Have you ever had one of those moments when the camera zooms in on you, everything stands still and you suddenly get it?
Have you ever had one of those moments when the camera zooms in on you, everything stands still and you suddenly get it?
Alistair Smith, in his book "Accelerated Learning in Primary Schools" told me that one of the secrets to learning new things is re-categorisation. That's the reason that I'm writing this post. It's also the reason I failed as an Electrical Engineer (I took notes in the lectures, but didn't look at them or do anything with them soon enough to properly learn the ideas). You see I was at this maths training day yesterday and I took all my notes on Twitter. So all of the information is out there in the ether, but it's not going to get any deeper into my brain unless I re-categorise it. This post is the first step in the re-categorisation process. There's another step to come when I refine my thoughts and write some focussed posts. Tweets in bold, extra thoughts in normal writing:
Yes it is possible to do work without a pc…
I started my first round of monitoring today.
The absolute key priority is that every child settles into their new class – start as you mean to carry on. Make clear and explicit your expectations to all from minute one, day one and continually reinforce – bad habits can be formed very quickly. Don’t worry about getting through lots of work, go slowly – quality learning behaviours and positive attitudes are far more important than quantity.
Be “over the top” to start off with, once all children “know the ropes” only then can you start to slowly ease off. Discuss and agree rules, rewards and consequences that will work for you and your class of children. Make these explicit on display to all and constantly refer to them (ours not mine).
So in turn I had converted his text into a list of questions that looked like this:
And I thought that would do the trick. But then I realised that I wanted to answer these questions by asking the children about them – and let’s face it, they’re not so child friendly. So I made a quick questionnaire that looks like the one in the photo. You can find the real one here.
The danger of following a spiral curriculum (a la Bruner) is that if you always follow the same path, you hit the same bits of learning at the same point on the spiral. Sometimes that means hitting difficult concepts at the end of a term when everyone is tired.
I’m loving the size of this carrot from Becky’s allotment
Sent from my thingamajig
Picked and underneath the pushchair…