Supporting Students

There is no such thing as a student who is a failure.. but we have all attempted tasks and failed. Why? A multitude of reasons, but each experience can add to the learning curve of life. On this blog, I will be sharing secrets from my own personal experience of how YOU can help your students suceed in life and learning...

IT Class update...

Have been using my laptop and rodent pic to show my IT students that blogs can tend to be informal. The idea came to me that next year for IT Practioners, it would be cool to set the classroom up as a "Company office" with 'PearNet' logos up on the wall, and directors etc. appointed.

The photo of my lovely daughter is the pic I could find on my USB stcik while all eyes are upon me in the class, Yikes!!!!

New Year's Greeting (academically speaking)!

During the summer break the last thing on my mind (or anyone else's) were the educational experiments that I am overseeing in our department here at Acton College. Well, we've been 'kick-started' back to life, in that tomorrow, I have to shepherd our department through roll-out and then through all our pre-flight ground checks and standby for our experimental first flight next week...

Yep, it feels a bit like the first flight of the Airbus A380 ...and the number of 'passengers' (read 'students' on board our Additional Learning Support (ALS) department are about equal, too. Welcome aboard, if you dare!

He Did It!

His 4th attempt... and he did it! Haileab sat the on-line exam twice in one day, and finally achieved a 56.4% pass mark. Here he is in our ALS teaching room where we have conducted most of our 1:1 "Power Revision" sessions. All our ALS staff were delighted.. I don't know if I was happier at Lewis Hamilton's British Grand Prix win or Haileab's success! Each attempt Haileab made ended up with a measurable increase. There are several aspects to this:

(1) We now have clear preliminary indications that "Power Revision" works... would it work with a small group of 2, 3 or 4 students? I believe it would.

(2) Another contributing factor for this success may be the fact he re-took the exam the same day. (He would not have had the same set of questions, only the same range of six subject areas.) A week ago I had a student who qualified for ALS but who decided to "go it alone" and failed at the first attempt. He re-took the test the same afternoon and passed.

Haileab received so much revision support because much of the taught classes had finished, which released timetable blocks for me to teach. (By the way, during the exams, Haileab received no support, such as reader, scribe, etc. at all.) For many reasons, "Power Revision" sessions may be more effective in a small group setting, provided the students are sitting similar subjects. Well done, Haileab! (Haileab has kindly given his permission to publish these photos, which I took today, on the web.)

End of Year Exam Frenzy!

In theory, this is a "quiet" week as classes have all ended, but for me it is more like being Lewis Hamilton waiting for the qualifying rounds at Silverstone last Saturday! Lewis went on to spectacular Formula 1 win the following day, but qualifying wasn't easy...

As I write, I have a student in the exam room, on a 3rd exam re-take. This is a mature student from an African country, who has excellent craft skills, but has weak English literacy skills I've been using a technique I call "power revision" and is multi-sensory.. at one point, I freaked out everyone in the staff room and my poor student when I pretended to get an electric shock from a fan the student was switching on. Although I am with one student, I don't use pen and paper, but a large white-board and coloured board markers, and I often act-out or dramatise scenarios the student might encounter on a construction site. (During one session, I drew on one of our college windows, that happens to face the new Wembley Stadium, to teach the concept of scale.) I also have a PC at the side, ready to do Google searches.

We revise ONLY the subjects that are exam-relevant, and at the same time, I help build and expand the student's vocabulary.

He took the exam for the 3rd time this morning, and rather like driving on a wet race track after it has been bone dry all weekend, the computerised exam threw up a massive amount of questions we had never revised. I'm hoping and praying that this afternoon, the questions will be kinder to him.. Does this experiment work? Well, here are the results so far:

1st take; 10th June 2008: 22% (3 hours 1:1 power revision; 1.5 hours general 1:1 revision)
2nd take; 30th June 2008: 37.5% (7 hours 1:1 power revision)
3rd take; 7th July 2008: 42% (5 hours 1:1 power revision + homework)
4th take; 7th July 2008 ??% (45 minutes debrief and evaluation)

Will he take poll position... watch this space!

Teaching Experiments Reach Philippines

I am thrilled that a teacher from another culture wants to try the Supported Experiments! Gladdys is a local elementary school assistant headteacher, chief librarian and curriculum advisor for her region in the Philippines. Several months ago, I sent her some DVD curriculum material that ended up as a successful art and religious studies project for her entire school. Learning of my involvement here in England in co-ordinating supported experiments for our department, she has wanted to try some experiments of her own. The idea she is working with involves daily focused student prayer. The story so far...

"I love your idea, Gladdys, (as you appear to be teaching in a Catholic setting, the prayer will not be a problem), and what you say: 'a specific purpose like "giving them the grace to learn and practice being courteous" , in this way the children have a goal... and throughout the day u will know if such specific prayer is carried on/lived on by the pupils...'

"What strikes me is that this is very focused and specific; this is the right way to make your experiment 'measurable'. Obviously, you will be monitoring student response 'throughout the day' (as you say) and I wonder if you’ve thought of a 5 minute review exercise at the end of the day, with the students writing one sentence about if they felt they achieved the goal, why or why not, and what their next step of progress might be? Indeed, if they write the prayer at the beginning of the day and return to it later, it would tie it all together. At student review times, progress of these little prayers could be included in the review. Those that might be uncomfortable with "prayers" or of a different faith, could be encouraged to see it as daily "goals". It would be lovely to see how this project progresses, and maybe I will enter a separate blog entry, so all can see your progress!"

Marginalising Faith

Saw this bookshelf in our local 'Oxfam' charity store recently.. a big gap when it came to books on 'religion'!

Unfortunately, there is a big gap for religion / faith / spirituality in many people's hearts and souls, and it is at the root of lots of problems in Britain. Of course, a lot of people are religious, but has it transformed their life, or is it helping them become more loving, caring and tolerant? Some expressions of faith are directed towards a seeming intolerance of others, and this is why many other things may sometimes hide under a religious mask. We cannot point the finger at any one faith, and indeed, I have met many an intolerant Christian. However, I make no excuse for being a committed Christian myself - for the values that Jesus Christ modeled are those of love, faith, acceptance and caring for others - the values that I seek to emulate, however poorly, in my own life and in my teaching practice.

It is less about 'preaching' and more about 'living', and for this very reason, (since we are considering ways to improve teaching practice) I refuse to make this blog a 'secular' thing. The spiritual is easily divided from the whole person, and the idea of excluding 'godly' values and virtues from our educational system is hogwash. However unpopular the notion may be, there is an objective 'right' and 'wrong' out there, and the Ten Commandments are a good place to start... provided we remember that it is only those of us 'without sin' who have the entitlement to 'cast the first stone'. I don't know where you stand, but it means that while I learn to hate every manifestation of sin (teenage knife crime, for example?) as a follower of Christ, I am free to love the sinner.