Tag Archives: research

Online Roundup #almosteaster

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First Attempt In Learning by girlinbracesEach week, I collect together a range of articles, apps, reviews and tips that I have curated, collected and culled from the Internet (mainly Twitter), and send this out to the staff at my school. Here they are for this week:

 

Use in class

The Learning Event Generator gives you hundreds of ideas for activities to embed learning. If you ever have trouble trying to work out how to get a concept firmly across and into your children’s minds (and for me this can be daily), this is randomised inspiration. (via @LearningSpy).

Kinetic Typography is a fancy way of saying ‘moving words’ and if you type that into YouTube, prepare to be blown away. I’m a big fan, so was delighted to find this site on Google. Type in words, and the site generates moving words automagically. I had a play by putting in a poem, and Lovely Louis read the poem over my shoulder in the same moving style – how fun would the children find this?!

I had great success using these Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strips to help teach speech marks within fiction writing this week. Worth looking at for the strips alone! I’m not sure I would be able to use the ‘Garfield Minus Garfield‘ strips, but they are incredibly funny!

Buy

There are two things I have bought on the fabulous eBay recently which I thought I would share here. The first is a motivational sticker set you can get online which would be perfect for school, have a look here. Yes, it’s cheesy, but my own children (as in offspring, not class) love and we regularly talk about them. Thanks @MissJLud for prompting me to mention these.

The other things are personalised stickers, also from eBay. This page is one I’ve used, and the company are very quick. I’ve been using stickers as incentives with my Year 6 Maths set to really good effect. The last set I ordered, I let the class decide the colour, logo, words etc. £2.20 for 96 stickers – bargain! Thanks to @rlj1981 for prompting me with this one!

 

Science

Squishy Circuits is something I had read about last year – but a chance opportunity to teach Science reminded me of the site. It allows you to make a simple play-dough like recipe which can then be used to build circuits with – no crocodile clip hassles etc. Looks great, and may well be something I do during the holidays with my monsters children, but thought it might appeal to others too!

 

Research

I’m a big fan of Hattie, who has carried out some metaresearch into Education to find out what really works under the bonnet. His books aren’t too tricky to grasp, but for a ten minute taster, have a look at this Infographic. Warning – you may be surprised with what his research has found! (via @Pekabelo &@HuntingEnglish)

 

This article from The Guardian is probably more suited to Secondary teachers, but is from a sixteen-year-old complaining that schools are missing an opportunity by not using Facebook and Twitter as VLEs. I don’t necessarily agree with her, but it caused some lively debate online!

 

CPD Saturday

Last Saturday I again abandoned Gemma and the children, and instead headed to Berkhamstead for a Teaching Learning & Assessment Conference. Arriving at 7.45am, I didn’t leave until 4.40pm, and although very tired, was excited and inspired by everything I heard about! You can read my notes about the day here, or ask me and I will forward you what I have. I am definitely going to persuade you to come along next year – it was brilliant, and I hope that the influence it has given me will permeate through the school.

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I came across all of these on Twitter, which is superb for getting and sharing ideas about teaching and learning. More info on joining can be found here. Have a good weekend!

 

Stephen

Raising the anchor on pupil expectation

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I have been (quite sadly) fascinated by mental anchoring systems for years. This relates to how you can develop quite quickly a fixed perspective on something with no rational reason for it whatsoever.

This came to a head with a Maths lesson I was teaching Year 6 on estimating, and the reading of Alex Bellos’ brilliant book “Alex’s Adventures in Numberland”, which noted that a strong correlation had been found between estimating ability and actual computational ability.

I decided to test the theories out by asking the children in the class to estimate how much an antique book my wife bought for me on ebay cost. I gave them a description of it, and told them that it cost between £1 and £99. It would make sense to suggest that they could have picked any number at all between these two points, so I would have a fairly random ‘spread’ of numbers.

What I did beforehand completely changed that. Before their book price estimation, I asked them to write down the last two digits of their phone numbers. I then explained the ‘Price a book’ challenge, and asked them to write down how much they thought it cost.

The Anchor theory suggested that the random number they first put down would influence the price that they put for the book, even though there was no relation to each of the numbers at all.

The results were startling. I had expected some correlation, but almost every single pupil had put an estimate within around £5 of their (utterly random) telephone number! I drew a chart on the board with two Y axes and joined each pair together to show them visually what they had subconsciously done.

Apologies for the quality of image!

The two exceptions to the anchoring wall were ones which began with very low numbers. Their estimates were wildly higher, presumably because they felt that they anchor was too low to be related to the value of an Antique book.

Although it was fascinating to see happen, and created a lot of debate on what guided our estimating skills in class, it did make me think how easily manipulated children can be by anchored expectations. A simple random number governed their estimating skills. How often do we as teachers take advantage of this and use simple techniques to raise expectations within the children themselves? What do we do to ensure that the children have a growth outlook on their ability, rather than a fixed outlook which dictates what they believe they are capable of achieving?

No answers here from me, but hopefully something to consider!

Further reading:

Gorn, Gerald J, and Marvin E Goldberg. “The impact of television advertising on children from low income families.” Journal of Consumer Research (1977): 86-88.

James, Oliver. “Evaluating the expectations disconfirmation and expectations anchoring approaches to citizen satisfaction with local public services.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 19.1 (2009): 107-123.

Lohrmann, Sharon, and Janet Talerico. “Anchor the Boat A Classwide Intervention to Reduce Problem Behavior.” Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions 6.2 (2004): 113-120.
Switzer, Fred S, and Janet A Sniezek. “Judgment processes in motivation: Anchoring and adjustment effects on judgment and behavior.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 49.2 (1991): 208-229.

Violent computer games make your kids negative: Discuss

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This is a response to a Channel 4 program, Extreme Parenting, in which a segment was given over to a study of Violent games.

A group of boys were randomly divided in two, and asked to play either a football game or a violent game. Their heart rates were monitored during this. They were then asked to view violent news footage, and again their hearts were monitored. Lastly, selected children were given an incident to intervene using politeness (pens were ‘accidentally’ dropped off a table). This being TV, violent games were clearly more ‘dangerous’ than non-violent games.

I felt there were several flaws in the set-up and outcome of this TV experiment, and would like to point out my concerns. Continue reading →

Lesson Themetunes

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Listening to musicWhen you hear French music in the supermarket, does your mind start, even unconsciously, considering French wine? Apparently it does, even if you deny it influences you directly. (See MindHack for a neat introduction to the research). So what impact does this have for our learning consumers?

Just like Proust’s Madeleine cake extract, hearing certain music makes an enormous difference in introducing themes, topics, subjects and lessons in our classroom. These can be played as a pause to the lesson, as the theme for the start of the lesson, or even as music to be played as a ‘bed’ when they get books out. I have used music for years, and the use of subject theme tunes has a definite impact – by the second or third lesson, pupils cotton on to the sound, and (it is my belief), gear themselves up for that subject. Continue reading →

A comparison of offline and online discussions among children, in relation to the factors that contribute to dominance in these areas

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The aims of the investigation

The expectations of the curriculum at Key Stage Two in Information and Communication Technology require students to be enquiring about current and future practices, and enable the students to investigate ways of communicating to the wider world. The statutory content states that pupils should know ‘how to share and exchange information in a variety of forms,’ as well as ‘describe and talk about the effectiveness of their work with ICT, comparing it with other methods and considering the effect it has on others.’ (2009)

I have informally noticed that, in the majority of classes, some children tend to dominate physical discussions and debates, for a number of reasons. Meanwhile, a different group of children tend to dominate online discussions, again for a range of reasons. Continue reading →