” factor Mike Hughes: “Lessons are for Learning” Network Educational Press Ltd

2. The “O” factor “Oh God, it’s Physics”

3. The “O” factor “Oh good, it’s Physics”

4. Write down…… • The first 3 words that comes into your head when you see the following slide

5. LESSONS

6. “Lessons” • 60 students

7. “Lessons” • 60 students • 27 wrote “teachers” or “teaching”

8. “Lessons” • 60 students • 27 wrote “teachers” or “teaching” • 20 - “boring” • 14 – “school’ • 13 – “homework”

9. “Lessons” • 60 students • 27 wrote “teachers” or “teaching” • 20 - “boring” • 14 – “school’ • 13 – “homework” • 13 – “learning” or “learners”

10. “Lessons” • 60 students • 27 wrote “teachers” or “teaching” • 20 - “boring” • 14 – “school’ • 13 – “homework” • 13 – “learning” or “learners” • 2 wrote “thinking” and 1 wrote “new stuff”

11. “Lessons” • 60 students • 27 wrote “teachers” or “teaching” • 20 - “boring” • 14 – “school’ • 13 – “homework” • 13 – “learning” or “learners” • 2 wrote “thinking” and 1 wrote “new stuff” • (the same as those that wrote “suicide”, “unmotivated” and “stress”)

12. Are things really this bad? Follow a student for a day.

13. What’s happening in most lessons?

14. What’s happening in most lessons? • Children answering questions

15. What’s happening in most lessons? • Students copying notes

16. What’s happening in most lessons? • Students “learning” something that they already know

17. What’s happening in most lessons? • Children writing down things that they don’t understand. “ - the earthquake was caused by movement along the subduction zone. Here the Cocos oceanic plate meets the Pacific plate –“ “What caused the earthquake in Mexico City?”

18. What’s happening in most lessons? • Children writing down things that they don’t understand. “ - the earthquake was caused by movement along the subduction zone. Here the Cocos oceanic plate meets the Pacific plate –“ “What caused the earthquake in Mexico City?” “movement along the subduction zone”

19. What’s happening in most lessons? • Children practising something that they can already do

20. What’s happening in most lessons? • Students doing practical work without really knowing the purpose

21. What’s happening in most lessons? • Students making models without a clear purpose

22. What’s happening in most lessons • Even AFL! Paul Black, Dylan Paul - I’m informed they are appalled about the way AFL has become an unimaginative and rigid ‘recipe’

23. Self-audit In each box is a list of commonly employed teaching strategies. Award each a mark out of ten depending on how frequently you use (or how often you see this in your school) the particular strategy in your teaching (10 = frequently, 1 = rarely). Try to use the full range of marks.

24. Self-audit In the second column of your sheet, give each strategy a second mark out of ten, depending on how effectively it contributes to learning (10 = significent contribution to learning, 1 = minimal contribution to learning)

25. Self-audit Plot your result on the scattergram that Simon is giving you. Consider your completed scattergram.

27. No National curriculum? • A whole generation of teachers who are unused to creating their own schemes/curricula

28. Enjoyment We know that children learn more when the lesson is interesting/memorable and when they are challenged to think, so we have to do whatever we can to make the lesson a “memorable” event.

29. Your time at school?

30. The ‘Hook’

31. Who can forget? The lesson where the chemistry teacher illustrated an exothermic reaction by burning his socks in an alcohol/water/salt mixture and then putting them on again

32. Who can forget? The lesson where the geography teacher illustrated coastal erosion by starting the lesson throwing a bucket of water at a heavily chalked blackboard

33. Who can forget? The lesson where the physics teacher illustrated work and power by getting his class to pull his car across the car park using a giant Newton meter

34. Who can forget? The lesson where the history teacher helped the class to recreate the trial of Charles I

35. Who can forget? The lesson where the tutor invited a terminal ill cancer patient to talk about their regret at starting smoking at 13

36. Who can forget? The lesson where the maths teacher illustrated the addition of negative numbers by staging a tennis by numbers game on the tennis courts

37. Who can forget? The lesson where the music teacher played the opening to the Rite of Spring in a completely darkened room with lights that gradually came on to illustrate the dawn of spring.

38. Who can forget? The lesson where the biology teacher had her class sit cross legged on their tables and taught them how to meditate by focusing on their breathing as an introduction to the lungs

39. Passionate teachers? Teaching should be fun (the classroom part!). If it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.

40. Ways to encourage creativity/thinking

41. Permission to fail • ‘The Inner game of tennis’ – Tim Gallwey

42. Don’t do your usual

43. New classroom? • My best Science lessons have been taught in an ordinary classroom not a Science lab. What could an English teacher do in a lab?!

44. New furniture arrangement?

45. “Thinking is so important” (Edmund Blackadder)

46. Changing the form of information

47. Changing the form of information • Draw the sentence

48. Draw the sentence • Draw the sentence • Food is ground into small pieces in the mouth. • Saliva helps the food to slide down the gullet. • The stomach mixes the food is with acid and pepsin. • The stomach squeezes food into the small intestine. • Bile from the liver is added along with enzymes from the pancreas. • In the small intestine the food molecules get small enough to pass into the blood. • In the large intestine water is taken out of what is left of the food. • Faeces are stored in the rectum before being expelled through the anus.

49. Draw the sentence • Draw the sentence Freeze-Thaw weathering • Rain water falls into a crack in some rocks. • At night the water freezes and expands. • This makes the crack larger. • During the day the ice melts. • The water falls deeper into the crack. • The water freezes again and widens the crack. • This happens repeatedly. • Eventually a piece of rock is broken away.

50. Draw the sentence • Draw the sentence Causes of the Second World War • Germany is defeated in the First World War. • The treaty signed with the victorious nations is very tough on Germany. • Resentment builds amongst the German people. • The Nazis take advantage of this resentment to build their support. • The victorious nations do not believe a world war will happen again and do not re-arm. • As the Nazis take power they gradually break agreements made at the end of WWI. • Germany rearms and threatens neighbouring states. • The invasion of Poland starts WWII.