Creative Teaching & Learning

Epic dreams

Ben Hur? Pah! Andrew Beswick took on a much bigger directing challenge when he filmed a Roman Britain epic and got every child at his primary school to play soldiers. He reports on the project that taught practical skills, teamwork and creativity.

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      string(2311) "people with a rare opportunity tobe part of something fun, creative and sociable. Sabrina Broadbent reports on FILMCLUB’s efforts to give morechildren the chance to get involved.www.teachingtimes.com/articles/filmclub-creativity2. Epic dreams – Andrew Beswick recalls the exciting experience he gave his students filming a Celts v. Romansblockbuster in a project of epic proportions.library.teachingtimes.com/articles/school-film-projectSupporting wellbeing through film – Into Film Festival 2015Surveys show that problems such as anxiety, depression and self-harm among young people are on theincrease. With wellbeing and mental health high on the national agenda, film – accessible and inclusivefor all – is a highly effective tool to boost young people’s confidence and tackle sensitive subjects linkedto their physical and emotional health.This Autumn, Into Film is launching a wellbeing season with hand-picked films, thought-provoking teachingresources and filmmaking activities to start conversations about topics such as body image, bullying, healthyrelationships and online safety. Seventy-five per cent of teachers told us that watching and discussing filmshas increased pupils’ confidence, and many report increases in empathy and tolerance.Wellbeing was also a headline theme at this year’s Into Film Festival, which took place from 4 to 20 November2015. Free screenings, with associated teaching resources, of films such as Cinderella (PG), The Diary of aWimpy Kid (PG), The DUFF (12A), Force Majeur (15) and Amy (15) did a fantastic job of encouraging youngpeople to stop and think about relevant issues.Find out more about Into Film’s wellbeing theme at: www.intofilm.org/wellbeing.The Into Film Festival is a free and annual celebration of film and education for five to 19-year-olds across the UK. Free activities include UK-wide screenings, special speaker Q&As and masterclasses with industry experts, as well as exclusive events such as film previews, premieres andmore. For further information about this year’s programme, visit: www.intofilm.org/festival.http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/filmclub-creativityhttp://library.teachingtimes.com/articles/school-film-projecthttp://www.intofilm.org/wellbeinghttp://www.intofilm.org/festival"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

A practical guide to teaching with film

3 Dec 2015

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      string(3916) "time, it was often challenging and required boundless energy.The time to plan strategically is vital in getting the most out of this sort of project. Time to train staff to become more prepared to deal with the type of learning taking place and the philosophy behind PBL is also essential.Appendix 2 provides a project calendar (also taken, with permission, from the Buck Institute for Education). This can be used to plan your project, but may also come in handy during the project, as a record of activities and events for later scrutiny.MoneyEnsure the project is supported by some allocated funding. Our budget wasn’t big but it helped enormously having some money, especially for buying resources for the exhibition and facilitating trips for those students whose families find these costs prohibitive.Get others involvedDistribute leadership and ownership of the project. Sharing leadership with other enthusiasts helps drive the process. It wasn’t until the projects took place and bore fruit that everyone was convinced it was a worthwhile endeavour. Moral purposeBelieve in and champion outward-facing teaching. Going ahead with a project which flies in the face of the majority of teaching and learning that currently takes place at Key Stage 3 and being convinced that it is the right thing to do, (when there is always the possibility that it could go wrong) takes courage, which only comes from having a strong sense of moral purpose – the conviction that what the students will gain from the experience will be positive and worthwhile. The moment the students began to appreciate and respond to stimulus beyond the classroom convinced everyone that outward-facing activities can raise aspirations and attainment, especially amongst the children who need it the most. Recognise and celebrate the achievementHaving a public exhibition or similar celebration event at the end is helpful. This encouraged students to recognise and respond to the fact that their task was ‘real’ and would culminate with showing their work to a critical audience beyond their usual teachers. This was both exciting and daunting at the same time – for both teachers and pupils. It encouraged a great deal of reflection about what level of work students are capable of and how we all raised our expectations as a learning community about what could and should be achieved for the exhibition. Moreover, many students developed a real passion to create something worthwhile and be successful, which can sometimes be missing in their day-to-day classwork. ScheduleEnsure that this is a defined and overt initiative. This project ran across five consecutive weeks. An alternative would be to run the same project throughout the year in dedicated curriculum slots, which would certainly have been less frantic and stressful.But the way we did it allowed students to become totally immersed and independent in their work in a way that would have been compromised if the project was drawn out across an extended time period. Moreover, two colleagues from neighbouring schools who run projects throughout the year said that if they were to plan again, they would use our model. Why? Because the atmosphere and excitement they experienced when they entered the project room at our school was palpable in a way that it was not in their own institutions. Alyson Boustead is Vice Principal at William Hulme’s Grammar School in Manchester. Knowledge trails1) Project Inspire – Geraldine Norman describes how their exciting project-based learning scheme, My World, came into existence. library.teachingtimes.com/articles/projectinspire2) Epic dreams – Andrew Beswick’s Year 6 students take on a project of epic proportions and film a Celts v. Romans blockbuster movie with every child in the school playing soldiers. library.teachingtimes.com/articles/school-film-project Project design rubric"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

PBL for beginners

21 May 2014

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      string(348) "... events, discussing character, feelings,behaviour and relationships’. NLSAnthony Browne and Gwen Strauss’s The Night Shimmyis an excellent resource for doing just this. The maincharacter, Eric, is not too keen on talking. He has a ‘friend’,the Night Shimmy, who talks for him and protects him fromthe frightening things that ..."
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      string(5612) "tree with a bird in itwhilst the text reads: ‘There in a tree was a blackbird singinga lovely song – as always.’Having looked at the book together and revisited thepicture sequence, the teacher asks the Y2 class to thinkabout what interests them in the story and to explore theirideas through drawing and/or writing. Children work indifferent parts of the room, some at tables, others on thecarpet. They whisper from time to time but mostly they arequiet and busy with their own thoughts. Some fill a wholepage with ideas and others write just a single question suchas ‘How did the bird die?’ The children gather together totalk about their questions and the teacher writes these upfor all to see.  Amy says ‘How do they know the bird died?’and Beth comments ‘I think the bird on the tree was theone in the hole’. The class gets stuck into discussion abouthow the animals could tell whether the bird was really dead.The teacher writes their suggestions up and they debateeach one: ‘the eyes were open’, ‘you can check the heartbeat’,‘doctors can make your heart start again’. A web ofpossibilities develops on the whiteboard but the discussionis inconclusive: declaring somebody dead is a complexmatter. As they talk, they refer purposefully to details in thepictures and in the text to confirm or refute ideas.‘In year 6, term 1 pupils should learn to distinguish betweenfact and opinion’. NLSChris Van Allsberg’s ‘The Mysteries of Harris Burdick’ is aseries of unusual black and white images accompaniedonly by a title and a caption. Working with a single imageof a man holding a chair up in the air as he looks down at alump under a rug (the caption reads: ‘two weeks passedand it happened again’) a class of Y5–6 pupils refine andprioritise their questions in small groups. Each group mustchoose only one question to put forward. In the end, theclass vote overwhelmingly that the question ‘What is underthe rug?’ is the most important to them. As they put forwardpossibilities, one pupil draws attention to the expressionand attitude of the man. Perhaps the man is mad, drunk,on drugs, hallucinating? How do we arrive at judgementsabout the behaviour of others? The teacher asks the pupilsto try and define what they mean by the word ‘mad’ andthey offer examples. A concept line is drawn on the board,with ‘normal’ at one end and ‘mad’ at the other and pupilsdebate where to place their examples of mad or normalbehaviour. As the discussion continues, the uncertaintyincreases and the last pupil to speak suggests: ’nobody iscompletely mad or normal’.‘In year 3, term 3 pupils should evaluate stories and considerthe credibility of events, discussing character, feelings,behaviour and relationships’. NLSAnthony Browne and Gwen Strauss’s The Night Shimmyis an excellent resource for doing just this. The maincharacter, Eric, is not too keen on talking. He has a ‘friend’,the Night Shimmy, who talks for him and protects him fromthe frightening things that appear in his dreams. Havingchosen the question ‘was the night shimmy real or not real?’children work in groups of four with one person acting asscribe. They are asked to consider arguments for andagainst the night shimmy being real. The teacher suggeststhat they could organise their ideas under three headings.Some of their answers are shown in the table below:31Teaching Thinking  Autumn 2003www.teachthinking.com Focus on: EnglishFocus on: EnglishFocus on: EnglishFocus on: EnglishFocus on: EnglishWhen the children return to a plenary session with theirideas, the dialogue moves on again to the question of howwe know whether something is real or not. The class isbuzzing and children are clamouring to offer answers:things you can see, things you can touch, things inphotographs or on the television. Each time someone putsforward an idea, the teacher gently pushes further. Soonshe doesn’t have to as the children themselves questionthe validity of each other’s examples of reliable ‘evidence’.Planned in the National CurriculumThe programmes of study in the National Curriculum have,from the outset, been couched in the terminology of enquiry.Whatever subject you turn to, you find reference to learningapproaches that include active pupil thinking such asquestioning (in all subjects); hypothesising and predicting(in science and English); appraising, reviewing and evaluating(in music, English and DT); comparing and investigating (inRE and history); responding, exploring mood, feeling and fairplay (in Art, PE and dance). These information-processing,reasoning and thinking approaches were furtheremphasised in the introduction to the National Curriculum(2000). This document also put greater emphasis on theability to communicate effectively, the importance of linkingknowledge with values and the development of both a senseof self and a sense of community.Experience in working with teachers across the primaryage range suggests that, while the skills developed inphilosophical enquiry often transfer to other areas of thecurriculum, the approach fits very comfortably withprogrammes of study in both English and in PSHE. Teacherstend therefore to plan their philosophy sessions into oneof these two ‘slots’, using either an hour a week from theirdaily literacy allowance, or the time allocated for PSHE (ifany).  At Key Stage One, the emphasis in both English(Speaking and Listening) and PSHE is on speaking clearlyand confidently, sharing opinions, listening to one anotherand participating in group discussion, taking turns,"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Philosophically Speaking

24 Feb 2011

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      string(357) "... the term by John Flavell in his 1976 paper Metacognitive aspects of problem-solving. Figure 1: Published literature on ‘Learning about Learning’ ** As featured on eric.ed.govTable 1 lists some examples of educational programmes which have appeared in the literature on metacognition throughout this period. These programmes vary in ..."
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      string(5614) "Learning to Learn (L2L) is a branch of educational theory and practice concerned with helping people become more effective learners. As can be seen in Figure 1, the amount of literature published on L2L has expanded significantly throughout the last 40 years. This literature centres around the concept of metacognition – often taken to mean ‘thinking about thinking’ – following the introduction of the term by John Flavell in his 1976 paper Metacognitive aspects of problem-solving. Figure 1: Published literature on ‘Learning about Learning’ ** As featured on eric.ed.govTable 1 lists some examples of educational programmes which have appeared in the literature on metacognition throughout this period. These programmes vary in focus and scale. However, it is also clear that they overlap in significant ways. For example, it could be said that initiatives such as ‘Learning to Think’ and ‘Thinking about Thinking’ centre around metacognition, whereas ‘Learning about Learning’, ‘Learning How to Learn’ and ‘Thinking Together’ involve broader notions of meta-learning and self-regulation. Explaining the difference between these two notions, Chris Watkins describes metacognition as ’awareness of thinking processes, and “executive control” of such processes’, while ‘meta-learning (making sense of one’s experience of learning)… covers a much wider range of issues than metacognition, including goals, feelings, social relations and context of learning’ (Watkins, 2001, p1). Underscoring the distinction, Watkins asserts: “metacognition is a defining characteristic of our species: meta-learning is its dynamic epitome” (Watkins, 2001, p7).Table 1. Examples of educational initiatives oriented toward metacognition. Saljö, R. (1979) Learning about learning, Higher Education, 8, 443-451. Hounsell, D. 1979, Learning to learn: research and learning in student development, Higher Education, vol. 8, pp. 453-469.  Novak, J.D. & Gowin, D.B. (1984) Learning How to Learn, Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, G. (1986) Learning to Study. National Extension College.Perkins, D.N., Goodrich, H., Tishman, S., & Mirman O. J. (1994). Thinking Connections: Learning to Think and Thinking to Learn. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Group.Collins C. & Mangieri J. (Ed.) (1992), Teaching Thinking: an agenda for the 21st century. Hillsdale NJ, Erlbaum.  Mercer, N., & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the development of children’s thinking. London, UK: Routledge.Claxton, G. (2002). Building learning power. Bristol: TLO Limited.Claxton, G, Chambers, M, Powell, G & Lucas, B. (2011) The Learning Powered School: Pioneering 21st Century Education. TLO, Bristol.Smith, A., Lovatt, M., & Turner, J. (2009) Learning to Learn in Practice: The L2 Approach. London: Crown House Publishing.Evidence for L2L: a mixed pictureIn 2011, the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation jointly published a Teaching and Learning Toolkit, with a view to helping schools decide how best to allocate Pupil Premium (PP) funding (Higgins et al., 2011). Regularly updated ever since, the Toolkit has been well-received by the teaching profession, and the majority of schools in the UK now use it to inform strategic planning. Ranked first in this league table of educational effectiveness are ”meta-cognition and self-regulation”, which are described as having ‘high impact for low cost, based on extensive evidence’ (Sutton-EEF, 2015). Meta-cognition (sometimes known as ‘learning to learn’) and self-regulation approaches aim to help learners think about their own learning more explicitly… The evidence indicates that teaching these strategies can be particularly effective for low achieving and older pupils. (Sutton-EEF, 2015)The educational value of developing students’ metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities is also supported by the results of a number of interventions showing large effect sizes on learning and study skills, and a range of academic attainments (e.g., Whitebread, 2013; Dignath, Buettner and Langfeldt, 2008; Hattie, Biggs & Purdie, 1996). Despite such a compelling research literature, attempts to translate the insights of the metacognitive movement into educational programmes of study have often fallen short of fulfilling the goal of consistently improving academic outcomes. In the UK, a number of large-scale initiatives have been trialed throughout in the last 15 years. These include the Campaign for Learning’s Learning to Learn project (Higgins et al., 2007; Wall et al., 2010); the Learning How to Learn initiative (James et al., 2006); Building Learning Power (Claxton et al., 2011); and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Opening Minds programme (e.g. see Aynsley et al., 2012). Large-scale evaluations of these initiatives reveal that they have not resulted in the kinds of learning gains that we might expect from programmes designed to help young people become more effective learners. Which begs the question: where did it all go wrong?One increasingly popular way to answer this question is to assert that generic skills do not exist – that skills are context-specific and remain context-bound, and that the transfer of skills is an impossible dream. 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Leadership

Rediscover Learning to Learn

20 Jun 2017

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