The Montaigne Society

The Montaigne Society is a group of 4th Form students who have chosen to devote Friday activities time to progressing their academic interests beyond the curriculum. I am lucky enough to oversee the group, and the sessions are a mix of interesting discussion of current affairs and open questions, and also the research process - looking into areas of personal interest. The culmination of this research is a presentation back to the society. Through the presentation the particular academic interest is shared, and points are raised and discussed.

On Friday, Ben Dimbleby presented to the group on the history of weaponry, looking at their development and commenting on the historical context in which key inventions were made. His aim was to research a topic in depth that had the joint appeal of indulging his interest in mechanical engineering and also his attraction to "The Enlightenment" period of History. It was, quite simply, stunning. Ben's depth of knowledge allowed him to talk around the subject and answer questions asked by the rest of the group with dexterity and skill. It was agreed that none of us would have shared this interest particularly at the beginning, but we were all thoroughly absorbed in the topic, showing that genuine academic interest, when expressed clearly, is thoroughly infectious.

The nurturing of such interests and the development of the skills of presenting and participating in high level academic discourse are the key aims of the Montaigne Society, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing how the group's interests develop throughout this year. I will regularly report back on the blog about the other talks that are made by the students.

Music and Learning

Tonight I am on duty with the Seventh Form. Sitting in School House, Old Hall, I am supervising some Round House girls and School House boys doing prep, and it is fascinating to see what working habits they have. Obviously, at the age they are independence is not just encouraged, but expected. Whilst I will always give my advice about good ways to work, I would draw the line at now saying "do this in this way" / "don't do it like this". My current musing is about listening to music. As you can see, many of them do like to listen to music whilst completing work.

I have read research that suggests classical music boosts engagement yet anything with lyrics distracts; I have also seen studies that support the thesis that "each to their own" - it simply depends on how your brain is wired.

My thinking tonight is that students here are optionally congregating in Old Hall to work together, and they seem to find benefit in this arrangement - preferable to simply shutting themselves away in their room, However, the music still provides a cut off from being self-conscious or aware of what others are doing in this space. Perhaps the combination of communal working, but with the music acting as a barrier to potential distraction gives the students the best of two worlds.

After being the disruptive influence in the room, and asking them what they are listening to and why they like it, the overwhelming consensus is that they think it enhances focus, removes distraction, and allows them to be more absorbed in a task. The style of music seemed to be "relaxing" types.

I think this is an interesting question for schools to engage with. Should more classrooms involve music when working independently? how do we best advise students about where to work? what age should they take these decisions?

Oh, there was one student who was not listening to music (Kristina), and when I asked her why she preferred not to listen to music, the answer was: "sir, I forgot my headphones"... oh well!

CamStar

It is time to shake the dust off this particular blog! In truth, so much has been happening, that my intention of regular reporting has somewhat slipped since the start of term; but it is always good to reassess priorities, and the opportunity to share the exciting developments at Oakham is not only worth some designated time, but will be enjoyable as well!

Today I would like to introduce any readers to CamStar. Having worked in developing teaching and learning for more than seven years now, I am always looking for a way for really great staff development to take place, and I believe that CamStar is one of them. So, what is it? CamStar is a network of schools and teachers co-ordinated by Cambridge University who are all involved in researching - finding evidence for - what works in the classroom. Members do this through planning an "intervention" (a teaching and learning strategy) which has the aim of answering a specific question: so, "how can verbal feedback improve evaluation essays?"; or "Can regular low stakes testing improve long term memory?". Then the intervention is carried out, evidence gathered and conclusions made. These are shared at both school and sometimes national (or international!) conferences. At their best, a new strategy can be shown to be effective and then shared with the community.

More than thirty Oakham teachers are involved and it is very exciting to see the range of research interests. Letters informing parents of the students who will be in classes that CamStar projects are aimed at will go out in January, and I will certainly regularly report back on how the projects are developing.

To end this post, the following quote from educationalist Tom Bennet sets out the case for why it is so important that teachers do seek their own solid justification to inform approaches in the classroom:

“My suggestion: we don't wait for the grown-ups to make everything better. We carry on doing what we've begun to do: mobilise, organise and improvise. Teachers and school leaders are, to a great extent, leaders of the culture within which they inhabit. Brain Gym may have been dropped on us from a height, but we didn't have to do it. As teachers, we take responsibility for our own development, and get involved in the movements that undercut the traditional hierarchies"

Very inspiring, and a great avenue to develop teaching and learning at Oakham!

Lower 1 impress with their debating skills

I had the pleasure today of joining Lower 1 for a formal structured debate about whether zoos ought to be banned. It is always a pleasure to go to the Lower 1 room and see the high level of enthusiasm and engagement from our youngest students. Previously, I have written about the importance of high academic expectations and what I saw here demonstrated this perfectly. The debate was not an unfocussed discussion, but a rigorously structured event, with particular roles and reflection afterwards on what could have been improved. The students were capable of giving spontaneous points of information and presenting logical arguments.

Powerful points were made about how zoos can actually improve the quality of an animal's life; others argued that the environment might make the animals more vulnerable in the long-term.

One thing that stood out was the fact that the students were using "connectives" in their contributions, referring back to prior points. They were also giving examples, sometimes from personal experience; they had an excellent grasp of the key issues, and all of this was from independently researched information.

What was particularly exciting for me as Director of Teaching and Learning was to see the progress that the students had made since I last observed them doing presentations on the Vikings last term. They spoke more fluently, reasoned more convincingly and in many places were far less dependent on their notes. It was also clear that they were very comfortable working together and showed a lot of respect in listening carefully to one another. I strongly believe that the skills required in debating (logical reasoning, presentation, clarity of explanation) are incredibly valuable for many other areas of learning, and having finished my own teaching for the year, this has now made me look forward to meeting my own 1st Form class next year and know I will be able to expect great things due to the strong foundation they have received in Lower 1.

Should learning always be fun?

I have had some really interesting discussions with a number of colleagues recently about whether or not "entertaining" classes in order to make material engaging is a good thing to do. If one manages to be entertaining, then obvious benefits could involve better motivated and more interested students - and this is undoubtedly why we try to bring a bit of showmanship to the classroom.

Students having fun - but have they learnt the maths?

However, some have rightly asked whether this can be a bit of a deception. Much learning, particularly when done independently, has no "bells, whistles, tricks or fireworks" driving the experience: it is sheer hard graft and the best motivation will be a serious interest in the material itself. In addition to this, the fact that there is a very well commented upon culture of "immediate gratification" - driven by the Internet, Social Networking, Computer Gaming and a generally fast pace of life - then should we not be concerned that the entertaining teacher is pandering to a dumbed down version of learning?

This is a particularly important question when we consider what a student actually learns when things are made more palatable and easier to learn. Perhaps memory retention of detailed concepts is higher when the learning process has been more challenging. I have often been struck that some "all singing all dancing" lessons I have taught get very good immediate feedback, but when I test the learning later, they remember that "they enjoyed the lesson" but not necessarily the content of the lesson itself. Conversely, lessons that I thought were too hard, and seemed messy - with students leaving the room looking like they wanted bad things to happen to me - later proved to have worked effectively in quality knowledge being learnt and retained. So, reflecting on my own experience, the thesis holds.


So, should we be more boring?

A categoric no to this. I still think that it is our job to present learning in engaging ways, but that engaging ought not be substituted for "fun" (although fun will have its place - particularly when occurring naturally - we should not actively seek it as the primary purpose of a lesson and think that it will make students learn better). Trying this out directly, I decided to take my Post-GCSE 4th Form set, who had three lessons left which were not going towards any qualification, and do some A-Level Philosophy work. Why not? They are bright, interesting young people and have the ability to think at a high level. Whilst there may have been a few calls for "films" and "Sir, play us a song" (yes, part of my entertainment repertoire is to write and sing songs...very badly), the 4th Formers got stuck in and did some high quality thinking about how much free will we might have, and why some argue that we have none.

Ultimately, we should not apologise for rigour, the intrinsic value of our subjects and the need to work hard at learning.

My conclusion to this question of "entertainment" in the classroom at the moment is that we should have really high academic expectations of all our students in the classroom, and not think that they need to be entertained in order to learn; this is doing them a disservice. That said, happiness and humour are vital components of good relationships, so we should also be cautious of teaching strings of lessons that do not allow breathing space; obvious progress (it can't be very hard all of the time, or too hard any of the time); and - at the right moment - simply allowing ourselves to have a laugh with the great young people we teach.

Times Festival of Education: Part 2

The Saturday line-up of the festival promised a fantastic day and it did not disappoint.

Early morning at the Festival

Amongst the earliest pedagogical birds, I was lucky enough to see John Tomsett in the first slot talking about the great value of using videos of our own lessons to tweak practice "at the margins": bad teacher habits; things to improve, and negative behaviours that we just do not notice until confronted with the hard visual/audio evidence. The session was enriched by showing some of his own less than perfect lessons (and any of us who think we teach perfect lessons are either abnormal or self-deluded). The concept of "deliberate practice" - which is the idea that we should focus in on an area for improvement and consciously enact improved practice until we embed it in our teaching habits - is one that is an incredibly common-sense path to improvement. His assertion that improving teaching and learning is "all about culture" resonates, and he made much of the idea that a Senior Leadership Team had to lead by example, showing themselves to also be willing to learn and seek to improve.



In the second session, I stayed where I was in the Old Gym and watched the TES Behaviour Guru, Tom Bennett. I have spoken with Tom via Twitter, and I certainly recommend his excellent book "Teacher". Today he unashamedly presented the common sense principles of good classroom management. I hope that others took away the important point that instilling strong classroom discipline is not about "the teacher getting respect" (as an end) but more about insisting on respect for your rules because they are in the best interests of the students. The other important message was that for independent learning to happen, there needs to be self-discipline first, which comes about through internalised discipline (or "compliance" in Tom's words). If this is not provided (in a "loving", but consistent and robust way) by the adult in the room, it is unlikely to happen. Although colleagues at Oakham are teaching in a very different environment to Tom's East London Comprehensive School, his thinking here is simply good teaching and applies to all practitioners, whatever their context.


After a dubious Cappuccino (it was just pretending to be something more than hot water with white froth) I enjoyed watching Kris Boulton argue for there being more of a focus on a teacher's subject knowledge, bringing expectations in line with other professions such as Law or Medicine. Then it was to Old School to hear a humorous but passionate talk by Geoff Barton about "The Habits of Literacy". Much like LHO (Learning Habits at Oakham), he argued that there were so many things regarding literacy that we as subject teachers take for granted and that we do not successfully make them explicit enough to students. The assertion that we have to "normalise" reading is certainly a lesson for all schools to prioritise.

Catching up with Oakham colleagues at lunchtime, David Starkey appeared to have made quite an impact and there were excellent reports on a wide range of other talks. Quite simply, what an amazing event - and one that has certainly offered the staff new ideas, revitalisation and inspiration.

The Times Festival of Education: Part 1

The Times Festival of Education is to education enthusiasts what Glastonbury is to music lovers. For those of us who might admit to spending their "free" time perusing education blogs and reading books about teaching, this is more than an antidote to England's World Cup exit.

 Six Oakham teachers are here at Wellington College but we seem to have the unplanned strategy of optimal coverage of the wide variety of talks - so I have not even seen some of them.

I still have a day to go but this has already been a valuable trip. My own highlights of yesterday include:

Some tribal singing

Dylan Wiliam's talk on Principled Curriculum Design. As a real heavy-weight in terms of teaching and learning thinking and practice, it was reassuring to hear so much support regarding what we are developing at Oakham. In particular, he talked about the importance of specific disciplines focusing on "domain specific" habits of mind when learning subject content. This supports one key strategy for LHO next year: in the Middle and Upper School to identify and present the most crucial Habits for each particular subject. This leads us to a place where we are authentically teaching subject disciplines with the expectation that students ought to be learning to understand how a mathematician (or historian, or linguist....) thinks and approaches problems. With a broader-based understanding of how the Habits are crucial for independent thinking and learning developed in the Lower School, this later specialisation has compelling research to support its value.


Tom Sherrington, one of my favourite education bloggers, did a talk on why despite the seeming divide between "progressives" and "traditionalists", great teaching uses elements of both. This seems to me to be common sense and certainly is how things are developing at Oakham. It is not so much that they are all really the same thing - there are key differences - but to be dogmatic with one is to cut yourself off from incredibly valuable approaches from the other.

A poor quality shot of a high quality session from Mr Michael Gove

Finally, a very late Mr Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, arrived to "headline" (in Glastonbury-speak) the event. It was very clear that many fellow-teachers, particularly those from the state sector, are not happy with many of he interventions that he has made. We, certainly, are currently engaged in much research and discussion regarding the best way forward with the Upper School Curriculum, in light of the proposed changes. However, I do not think that anyone could deny that his performance in answering questions was very impressive. Surprisingly, for a politician, he does answer questions and clearly believes on a principled level what he is doing. Whether or not you agree with all being changed is certainly another matter.

Good Advice

Sometimes it can be those unplanned meetings that turn out to be incredibly useful; particularly when it is with a whole class of 1st Form Oakhamians who are brimming with great advice for the new students joining us in September.

To cut a long story short, after the 1st Form exams, Class 1B had a lesson where the teacher was absent. I was in the Jerwoods Reception area when this call came through and cover was being sought. I overhead this and realised that I had been meaning to find time to ask a 1st Form class the question: "What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time, to before you had started at Oakham?" - and so, seizing this opportunity, the class were ushered into J7 - me with a board pen at the ready in order to capture their wisdom.

Now, Oakhamians are not generally known for their hesitancy, and 1B did not disappoint: an explosion of thinking was the metaphor that came to mind. These were just a few of the many things that they said:

"Always listen in class - it really does all matter." Aha! I thought, a class just having sat some exams with some "mysterious" looking questions...

"Take a risk - you'll regret things more if you don't do them." Excellent advice, and we explored what this actually meant: from trying a new sport to putting your hand up to answer in class.

"Be proactive in e-mailing teachers.... especially music teachers."  I am interpreting this to mean that they have to keep on top of their music commitments due to lessons changing around, rather than that the music teachers are particularly terrifying. But proactivity is indeed one of those key learning characteristics that all successful students have. Learning does not happen to you - it is something that you have to make happen.

.....and many, many more reflections. The advice was so good that not only did I share some of it with new Lower 1 and 1st Form Day Parents on that same day, but I am going to be getting some video clips of these highly reflective and articulate students, to perhaps show to the new Oakhamians in September. It is often better hearing advice from someone who has recently been through what you are about to experience.

The activity also showed how our LHO (Learning Habits at Oakham) initiative is giving students the language and the guidance to grow as reflective learners. With a carefully thought through programme of how we approach LHO from September, I cannot wait to see how the sort of advice that we see above is put into action, and what advice the new cohort will give their past selves by the end of next year.

Introduction...

by Ritchie Gale

Dear Oakham Community,

In the 1982 film Gandhi, the lead protagonist claims that the strength of a community is reflected in the strength of its press. As a 21st century form of sharing news and ideas, it seems appropriate that as a centre of learning excellence, Oakham School has a blog which regularly shares our thinking and activity concerning teaching and learning.

So, this is the first post in my own blog, which will be aimed at providing a window into the academic activity happening across the school. Whilst headline stories such as competitions, results and trips will still have their own articles on the website, this is a far more informal and regular presentation about the richness, diversity and the innovation happening in (and sometimes out) of Oakham classroom. The bread and butter, the everyday, the trials and tribulations, the progress, and the questions that face all of us involved in the gloriously messy business of learning.

For a number of years now we have been exploring an approach to learning that is centred on the students and how they develop their attributes, or 'habits of mind' http://bit.ly/1pjE81d. This is because we care about them becoming powerful, life-long learners who are not simply trained for a specific exam, but also able to thrive in any future situation. This, we believe, has to be the right approach and guiding vision in how we develop our teaching. Subject knowledge and academic passion remain the objectives, but questions about how that knowledge is acquired, and the impact of that process on the learner are what we are taking very seriously.

Exactly how these developments are made has been, and will continue to be, the key question. Independence is the end goal, and not the means to the end. This is not about leaving students to it, but in modelling, teaching and encouraging the knowledge, skills and habits required for independence. There is also the inevitable situation that Oakham teachers have always taught well and built up positive learning habits in students through their teaching - but since making the vision explicit, it is also clear that to move closer towards the ideal we must develop what we do and be willing to open ourselves out to new ideas and approaches, integrating those with what we know works well. The encouragement to staff is that this process does not demand us to all teach in the same way, but that in our own subject contexts, within our own styles, we can contribute towards the big picture.

Future posts will bring you stories and reflections from specific teachers who are trying different ideas out in their classrooms, explaining exactly why it is that Oakham is a fantastic environment for students who would become exceptional learners.

R. Gale