Hmm. Not sure about the title but there's another set of my musings on PE & ACfE in the GTCS magazine this month. (Not sure about the picture either, what is it that's interesting me off to the left?)
GTCS Magazine, February 2008.
Wednesday 27 February 2008
We'll this has got to be good news surely...
In a further bid to make children more active, more often, the Scottish Government yesterday announced its plans to increase participation in sport and physical activity amongst girls.
Okay, so this is not strictly a CfE item but it does, once again, show the value being placed on the "non traditional" view of what school is "for." At the risk of a terrible sporting related pun, fair play to the folks at Holyrood.
There's loads more that could be said about this but I imagine Lousie Jones will have a good health related slant on it and she's far better qualified than I am on this sort of thing!
Okay, so this is not strictly a CfE item but it does, once again, show the value being placed on the "non traditional" view of what school is "for." At the risk of a terrible sporting related pun, fair play to the folks at Holyrood.
There's loads more that could be said about this but I imagine Lousie Jones will have a good health related slant on it and she's far better qualified than I am on this sort of thing!
Friday 22 February 2008
Thursday 14 February 2008
In search of excellence...
Still on that journey, huh? Anyway, I didn't (don't?) want this blog to be anything other than a look at evidence gathering in the "new" curriculum. However there are issues impacting on us as teachers which, I think, will directly affect how the curriculum is delivered.
If one of the key notions of ACfE is the integration of different curricular areas in order to enliven and enrich the experience for learners (it is a key notion, right?) then it strikes me as fairly obvious that the approach teachers take to both introducing and teaching subjects - and/or teaching across the curriculum - will be central to the way in which that information (or that "experience") is interpreted and subsequently utilised by the pupils.
Phew. Long winded way of saying something I said before. Ho hum.
Back to the point: basically I agree with and endorse - not that he needs it - the ideas of Richard Bailey with regards to the notion of learning as problem solving. It strikes me now, having been both teacher and, in a previous life, sports coach that if you have no need for the learning experience then you're going to take very little from it. In other words, if there is no "problem" to be solved then why are you learning decontextualised solutions?
Professor Bailey put this into context with the simple analogy of a traditional basketball drill: the chest pass. Two rows of participants, firing off passes to a partner with the possible reward of a game at the end. Loads of perfect chest passes result. Along comes the game. The ball rarely makes its target. "Stop, stop, stop!" exhorts the bewildered coach. "Why aren't you passing like I showed you?" "Oh," say the players, "So that's why we were doing it..."
I've heard him speak before and one of his books is the core text on the PE course but it doesn't stop the cringe inducing feeling of "whoops - think I've done that in class" every time he makes this sort of analogy. The key question, though, as a reflective practitioner must be "how can I use this notion in class?" I've found the answer lies in keeping things simple. I ask myself a question when planning an activity, a lesson or a topic: what use will doing this activity/practice/scenario be to the children. If an answer's not immediately forthcoming which doesn't involve contrivance on a massive scale then I think of another activity/practice or scenario which will be.
Reading that back I realise I've made that sound like a lot of work for myself - and anyone else adopting such an approach. But it isn't really, and its value can't be overstated. Time is so precious, I think it pays to ask oneself, "Am I wasting mine and that of my pupils by doing this?"
Interesting "what's this learning malarkey all about?" type link.
If one of the key notions of ACfE is the integration of different curricular areas in order to enliven and enrich the experience for learners (it is a key notion, right?) then it strikes me as fairly obvious that the approach teachers take to both introducing and teaching subjects - and/or teaching across the curriculum - will be central to the way in which that information (or that "experience") is interpreted and subsequently utilised by the pupils.
Phew. Long winded way of saying something I said before. Ho hum.
Back to the point: basically I agree with and endorse - not that he needs it - the ideas of Richard Bailey with regards to the notion of learning as problem solving. It strikes me now, having been both teacher and, in a previous life, sports coach that if you have no need for the learning experience then you're going to take very little from it. In other words, if there is no "problem" to be solved then why are you learning decontextualised solutions?
Professor Bailey put this into context with the simple analogy of a traditional basketball drill: the chest pass. Two rows of participants, firing off passes to a partner with the possible reward of a game at the end. Loads of perfect chest passes result. Along comes the game. The ball rarely makes its target. "Stop, stop, stop!" exhorts the bewildered coach. "Why aren't you passing like I showed you?" "Oh," say the players, "So that's why we were doing it..."
I've heard him speak before and one of his books is the core text on the PE course but it doesn't stop the cringe inducing feeling of "whoops - think I've done that in class" every time he makes this sort of analogy. The key question, though, as a reflective practitioner must be "how can I use this notion in class?" I've found the answer lies in keeping things simple. I ask myself a question when planning an activity, a lesson or a topic: what use will doing this activity/practice/scenario be to the children. If an answer's not immediately forthcoming which doesn't involve contrivance on a massive scale then I think of another activity/practice or scenario which will be.
Reading that back I realise I've made that sound like a lot of work for myself - and anyone else adopting such an approach. But it isn't really, and its value can't be overstated. Time is so precious, I think it pays to ask oneself, "Am I wasting mine and that of my pupils by doing this?"
Interesting "what's this learning malarkey all about?" type link.
Thursday 7 February 2008
Well, that's better...
After the trauma of the HMIe visit - don't get me started - it was fantastic and quite uplifting to go to today's PE inservice day at Inverness Royal Academy.
As part of my PGCE PE course I'd been introduced to the, for me, revolutionary thinking of Richard Bailey, and I'd heard him speak at the launch of the PE course. His thinking around problem-solving based learning have impacted on my whole approach to teaching, not simply in PE so I was excited at the prospect of hearing him speak again.
Anyone who speaks "common sense" is always, I think, worth listening to and even more so today when my spirits were in need of a lift following the last three and a half hectic weeks. Prof. Bailey didn't really add anything new to my knowledge today but rather he did something which for me was far more valuable - he confirmed that (in his opinion) what we're already doing is good stuff and fits in to the findings of huge swathes of research across six continents. Always nice to be told "good work, keep it up" - if it works for our learners in school then why not for us as teachers?
Also good was the vast amount of interesting stuff going on around Health Promoting Schools which it turns out will shortly come under the "Health & Wellbeing" agenda of ACfE - on whose outcomes we had what was, to be blunt, a rather dry presentation. Oh well... it was nice to have a chat with the Development Manager, Louise Jones, about how all this stuff should perhaps aim to be more firmly embedded rather than being a box-ticking "add-on". More common sense.
Mind you, difficult to get information across in a short space of time when there's so much to say.
Of less excitement, perhaps, was the continuing absence of any real commitment on the part of Highland Council in relation to implementing the "Secondary based - primary focused" model of PE delivery, in spite of the (seemingly) successful pilot in the Fortrose area.
Watch this space?
As part of my PGCE PE course I'd been introduced to the, for me, revolutionary thinking of Richard Bailey, and I'd heard him speak at the launch of the PE course. His thinking around problem-solving based learning have impacted on my whole approach to teaching, not simply in PE so I was excited at the prospect of hearing him speak again.
Anyone who speaks "common sense" is always, I think, worth listening to and even more so today when my spirits were in need of a lift following the last three and a half hectic weeks. Prof. Bailey didn't really add anything new to my knowledge today but rather he did something which for me was far more valuable - he confirmed that (in his opinion) what we're already doing is good stuff and fits in to the findings of huge swathes of research across six continents. Always nice to be told "good work, keep it up" - if it works for our learners in school then why not for us as teachers?
Also good was the vast amount of interesting stuff going on around Health Promoting Schools which it turns out will shortly come under the "Health & Wellbeing" agenda of ACfE - on whose outcomes we had what was, to be blunt, a rather dry presentation. Oh well... it was nice to have a chat with the Development Manager, Louise Jones, about how all this stuff should perhaps aim to be more firmly embedded rather than being a box-ticking "add-on". More common sense.
Mind you, difficult to get information across in a short space of time when there's so much to say.
Of less excitement, perhaps, was the continuing absence of any real commitment on the part of Highland Council in relation to implementing the "Secondary based - primary focused" model of PE delivery, in spite of the (seemingly) successful pilot in the Fortrose area.
Watch this space?
Tuesday 5 February 2008
Skype-ing with Tommy Cooper...
"Doctor, I can't pronounce my F's, T's and H's." "Well you can't say fairer than that then"
What does all that have to do with ACfE? Well you may ask. It's really the punchline I was interested in. What are we looking to do with some of these enriching, cross-curricular activities (or "experiences" if you will)? There's a fairly comprehensive list which the kids came up with on the impact of their Skype Q&A with the Eorpa team today. Examining it reads, I think, like a bit of a wish-list for some of the things we'd (as staff) hope the kids would "get" from ACfE.
"...you can't say fairer..." etc, etc.
Monday 4 February 2008
Assessment is for...?
Learning? Is it? I'm still trying to embed this notion within my own head never mind in my own practice. Too much jargon clouds the issue I suspect and it can be all too easy to begin to lose sight of the point of the whole thing - enhancing the children's learning and trying to provide a happy, stimulating environment within the class and school.
Anyway, as a small step towards ensuring that the learning is in some way valid (whose criteria?) I'm trying to focus on getting those all-important learning objectives up for the children on a regular basis.
This point could be argued all day/week/year - indeed on my initial degree course (a BA in Sport in the Community) we spent seemingly endless hours on coaching modules where we looked at ideas around objectives, targets and aims. Asking questions like "are objectives stepping stones towards aims or is it the other way round?" and big ideas like that. I'm unsure to this day if we ever got an answer but I'm willing to consider - and try - anything which might benefit the learners.
For that reason I'm going to keep a note of all the "We Are Learning To" points (thanks Shirley Clarke for the jargon but I think we all had the idea anyway...) and post them along with the "evidence" pictures. We shall see how it goes.
Assessment is for Life. Not just for classroom observations. Discuss...
Anyway, as a small step towards ensuring that the learning is in some way valid (whose criteria?) I'm trying to focus on getting those all-important learning objectives up for the children on a regular basis.
This point could be argued all day/week/year - indeed on my initial degree course (a BA in Sport in the Community) we spent seemingly endless hours on coaching modules where we looked at ideas around objectives, targets and aims. Asking questions like "are objectives stepping stones towards aims or is it the other way round?" and big ideas like that. I'm unsure to this day if we ever got an answer but I'm willing to consider - and try - anything which might benefit the learners.
For that reason I'm going to keep a note of all the "We Are Learning To" points (thanks Shirley Clarke for the jargon but I think we all had the idea anyway...) and post them along with the "evidence" pictures. We shall see how it goes.
Assessment is for Life. Not just for classroom observations. Discuss...
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