Memory Archives -

3rd June 20207th June 2022

Why a teacher should never stop being a pupil: from the perspective of the MFL classroom

Mrs Claire Baty, Head of French, looks at the idea of teachers being life-long learners, and the benefits this affords in our classrooms.

It’s widely accepted that learning something new can enhance your quality of life, give you confidence, have a positive impact on your mental health and above all be fun. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever” (Ghandi). Yet learning from scratch, purely for the cognitive challenge, is something that most of us rarely do.

As a French teacher, my focus has always been on imparting knowledge; enthusing and, I hope, inspiring my students to learn this language that I have spent years studying. I encourage my students to be curious beyond the curriculum. I ask Key Stage 3 to look up extra words to extend their topic specific vocabulary beyond the confines of the textbook. I set Key Stage 4 longer, more authentic reading and listening texts to decipher, hoping to instil a desire to build upon their knowledge. I expect Key Stage 5 to indulge in research into cultural, literary and historical topics beyond the course. I hope that they do this with the same sense of pleasure that I feel when doing the exact same thing. Yet, I haven’t taken into consideration that for my students, especially those in Years 7-11, they are not yet fluent in this language. French is still new to them. When I read the news in French or look up a word from a novel I am reading, none of it is new, I am merely building on years of study, whereas my students are starting from scratch.

So to become the pupil again and experience language learning from the perspective of the student in the MFL classroom, was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed. Learning Mandarin alongside a class of Year 8 students is enlightening in so many ways. Not only have I learnt how to introduce myself and family in Mandarin, I have found myself reconsidering how we learn language and the effectiveness of our methods for the students that we teach.

The reality of learning a new language

Chinese is a fundamentally different language to the European languages that I am familiar with but, if I am totally honest, I expected to find it easy to make progress quickly, after all I am a linguist, a languages teacher and a motivated student with the advantage of knowing how to learn a language. In reality, it is proving less obvious than I had first thought!

My desire to always get it right has a direct impact on my confidence and self-consciousness when speaking in Mandarin. Even when I know the word I am profoundly aware of the lack of authenticity of my pronunciation. What is more, I was completely unprepared for how difficult it is to multi-task during a classroom based lesson. Copying vocabulary from the board, whilst listening to the sound of the word and trying to remember the meaning all at the same time as being prepared to answer a question from the teacher requires an agility of mind that is hard to achieve. But, perhaps most surprisingly for a linguist, is how hard I find it to recall new vocabulary from one lesson to the next without considerable pre-lesson preparation and sneaky glancing at notes! As a teacher, I often find myself saying to my French classes “but we saw this word last lesson in exercise X, page Y”. I now understand first-hand how difficult instant retrieval of vocabulary is, but also how important it is if you want to progress in a language.

If this is how I am feeling, when the language classroom is my ‘zone’, then how do my students feel? As teachers, do we ask too much of them each day or do they adapt to the demands placed upon them as learners and I am just out of practice?

How is second language taught?

Due to the closure of schools in March, my experience of learning Mandarin has moved from face-to-face classroom learning to independent textbook exercises, remote virtual learning and online platforms such as Duolingo, inadvertently placing me in a good position to consider this question.

In the MFL classroom we learn by rote, repetition, hearing others, practising, being creative with the language, revisiting previous knowledge. Independent access to a textbook is valuable to a point but then you need an expert to answer questions (and I have lots of questions!). Remote learning has become part of the ‘classroom’ experience and unexpectedly for me, the sense of anonymity created by initials in black squares during a TEAMS video conference has actually helped me to feel more confident when speaking in Mandarin and more inclined to take a risk. I wonder if my French students feel the same.

But what about all the online platforms available that claim they are the best way to learn a language? These applications offer a totally different approach to language learning. Often providing minimal explanation of key words or grammar, the focus is clearly on lots of practice, which means you get things wrong – all the time! To some extent this mimics how a child might learn a language; seeing and hearing words in context with lots of repetition. Whilst I must admit that these platforms are addictive because of their gaming style, I find myself wanting greater explanation. I want to read the notes, make my own notes, learn the information before attempting the exercise, whereas Duolingo seems determined to force me to have a go and risk getting it wrong.

What about the role of online translators? I have spent most of my working life warning students of the pitfalls of ‘Google Translate’. Every language teacher can give numerous examples of student’s work containing glaring and often comical errors, yet now that I am a beginner learner of Mandarin who is frustrated that the textbook glossary doesn’t contain the word I want to use, I find myself turning to Google Translate more and more frequently and with a surprising level of success. Perhaps the key here is that I am also a linguist and language teacher and hence know what pitfalls to look out for. But this does support what language teachers have been forced to accept; that A.I has transformed machine-based translation and Google Translate is no longer the enemy it once was. I agree whole heartedly with my colleague, Adèle Venter who, in her article Approaches to using online language tools and AI to aid language learning, says that students need to be taught how to use these tools rather than being told not to use them at all.

Above: STEAM Spanish with Ms Horno Garcia

How does this affect my teaching?

What have I learnt from this whole experience, apart from being able to introduce myself and family in Chinese? Can learning a new language make me a better French teacher?

Knowing how to learn helps you learn. I am at an advantage over my fellow Mandarin students, not because I am innately any better than them at Mandarin, but because I know how to take notes, revise vocabulary and practise the language independently. Activities aimed at improving pupil’s metacognitive skills must be a significant part of the classroom experience.
It is also clear that retrieval practice needs to be a priority in every lesson. Ross Morrison-McGill (TeacherToolkit) makes an interesting link with the ‘knowledge’ test for London black cab drivers. According to his article Why do London cab drivers know so much? “spaced practice and interleaving” are the key to memory. I would also agree with Andy Tharby who comments in his article Memory Platforms that quizzing is a far more powerful tool to retrieval than re-reading notes or listening to teacher explanations. The latter create what he refers to as an ‘illusion of fluency’ – we think we know when in fact the knowledge doesn’t stick. Effective starter activities that encourage the transfer of knowledge from one lesson to another, one topic to another need to be incorporated into every lesson.
Students need time in lessons to reflect, to consider what they are learning, to form and then ultimately ask questions and to consolidate their learning. Being overwhelmed, tired even anxious can all stem from a feeling of busyness that comes from having a distracted mind. We feel busy because we are in the habit of doing one thing while thinking about the next (mindful.org) Giving students time to process and complete the task I am asking of them during a lesson could lead to much deeper understanding and as a result, greater confidence.

I am not learning Mandarin because I have immediate plans to travel to China, nor do I need to use the language every day to communicate at home or at work (although I can see how it would be beneficial), I am learning purely for the sake of learning something new. It’s exciting to be able to do something that I couldn’t do 10 months ago. The change of perspective that has been afforded to me by becoming the pupil rather than the teacher is invaluable and I am excited to consider what I will change about my own classroom practice as a result.

Further reading and references

http://whs-blogs.co.uk/teaching/tag/mfl/ https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/ https://reflectingenglish.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/memory-platforms/ https://teacherhead.com/ https://www.mindful.org/a-mindfulness-practice-for-doing-one-thing-at-a-time/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2017-05-01/language

11th February 20207th June 2022

Dreams – what are they and why do they happen?

Sofia, Year 9, discusses what dreams are and why they happen.

When you think of the word “dream”, many questions may pop into your head such as ‘what do they mean?’ and ‘what are they for?’ and perhaps ‘can they predict my future?’ I guess the best way to describe a dream is a story or sequence of images your mind creates while you are asleep. Except of course there is a lot more to it…

The history of dreams

It is thought that people in the third millennia in Mesopotamia were the first to record their dreams on wax or clay tablets and over 1000 years later Egyptians made themselves dream books, which also listed their potential meanings. Priests would be the ones to interpret these since they were written in hieroglyphics. Interpreters were looked up to, as they were blessed with this divine gift.

Interestingly, in the Greek and Roman era, dreams were interpreted in a religious context, thinking gods or even those from the dead were sending them direct messages. They believed dreams forewarned and they even built special shrines where those who sought a message would go to sleep.

In China, dreaming was also seen as a place where your spirit and soul left your body and went to a different world while asleep. If you were awoken, your soul may fail to return to your body. In the Middle Ages, dreams were considered to be the devil’s dirty work and fill the humans’ minds with malicious thoughts while at their most vulnerable state.

The psychology behind dreams

Dreams can sometimes be exciting, terrifying, boring and just plain random, and although it may not feel like it, we have multiple dreams in one night that actually only last approximately 15 minutes. It’s hypothesized that everyone dreams, even though people who don’t remember their dreams may think they don’t dream[1]. Within 5 minutes of waking up, you usually forget 50% and by 10 minutes almost 90% is gone[2].

Dreams typically involve elements from life such as known people or familiar locations. And yes, it has been proven that your brain is incapable of “creating a new face”. They can also allow people to act out certain scenarios that wouldn’t happen in real life and make you feel incredibly emotional if it is vivid enough. In 1899, Sigmund Freud wrote a study “Interpretation of Dreams” which has been controversial among other experts. He states that we only dream to fulfil wishes, but many have disagreed. The Continual Activation Theory explains that we dream to keep our brains working and to consolidate memories, so that when data is needed from memory storage, we have it, but it’s just expressed in a different way while we dream. It is also suggested that we dream to rehearse and practise. Have you ever had a nightmare of being chased by a bear or even a criminal? These have been proven to be very common and challenge your instincts in case you ever do come across a dangerous situation in your life.

What does science have to say?

The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology (derived from Greek word ‘oneiron’) Dreams mainly occur in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep when brain activity is high and feels similar to being awake; it occurs within the first 90 minutes of falling asleep. During this stage, the pons in the brain shut off signals to the spinal cord causing you to be immobile while sleeping. When the pons doesn’t shut down the spinal cord’s signals, people will act out their dreams which of course could be dangerous, perhaps if you run into a wall or fall down a staircase.

Above: Brain illustration by pickpik.com

This is known as REM sleep behaviour disorder, which is rarer than sleepwalking. Even though we are immobile, the brain is very active, and you could still move and accidentally hit your sister in the face thinking you’re in a netball match. The blue represents inactive parts in the brain during REM in the image shown. Linking back to a previous point, an additional reason we may dream is to forget. This may sound confusing, but our brain creates thousands of connections by everything we think and do. A neurobiological theory known as Reverse Learning told us that during REM sleep cycles, the neocortex reviews the connections and ignores unnecessary ones, preventing your brain from being overrun with useless connections.

Even if we never know the real reason why dreams happen or whether they have any significance, it is possible that we will eventually one day find out due to developing technology. However, they may always remain somewhat a mystery to us, but hopefully, the next time you go to bed, you’ll maybe consider the complex aspects of science behind them.

References

[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/does-everyone-dream

[2] https://www.manifatturafalomo.com/blog/sleep-tips/15-incredible-facts-about-sleep/

31st January 20207th June 2022

Friday Gem #4 – ‘Do Now’ Starter

This idea comes from Nazlee, who shared it with the assessment and work scrutiny working party this week. It’s a quick but powerful way to start a double lesson with some low stakes retrieval of prior learning in order to strengthen long term memory.

What is it?

At the start of a double, put on the board three to four short questions/activities.
They should require pupils to recall prior learning from last lesson, last week, last term and last year.
They questions should be quick to complete and quick for the teacher to check in class.
This should take no more than 10mins in total.

This is effective because…

Interleaving and spaced retrieval practice are both proven to strengthen long term memory. Increasing storage strength is really important for our bigger, linear GCSEs and A Levels. Here are two great articles from the ‘Learning Scientists’:
- https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/5/10-1?rq=retrieval
- https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2016/4/1-1?rq=retrieval
Studies show that low stakes testing deepens learning: assessment as learning.
Routine knowledge recall produces better organisation of knowledge/concepts for pupils. Powerful schema are built in the pupil’s memory.
Immediate feedback allows teacher to quickly put right any misunderstandings (shown to be important in consolidating learning) and it identifies gaps in understanding to be addressed.

Examples from Nazlee (Maths) and Mary (Chemistry):

Maths Year 7:

Maths A Level:

Year 11 Chemistry:

27th November 201927th November 2019

What is the single most important thing for teachers to know?

Cognitive Load Theory – delivering learning experiences that reduce the overload of working memory

Rebecca Brown – GDST Trust Consultant Teacher, Maths and teacher at Wimbledon High School – explores how overload of the working memory can impact pupils’ ability to learn effectively.

Over the summer whilst (attempting to) paint and decorate my house, I was truly inspired listening to Craig Barton’s podcasts[1] and the opinions and theories of the fabulous guests that he has interviewed. In particular, his episode with Greg Ashman[2] where they discuss Cognitive Load Theory. I feel slightly embarrassed that I have managed to get through the last twelve years of my teaching practice and not come across this pivotal theory of how students learn before now!

Delving into this deeper, I have since found out that in 2017, Dylan Wiliam (another of my educational idols) tweeted that he had ‘come to the conclusion Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory[3] is the single most important thing for teachers to know.’ As a self-confessed pedagogical junkie I immediately wanted to know more – so what is Cognitive Load Theory and what impact could it have on the learning of my students?

What is Cognitive Load Theory and where did it come from?

“If nothing has been changed in long term memory then nothing has been learned” – Sweller

In 1998, in his paper Cognitive architecture and instructional design[4], prominent Educational Psychologist Dr John Sweller helped demonstrate that working memory has a limited capacity. He put forward the idea that our working memory – the part of our mind that processes what we are currently doing – can only deal with a limited amount of information at one time.

In essence, it suggests that human memory can be divided into working memory and long term memory. Long term memory is organised into schemas. If nothing is transferred to long term memory then nothing is learned. Processing new information puts cognitive load on working memory, which has a limited capacity and can, therefore, affect learning outcomes.

If we can design learning experiences that reduce working memory load then this can promote schema acquisition. Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory suggested that our working memory is only able to hold a limited amount of information (around 4 chunks) at any one time and that our teaching methods should avoid overloading our working memory to maximise learning.

De Jong[5] states that ‘cognitive load theory asserts that learning is hampered when working memory capacity is exceeded in a learning task’.

Put simply, in early knowledge acquisition, if we can simplify how we deliver material to students, to focus on what really needs to be learnt so that they are not using up too much working memory, then we have a much higher chance of being able to help the learning stick in their long term memory.

Types of Cognitive Load

The theory identifies three different types of cognitive load:

Intrinsic: the inherent difficulty of material being learnt. This can be influenced by prior knowledge that is already stored in the long term memory. For example, if students know that 5×10=50 this can be retrieved without imposing any strain on working memory but if the calculation required as part of a problem was 398 x 34, students would have to begin to retrieve information on how to do long multiplication which would take up working memory required for new material.

Extraneous: the way in which the subject is taught or the manner in which material presented. Extraneous load is a cognitive load that does not aid learning and should be reduced wherever possible.

Germanic: the load imposed on the working memory by the process of learning itself. That is, moving learning from the working memory into the schemas in long term memory.

So, if we can manage intrinsic load, reduce extraneous load, allow more room in the working memory for Germanic load then we have better chance of learning being transferred into long term memory.

Moving forward

In his enlightening and motivational book How I Wish I’d Taught Maths, Craig Barton[6] summarises that the essence of Cognitive Load Theory is getting students to think hard about the right things in order to facilitate the change in the long-term memory necessary for learning to occur.

Whilst I am so far from being an expert in Cognitive Load Theory, from the research that I have already read, I am positive that my teaching practices will be enhanced by continually considering ways of reducing Cognitive Load and ensuring that students working memories are not overloaded with information that is not conducive to learning.

My next steps are to look further into the research from Mayer[7] on Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to develop how I can best present learning opportunities to students.

References

[1] http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/podcast/

[2] http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/greg-ashman-cognitive-load-theory-and-direct-instruction-vs-inquiry-based-learning/

[3] Sweller, J., Van Merriednboer, J. J. G. and Paas F.G. W. C. (1998) ‘Cognitive architecture and instructional design’, Educational Pscycholgy Review 10 (3) pp. 251-296

[4] Sweller, J., Van Merriendboer, J.J.G and Paas, F.G. W. C. (1998( ‘ Cognitive architecture and instructional design’, Educational Psychology Review 10 (3) pp. 251-296

[5] De Jong T (2010) Cognitive Load Theory, educational research, and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional Science 38 (2): 105-134.

[6] Barton, Craig 2018 How I wish I’d taught Maths

[7] Mayer, R.E (2008) ‘Applying the science of learning: evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction’, American Psychologist 63 (8) pp. 760-769

26th January 2018

Where academic and pastoral meet: why we should value what we remember and will remember what we value.

Fionnuala Kennedy, Deputy Head (Pastoral), looks at research in to memory and how this can be used to aid revision for examinations.

As with most of my thoughts about education, this one was provoked by a conversation over supper and a glass of wine with someone not involved in the educational field. Unlike most of my thoughts about education, it is based on the work of a Dutch psychologist and Chess Master born in 1914, whose initial thesis, “Het denken van den schaker”, was published in 1946 (the English translation, “Thought and Choice in Chess”, appeared in 1965).
During the 40s, 50s and 60s, Adriaan de Groot conducted a series of cognitive chess experiments which ultimately formed the basis for ‘chunking’ theory and allowed for the development of chess computers. Testing all levels of chess player, from rank beginners through to Grand Masters, de Groot’s goal was to explain how the very best chess players could visually absorb a full chess board, assess the positions of pieces, process the different numbers of moves they could make next and rank them in order of preference, and all within seconds. This process was divided into four key phases, occurring rapidly in sequence:

The orientation phase – assessing the position and coming up with general ideas of what to do
The exploration phase – analysing concrete variations
The investigation phase – deciding on the best move
The proof phase –confirming the validity of the choice reached in phase three.

This in itself is an incredibly useful model of thought and study, particularly for the examination student under pressure of time. It is, however, not this which really piqued my interest in de Groot’s study, but rather the next phases of his thinking which have since been built upon by psychologists in the US.

Having determined the role of visual perception and thought processes of Grand Masters that lead to their success, de Groot went on to consider how they would memorise and what it was about that method of memory which made them so particularly successful. And the findings were – and are – fascinating.

In de Groot’s most famous demonstration, he showed several players images of chess positions for a few seconds and asked the players to reconstruct the positions from memory. The experts – as we might predict – made relatively few mistakes even though they had seen the position only briefly. So far, so impressive. But, years later, Chase and Simon replicated de Groot’s finding with another expert (a master-level player) as well as an amateur and a novice. They also added a critical control: the players viewed both real chess positions and scrambled chess positions (that included pieces not only in random positions, but also in implausible and even impossible locations). The expert excelled with the real positions – again, as might have been predicted – but performed no better than the amateur and even the novice for the scrambled positions. In essence, then, the expert advantage seems only to come from familiarity with actual chess positions, something that allows more efficient encoding or retrieval of the positions. The grand master’s memory, the test suggests, will only have absorbed the positions on the board which matter to them, which have meaning and purpose; it is not that their memories are simply ‘better’, or better-trained, but that they have become more efficient in storing meaningful patterns. Without that meaning, the expert and the novice will both struggle equally.

And this amazed me, and got me thinking. As educators, we know that theories about the ways in which we think and remember come and go, that pupils may learn in different ways, at different ages, in varying degrees of success and failure, and thus we shouldn’t jump on too many bandwagons pedagogically. I know for example that I am almost certainly more reliant on audio and visual modes of learning than kinesthetic, but then I suspect that’s because the latter didn’t really exist when I was at school; and I also tend to believe that I remember letters and words better than numbers, but this I now recognise to be because I grew up with parents who listened to music and read literature. It is not that our brains can or cannot remember aspects of learning; it is not necessarily that we have different ways of thinking and remembering and learning, or indeed brains which ‘absorb’ certain information better or worse than others. Rather:

We will remember that to which we ascribe value; we will memorise where there is pattern and meaning.

Which only goes to add more grist to the mill to Mrs Lunnon’s message delivered in our opening assembly this term: ‘What I do is me: for that I came’ (Manley-Hopkins). If we approach learning as a task which must be achieved simply to obtain an end-goal, we simply will not learn as well. Rather, if each task is ascribed a meaning and value for and within itself, it will become much easier to remember and store away. Thinking ‘I want to get 10/10 in my Spanish vocab test because I want to be top of the class’ will only make your task more difficult. Looking at each word you are learning and putting it into a context where you might use it one day, or including it in a joke in Spanish, or making a connection between the words, will save you time and maximise the chances of your brain storing that information away for you for longer.

What’s more – and this is where the pastoral side really kicks in – such an approach takes away the slog and grind of learning. Instead, meaning will surround us and be ascribed in all we do. And, of course, more excitingly than that: if we are on the look-out for meaning, it will help us to find the area which feels the most meaningful for us, in which we can readily spot and identify patterns of meaning and which fills us with joy and satisfaction. And it is this, and not simply a desire to do well or know more, which will lead to true mastery as we negotiate the chess board of our own learning and lives.

Follow @DHPastoralWHS and @Head_WHS on Twitter.