Ford Castle http://www.ford-castle.co.uk Excellent outdoor education for over 50 years Wed, 16 May 2012 15:31:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Are we in danger of making clowns of our teachers? http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/general/are-we-in-danger-of-making-clowns-of-our-teachers http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/general/are-we-in-danger-of-making-clowns-of-our-teachers#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:27:55 +0000 editor-ruth http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/?p=1582  

When is a teacher not a teacher? When they’re a teeny tiny molecule? When they’re a flower? When they’re a clown?

Pressure from Ofsted (and others) to make lessons more interactive and accessible to all students may put a teacher’s imagination to the test.  But more importantly, may risk losing credibility that really will engage pupils.
New research suggests that students who are in a good mood are more receptive to creative learning.  Clearly pupils who are engaged by their teacher are more likely to contribute positively and get more out of the experience, but is there a line that separates excellent teaching from pure entertainment?Wonderfully interactive lesson plans, devised by highly-motivated teachers, may successfully involve the whole class and hold the attention of all; even those who normally have difficulty remembering why they opened their pencil case, but what will it take to make them concentrate for the next lesson?
Clearly the suggestion is not to prevent interesting lesson plans or imaginative ways of teaching.  Perhaps there is a more fundamental key to engaging students though, which has more longevity.  Research shows that pupils, who believe in their teacher and find them to be credible, will be more receptive to what that teacher is saying.  
 If students trust their teacher, believe them to be competent and that it’s worth their while to listen; they will.  There may be a danger, however, of attempting to fabricate the effects of credibility with gimmicks that pander to children for whom opening their schoolbag is a challenge, whilst patronising the rest of the class.  Apparently it’s not just bad party magicians that children can see through at forty paces.
We have an ethos of learning through fun.  All of our young visitors will take something away with them: a greater understanding of what it was like to be a soldier stationed on Hadrian’s Wall; an idea of what Victorian entrepreneurship achieved; or a new-found interest in Fencing or Archery.  We take the business of fun very seriously though.  The same Group Leader who takes their group through a course in local history or on a fieldwork trip may be performing at Evening Ents.  So once again, the teacher becomes the jester?  
Context is all important of course.  If the Group Leader has no credibility, they will remain a joke in everything.  Aside from not being able to engage the group on excursions or fieldwork trips, perhaps more importantly, as an instructor it’s imperative that everyone pays attention to the safety talk before the more adventurous activities.   Our Group Leaders and instructors aren’t often qualified teachers, but we do spend a lot of time and effort finding, training and then monitoring the right people.
So whichever hat our Group Leaders are wearing, we’d expect it to fit perfectly and for them to carry the group with them whether they’re in mid-flow about rivers or just jesting.

 

]]> http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/general/are-we-in-danger-of-making-clowns-of-our-teachers/feed 1 Is learning, as a reward in itself, dead? http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/general/is-learning-as-a-reward-in-itself-dead http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/general/is-learning-as-a-reward-in-itself-dead#comments Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:58:22 +0000 admin http://www.ford-castle.co.uk/?p=1536 From gold stars that reward positive behaviour and good work, to expensive IT packages with more advanced carrots that are easily recognised by today’s students.   Teaching has fortunately moved on from the stick-and-stick approach, to more subtle forms of classroom control and more advanced techniques than learning by rote.  Is there a concern though, that children are not equipped with the tools to cope with dead ends and to have the self-confidence and motivation to find a solution, when the answer to the puzzle or the information they are looking for, is a little harder to find?  Gold Star Yet when the answer is but a Google or Wiki-check away, are we just ignoring the inevitable?  Why read an entire book when the Internet holds ready answers to every specific question, the swift end to your homework and your access to the next level?  I remember being so relieved at finally finishing a certain English text, felt at that time to be perfect for young learners, which took, or seemed to take, an entire academic year to complete.  A new teacher, a new text, but what was this?  Dickens?  Good grief, was the man attempting the world record for the longest, most convoluted sentences (2 House Points away from the first person to Google ‘longest sentence on record’*)?  Several chapters on and I was hooked.  Was it the literature, or was it the class discussions that led to the homework we were given?  I can’t honestly remember, but I do know that those assignments didn’t come out of a textbook and none of the answers consisted of simply the name of a character. So why not use rewards as a means of encouraging the unenthusiastic learner to get involved, particularly if that may spark a genuine interest?  The challenge then, of course, is how to keep that attention and encourage students to want to extend and develop beyond the programme. The fear, of course, is that the gamification of education inevitably leads to the expectation of rewards rather than imbuing the inherent value of a subject.  Moreover, what happens when the gold stars and secret levels cease?  How do you re-engage a disenchanted child?  Do I remember more about meandering rivers and oxbow lakes, than Malthus’ theory of population explosion/crash, because I stood, in totally inadequate wellies, and measured such a river?  Do I have more empathy with my grandmother’s generation, forced to write right-handed because writing with your left hand was impossible without constantly elbowing your neighbour, than with a child working day after day in the cotton mills of Lancashire – though hugely sympathetic towards them, of course – because I have sat, chalk in hand, slate before me, with a cane-wielding school ma’am hovering, at Beamish Museum?  Well, I didn’t get A’ level history for my knowledge of either child’s experience, but I found out that history was real and not just about memorising dates and whilst my geography studies went no further, I can still point out a pyramidal peak, evidence of solifluction or a limestone pavement at a hundred metres.  Why?  Because I was given the opportunity to get up close and personal to all three on a geography fieldwork trip. Learning outside the classroom is an extension rather than an alternative to good teaching, not a gimmick, but with often immediate results and it can be an excellent means to switching students on to a subject, or extending areas more suited to a hands-on approach. *Okay, so the contenders are:

  • Nigel Tomm’s one-sentence novel, “The Blah Story” at 469,375 words
  • Jonathan Coe’s novel “The Rotters’ Club” containing a 13,955-word sentence
  • James Joyce’s “Ulysses” with two sentences from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, one of 11,282 words and one of 12,931 words
  • William Faulkner’s novel “Absalom, Absalom!” with a sentence of 1,288 words

The last is the entry from the book of “Guinness World Records”  . . . and yes, I ‘Googled it’, to discover the above on Wikipedia. 

Do you take my point . . . ?

 

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