Learner Evolution ~ Chris Harte

Resilience, abandonment and cunning

All learners should be more resilient. It is good for them. It makes them better learners. Should they? Is it? Does it really? Let's discuss...

Every school talks about developing attributes in their kids and this is a good thing. It becomes an even better thing when learners are put into situations which help them recognise the challenges, see how their developing attributes (like resilience) help them move forward and reflect on how they might further develop aforementioned attributes. This is good. 

But let us hone in for a moment on one of the most often promoted attributes in the development of our young humans; resilience. What does it really mean to be resilient? Literally and etymologically it means to jump back or recoil back (resalire - to leap back). Figuratively, it means that we can bounce back from problems and difficulties and is often conflated into meaning that we can keep fighting on (in fact having a conversation with my 9 year old son and wonderful wife in the car we discussed whether resilience and persistence were often conflated and decided that I have indeed done so in this post). If you ask a learner would they say "no matter how hard, you just keep trying." Maybe something like that? Is that really what it boils down to? Something as simple as not giving up? Well I have a problem with that. Does this encourage learners to keep on keeping on, chipping away in the same way at the difficulty they are facing? Does a highly resilient learner keep bouncing back from the same failure? Maybe they should just give up. 

There is undoubtedly a sisyphean dignity in continually rolling a stone up a hill to simply watch it roll back down again, but should we be promoting this type of resilience over something more useful, like cunning or abandonment? If a learner is really struggling with something in their learning, maybe they should abandon this failure and find a better failure or maybe they should try and be cunning. Now that is a great attribute (assuming that we are using the original meaning of the word meaning highly skilled and knowledgeable). 

Great learners are cunning. They see a problem and try to overcome it. They fail. They try again and they fail (well done on being resilient, have a sticker!). They then stop trying in the same way. They step back. They observe and immerse themselves in the problem and use age old cunning to see whether or not they can overcome the problem in a different, perhaps novel way. They ideate their way out of the problem if the problem is worth solving (see below). So although resilience is a really positive attribute, it should not be blind and should have at least an equal measure of cunning. 

The whole issue of abandonment is fascinating and I will explore it in another post but to sum it up; a learner figures out the simple equation "is the value of this learning equal to or greater than the effort put in to attain it? IF = yes THEN proceed IF = no THEN abandon." Learners who can really focus their energy where it matters are perhaps more successful than those who are blindly resilient. 

So a cunning learner who is ready to abandon may not seem as noble as Sisyphus and his rock'n'roll, but they may indeed be a lot more effective. 

Feature photo used under Creative Commons by Pascal (Source: Flickr)

Languages:Reboot

In my last post I ranted and talked about the state of the languages nation, so here I am going to share some of my thinking into how I think it could be done! Any of the good ideas I have are mainly stolen and at best blended with the ideas of such wonderful thinkers as Derek Wise, Michael Wardle, Darren Mead, John Connor, Ewan McIntosh et al and I must confess that anything that sounds rubbish is inevitably a 100% me, but here we go. The following is the introduction from an essay I am writing which form the basis for a presentation (see the handout at the top of this post) I am giving in Southampton on Sunday (which if you would like to watch it live streamed and probably see me trip over or faint you can tune in here at 9:45am GMT Sunday 13th February). If you think it is interesting, then tune into the broadcast or catch up with the blog post next week. 

Languages : Reboot

It is 2011 and we are in danger. By we, I mean those of us who may have an interest in the following ideas; learners and teachers of languages. Danger may seem a strong word, but I do not use it lightly. We are in danger of turning our children off languages. The current government has put in place the English Baccalaureate which will encourage “more rigourous, academic study of language” and like it or not this concept will inevitably lead to a rise on the numbers of language learners continuing to study languages up to the age of sixteen. The great caveat is that if we continue with the mundane, memory based, rote learning and nullifying contexts of the current GCSE, we will lose any sense of developing linguists and we will continue to keep only a very small proportion of those who study a language up to the age of 16 studying languages up to A-level and beyond once they have achieved their baccalaureate.  The current government’s plan with the Ebacc is not to develop a new generation of great linguists, it is to create a new generation of learners who see languages as an elite subject which marks the academically bright from the proletariat. This will, in the long run, lead to continuing decreases in the number of languages undergraduates and a languages deskilling of the general population, including those in the business and commerce sector.

Most believe that the cause of the general apathy towards learning a “foreign” language in the UK is the globlish phenomenon. Everyone speaks English so why should I bother learning anything else? To a certain extent this is true but you and I have rehearsed the arguments against this a thousand times in defence of our subject and we know them to be true; intercultural understanding, employability, improved communication skills, the prevalence of the BRIC economies etc. And the real  downer about the globlish situation? There is nothing we can do about it. In our ever shrinking world, with all of its inequalities, problems and vast opportunities, you probably can get by on English and we certainly can not halt the growth of English as a global language. 

So are we impotent in the face of this danger? I do not believe so. We can change the hearts and minds of our children towards language learning. We do it every day. We work incredibly hard to create engaging and powerful learning experiences in our classrooms despite all of the barriers we may face (reduced curriculum time, learner or school apathy, poor examination system, boring contexts and text books etc). Some of these barriers are not within our power to overcome, yet, I am going to argue and exemplify, we can definitely make moves to re-empower ourselves and our profession, we can make language learning such a rich and holistic learning experience that we are not only developing great language learners but as importantly great 21^st Century learners. We can show learners, school leaders and the rest of the educational world that learning another language is not only a fantastic way to develop effective learners but it is probably the best and most flexible tool to develop learners who can “learn, unlearn and relearn”. (Tofler, Alvin)

The models and ideas I am proposing are not revolutionary, they are simply evolutionary. We are now at a point where, although our system of language learning and teaching is not entirely broken (there are fantastic examples of truly effective practice happening every day) our disk drive is fragmented, we have a lot of old and now corrupt data which has dragged our approach to a grinding trudge. We do not need to reinvent the wheel or throw out the baby with the bath water, but we do need to do something to pull together powerful, purposeful pedagogy and ensure we remould language learning into a relevant and holistic learning experience. Ask any ICT technician what to do and he or she will give you the answer “turn it off and turn it back on again”. Well, they are right, it is time for a Languages : Reboot.

 

Pedagogy later = Apocalypse now

 It has been lovely, thanks for asking. The break I mean; I have reined back on twitter, have put my blog on the back burner and have been focussing my time on family, friends and writing. So what has cause me to rupture my silence, to burst the bubble of summer fun? Mainly anger and disbelief. I am devastated by the decline in languages in England. I was embarrassed by the front page of the Independent which loomed up from the newspaper stands in my local supermarket yesterday  - languages in schools in crisis. Children are not opting to take languages because they are perceived to be hard. This is bollocks. The real reason children are not opting to take languages is because, despite the best (?) efforts of the new secondary curriculum, Links into languages and the exam boards, the current trend in language learning is that of trying to disguise the same old, disengaging (I hesitate to use the word) pedagogy that is boring, transactional, rooted in contexts which the students will never use, vocabulary-list-tastic by making it whizz bang and fun (at least our perception of fun...). Well, for want of a less vulgar expression, you can't polish a turd.

Do not misunderstand me, there are shining examples of innovative and excellent practice out there which put pedagogy at the heart of everything they do, but this is not reflected in the national picture. My proof? Look at the decline in numbers - French has dropped out of the top 10 subjects at GCSE for the first time since 1066. German is faring worse and Spanish has gone up 1%, but 1% of a paltry figure is not a lot. Only 1 in 4 teenagers in this country are taking a language post 14. This is a disgrace.

The not-so-new secondary curriculum is brilliant, in that there is nothing in it, we are not to be dictated to in terms of content which has led to a growth of CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning) which is being heralded as the Messiah of languages. I think CLIL is a positive move, but I have observed a number of CLIL lessons where History is taught entirely in French or Fair trade is taught in Spanish, however, the history lesson and the citizenship lesson in themselves lacked really effective pedagogy. We are on the right road with CLIL, but we need to rebrand it as CLPIL (Content, Language, Pedagogy Integrated Learning - not so easy to say...)

Do not get me started on exam boards. Ridiculous. I lost all respect for publishers and exam boards when they started getting into bed with each other and branding textbooks as "the only AQA/EDEXCEL endorsed book". In other industries I am sure this would contravene competition laws. The message from this is "buy this book, learn it off by heart and your exam results will go up" which head of department in a struggling school would not do this? The exam needs to be rethought to test skills not content and let them have a bloody dictionary for at least part of the exam where they are dealing with unknown language - reading and listening. We should be examining how learners cope with language, not how much of the vocabulary they have learned.

So let us turn to the sources of language teacher professional development in this country and see what is happening to carve a consistently better pedagogical approach. Well, I was on a nationally rolled out CPD course a little while ago which consisted of drawing stick people in powerpoint and adding voice overs. Some people did not know how to do that so in one sense it was useful to them but I kept asking myself, what is the pedagogical purpose? (I actually felt sorry for the presenter because he was obliged to stick to a script written by someone else). At no point was the reasoning behind doing this activity discussed, assessment rubrics were not mentioned, scaffolding activities were not explored, feedback and feedforward did not come into it. It may as well have been a session on how to make finger puppets without ever mentioning the why. The focus was on (not very) shiny output and little on the input. I might be able to get my students to make vokis, podcasts, talking powerpoints, films and animations but if they are all about asking where the post office is (get a map) or saying what is in my pencil case (get a life) then it is a waste of time. Our children are prolific consumers and,today, creators of media, they can create things we cannot and I am guessing they would never use powerpoint to do it. In all cases, the shiny output is only one part of the puzzle, how best do we input language, link it together, set up assessment rubrics (when will there be a national languages CPD on SOLO Taxonomy?), practice, demonstrate and review learning? En gros, when are we going to get back to the basics of what good language teaching/learning pedagogy looks like?

I hesitate to criticise because I love languages and language teachers. Ne'er a finer bunch of people will you meet, but rather than putting time into crystalising and sharing a new and effective pedagogy and investing in training teachers in situ, we expect languages teachers to PAY to go to evening or residential events, where we roll out rushed off, outcome focussed CPD. It is a disgrace. 

I am sorry if this upsets anyone, this is not a personal attack but rather a rally to say we are at rock bottom and we as a language learning community need to really take stock of what we are doing because if we always do what we always did, we will always get what we always got; in this case a crisis.

You can't do that in language teaching...

 My dear friend @joedale sent me a link to a TES discussion board about how to use Bloom's/Anderson's revised Taxonomy in the languages classroom. I was amazed by the negative nature of some of the responses that were posted claiming that our language learners could only ever get up to applying on the taxonomy as their language level is not good enough -rubbish say I!!!!

Anyway, I then spent a little time reflecting and wrote this post on the thread in reply...

"Hello! I think there is a little bit of confusion here about what Bloom's/Anderson's taxonomy is for. As Graham rightly points out, it is a generalised framework of higher order thinking skills. It is a way to look at the complexity of thinking a learner is using - however, it has nothing to do with linguistic outcomes and trying to artificially superimpose this taxonomy onto "what they need for GCSE French/Spanish/German etc" is wrong. This approach will lead to the disastrous situation where teachers think that learners can only function at the first three levels in a languages classroom because they do not have a sufficient level of language to write an evaluative essay on veil wearing. Put simply, we are teachers of languages but we should also be teachers of learning.  I bet that every teacher here has talked to students about the best way to learn new vocabulary; lists, mind maps, word hooks, look cover spell check etc. By talking to the students about different ways to learn a language and giving them the chance to evaluate which works best for them, we are allowing learners to use higher order thinking skills. At the end of a series of lessons about the perfect tense in French, getting students to create a flow diagram to help others to form the tense correctly is an example of synthesising/creating. Analysing is about comparing constituent parts and deconstructing ideas/language - i.e. the best form of deductive grammar learning (rather than explicit grammar teaching). Evaluation is also about hypothesising - think about pre listening exercises before you attempt a gap fill - "what kind of word might fit in this space?" "a noun because there is a la before it"... Basically I think that we need to differentiate between learning language (memorising words and structures and using them - gets us up to "applying" on the taxonomy) and learning to be a better linguist (analysing constituent parts, hypothesising, bringing together different grammatical concepts to create a piece of writing or speaking which takes us right to the top!) We are doing a huge disservice to our children if we do not get them to think in language learning (something the exam boards do not do) as we are trying to create better language learners, not better exam passers! The entire Bloom/Anderson's taxonomy is applicable to language learning and we should be explicit with the learners talking to them about the different levels of thinking they are using.

As for De Bono's hats - I have an entire Y9 scheme of learning in French based on them! We take the topic of the environment and each lesson is based around one of the hats - Lesson 1; white hat thinking - we learn to use facts and figures about the environment. Lesson 2; black hat thinking - what are the problems to do with the environment? Lesson 3; yellow hat thinking; what are the positive things you do now? Lesson 4; red hat thinking - what are your opinions and feelings about the environment? Lesson 5 green hat thinking; use the future tense to say what you are going to do to be more environmentally friendly. Assessment? A letter to the European Commission - on the writing frame we have  a different coloured hats next to each few lines to encourage the students to write a paragraph about each hat, therefore giving different points of view. So where is the blue hat? When I mark the work and give them feedback I am wearing my blue hat to suggest what else they could do to improve their work. 

We should not be shying away from things that are accepted as being effective pedagogy and ways of thinking by saying that "you can't do that in languages". We can do anything in languages because, as we all know, linguists do it best."

Any comments or thoughts would be greatly welcomed!

 

TeachmeetNe09-2 - Pedagogical paradise!

Once again, I am overwhelmed to be part of something amazing. I have, in the past, spent hundreds of pounds going to a conference and walked away poorer both in cash as well as in ideas. Somehow, some (not all!) professionally oprganised conferences actually mangage to suck ideas out of me rather than filling me with inspiration This was not the case with the second North East of England teachmeet this year! In fact...

So that just about says it all!

 The evening started with one of the most intensive apple/idea swopping presentations I have ever listened to/watched/experienced - Gwyn ap Harri; the man (dare I say genius?) behind Smart Assess  talked through his model of pedagogy in 7 minutes. Gwyn has kindly shared his presentation and notes below.

After Gwyn, Alasdair @hairysporan then took us through a 2 minute whistle-stop tour of etherpad - a great collaborative tool.

I was next up talking about international collaboration between students and teachers  - the prezi is below and links to Achievers International, e-twinning and the Tate Modern's turbinegeneration project. All of this work can then lead to the International Schools Award, something I would highly recommend - click here to find out more information. We were then joined by @emmarisby from Australia via Skype -she had been up since 4:30am her time to tell us her current favourite teachnology - quizlet. 

We were then followed by an excellent presentation from Lisa Keenlyside on her use of stopmotion animation in the science classroom.

Our final presentation of the first half was from Helena Butterfield - fabulous ideas for use of sound recording in the classroom. You can see the prezi and links on Helena's blog here.

The next part of the evening was broken down into learning conversations. I attended one in the "headspace" room where we discussed the role of the teacher as an expert and learner - great ideas and some really deep thinking.

After the learning conversations, we headed back for a nano presentation from Ben Barton @bartoneducation, a teachmeet virgin, who came all of the way up from the big smoke to join us. He demoed great use of video in the classroom to promote deep thinking.

After Ben came the greatest pedagogical thinker to ever come out of Gateshead; Darren Mead. Darren went on to use the three little pigs story as an analogy for the SOLO (structure of observed learning outcomes) taxonomy. Read more about the SOLO taxonomy at Darren's blog here. The real mind blower was the video below that Darren showed of New Zealand primary students talking us through their understanding of the SOLO taxonomy:

Following Darren came an inspiring 2 minuter from Archie Cameron (@hjava) about his fear of blackboards. I have never been more humbled by such an honest approach to the fact that being an outstanding teacher is not all about the gadgets and gizmos although they can be awesome tools and indeed that pedagogy is about learning and moving children on in life not just having whizzing powerpoints. It was doubly emotional for me as the teacher he was talking about who stood with a novel in hand and engrossed his class was my A-level English Literature teacher who gave me a passion for Shakespeare and Tennesee Williams! Glad he is still doing it!

The ever entertaining, pertinent and pragmatic Dominic McGladdery did a two minute presentation on alternative to tick and flick marking-  some excellent ideas cunningly disguised as a wordle even though they were on a powerpoint. Check out Dominic's post and his ideas at his blog here.

To round up the evening, we took a simple practical jigsaw activity and turned it into a drunken scramble on the floor...No really, the singular Fergus Hegarty showed us how to use what looks like a simple match up activity on a much deeper level, including the use of shape and task to differentiate outcomes. In order to truly appreciate this activity, best watch it back on the flashmeeting.

Anyway, another Teachmeet down, plans afoot for more, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and learned a great deal. I would like to put out a massive thanks to Simon, Darren, Fergus, Scott and Fabienne for their organisational prowess. Our sponsors; the British Council, SSAT, BartonEducation, and Smart Assess. The Tyneside Cinema staff (specially Ents Queen Jen!) the wonderful presenters and of course the fantastic audience.

See you again soon and until then sit back and enjoy "TeachmeetNE09-2 the festive edition -the movie" at

 http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/331130-7957  and sign up to the NING to keep in touch.

Cheers

Chris

FLIP - a model for developing independent language learners

FLIP - Flexible Learner-led, In-time intervention, Personalised. Last year was the first year that Cramlington Learning Village had a full KS3, previously having been only a high school and we were faced with the challenge of starting from scratch within the creative auspices of the new secondary curriculum. So after much discussion and thinking, we decided that the only way to get some truly independent language learning was to get rid of 1/3 of our content. Excessive content is the enemy of effective learning so we decided to make 1 out of 3 lessons a fortnight content free but learning rich! Rather than trying to explain this in text, I have embedded the video below to let you see it in action. I would love some feedback, so please leave a comment!

 

FLIP Languages Model from charte on Vimeo.

Cramlington Teaching and Learning Conference 2009

284 delegates cam along to the 8th annual Cramlington Teaching and Learning conference on Friday - a massive crowd for what turned out to be a fantastic event. I was asked to lead three sessions. The first one was about how we had developed our new KS3 curriculum. This seemed to go down well with the delegates and I have embedded the prezi I used below.

After that, we looked at how technology could help make language learners in to language creators using simple and free technology such as Audacity, GoAnimate and Glogster. We created an etherpad (a simultaneously editable web document for collaboration) to keep our collective notes - click here to see the etherpad.

Finally, the final session was all about developing higher order thinking skills in language learners and Miriam Barrachina and I demonstrated the use of mysteries, venn diagrams and fact or opinion resources. We did not even get onto looking at living graphs because of the in depth discussion we had about the impact on target language and what the learning objectives of this style of lesson might look like. You can see the presentation here.

I ad a great day and enjoyed hearing Alistair Smith talk about learning generations, even if it was from the corridor where I was assigned to usher in late comers!

Effective Participators - getting them ALL to work in groups using pie

I was talking today at a fanastic SSAT Lead Practitioner day at English Martyrs School in Hartlepool. Myself and the other delegates received a fabulous welcome from the wonderful Lesley Welsh who inspired us all with her inimitable style and bubbling enthusiasm for languages and who shared with us her fantastic ICT savvy (check out her post on Diigo - it is the future) and generously provided us with a USB memory pen jam packed with brilliant resources.

For my own part, I banged on (again) about developing PLTS in language lessons and one delegate made a very good point about the way that some children when faced with group tasks are definitely not effective participators and tend to opt out. I said I had a neat trick to deal with that but forgot to share it! So I shall do so now...

Participation pie charts  - at the end of a group activity, ask the students to draw (freehand and rough is fine) a pie chart showing the percentage that each member of the group has participated. If they are in a group of four, for example, there should be a 25% split (four equal portions of pie). The students are incredibly honest about this and the people who were messing around or just being emotional truants, get less of the pie, highlighting the fact that team members need to pull their weight if a group is to be effective. Simply highlighting this and then at the start of the next group activity telling the students that they will be completing a participation pie chart is often enough to get the ineefective participators to start mucking in. Give it a go!

As it is near Christmas, it may be a festive mince pie chart... 

Sorry, it has been a long half-term :-)