Notes

TLAB Notes

April 7, 2015
5 Min Read

Took a while to get there, what with train cancellations, but it was worth it.

Lots to think about, though various themes/books seemed to be being hammered home. Nuthall’s Hidden Lives of Learners and Berger’s Ethic of Excellence were heavily plugged.

Notes from what I saw:

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL
focused on development of social cognition and the factors affecting decision-making.
late arriving but conclusion seemed to be that a lot of research shows teens are greatly affected by peers whereas adults typically are not, or are influenced far less.
Peer-learning presumably needs to take account of this. She mentioned the paradox of adolescence, i.e. that you are most prone to take risks at your healthiest time of your life. A pack mentality is a great indicator of increased risk-taking so question is how peer attitudes affect risk-analysis.

There’s a talk of hers below which covers some similar things

Ken Brechin, Cramlington & CPD

Bible seems to be Daniel Muijs’s book Effective Teaching.

Big questions were: “Is your CPD having an impact?” and “How do you know?”

Various ways of measuring impact – analysis of student data through to anecdotal evidence – but context affecting currency. Main thing is to make sure you know what you want CPD to achieve.

Spoke to various punters – all agreed that CPD often not great in schools. Seemed usually to be an expensive, hard to argue for OSIRIS course and then no sharing of what learnt

Ray Healey on Creating and Extension Culture in Maths

Emphasised value of a whole department thinking it’s worth it, rather than being one member of staff’s bolt-on
Good extension questions are: simple, attractive, accessible, have maths merit, are open-middled and manageable
Need to create culture of engagement: e.g. maths is learned not innate, encourage strategic thinking, avoid sounding like the expert
Some useful resources are:

Cristina Milos

Took us through a typical “IB/Inquiry learning” Primary lesson, from planning to delivery to assessment
Powerful stuff – big thing for me was seeing the various Hidden Lives/Daniel Willingham books being made real
Ironically harder to write notes during but felt learned more
More here

Barbara Oakley on Learning how to Learn

Professor of Engineering
Very non-maths background, went into military, so question students ask is how did she manage to become an engineer.
Lots of familiar stuff on Dweck’s Growth Mindset and Spaced Learning from a different angle.
Focused and Diffuse modes of the brain important – Edison, for example, used to try to come up with ideas by sitting in an armchair with a handful of ballbearings. Awake he was “focused”; as he nodded off he slipped into diffuse mode (and the ballbearings hit the floor to wake him up)
Importance of Pomodoro technique to stay focussed.
Repetition useful – If you don’t repeat learning frequently, vampires suck away the knowledge before it has stuck.
Procrastination is addictive and a response to literal brain-pain when faced by the unknown.
Sleep is vital – it basically seems to flush toxins out of the neural pathways to allow more growth (learning) to happen.
More on all this can be found in her book
A Mind for Numbers or in her TED talk.

Jonathan Peel has helpfully scanned in her tips here

Other notes online/slides from talks

TLAB Notes

Adjective Game for English Lessons

MIST – Educational Videos for Maths and Science