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Focus on Action Research
A strong Action Research group has been established to develop a range of
Teaching and Learning skills in order to create a stimulating and
dynamic environment for all of our students.
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Alan Willans
Action Research |
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Over the last 6 years an Action Research group has operated within the school. A group of volunteers representing subjects across the curriculum has met on two occasions per term, to develop and create a stimulating and dynamic learning environment for all our students.
To date we have focused our attention on:
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Multiple Intelligences
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Improving Learning by Adapting Teaching
to how Individuals learn
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The Three-Part Lesson
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Developing Thinking Skills
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Skills for independent learning and research
These approaches to teaching and learning underpin
our planning and are reflected in our schemes of work. Following on
from whole school curriculum planning and development, the key priority
of independent learning need to be at the forefront of our teaching.
During 2009-10 the group has 'taken a break' in order to spread Action Research outcomes more widely through our Twilight INSET programme. Key Action Research colleagues are leading much of the Twilight Programme, and we hope to re-launch the Action Research Group in September 2010 or to launch 'Action Research Posts' within the school.
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So what have we been up to?
It is always great to see staff wanting to try
out new ideas. This term we have been focusing on developing ‘Thinking
Skills’ and everyone has tested the water with resounding success! Some
of our group describe their work:
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Donna Parry:
“We had year 8 and our group
decided to focus on using collective memory. Rather than spend a whole
lesson doing something out of my comfort zone I decided to do the
activity as a starter. My initial thought was to ask the students to
work in groups and study different photographs of products related to
their project. However, after reading through the literature again I
finally decided to ask them to look at the same photograph and I chose
something
(I thought was
simple to remember) fairly straight forward. I introduced it as a
competition and there would be a prize for the best group. I was really
impressed with the speed to which they all settled to the task, how well
they worked as a group and the enjoyment of all students who felt they
could contribute. The majority of the groups could remember 60% of the
picture and there was a tie for first place. I enjoyed the activity and
will use it with other groups in future”. |
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Paul Kaspar:
“‘Mysteries’
- thinking skills application. With my year 13 Media Studies group, I
set them up on PC’s with a folder with ‘random’ selected still frames
from classic Film Noir movies. I introduced the software Microsoft
‘Photostory’ to them (great free download, by the way!) and asked them
to weave the images into a noir murder mystery, complete with femme
fatales, curling fag smoke and hard-drinking private eyes. The software
allowed them to dissolve photos together, with re-framing and pace,
adding music, captions and voice-over. Gripping results and a fun way of
teaching genre codes and conventions by osmosis!” |
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Nick Hobbs:
“My
group agreed to work with Year 9, requiring pupils to evaluate
information through reading images. After only 2 months of Spanish, I
didn’t expect very sophisticated use of target language so decided to
create a starter which would lead into a simple reading text, one
purpose being to increase awareness of the Spanish speaking world. To
this end, before we looked at the text I projected a number of images
onto the board, most of which were directly related to what they were
about to read. I simply asked them to put forward theories as to what
the connection between the images was. The images were two Cuban women
smoking cigars, a tourist resort in the Dominican Republic the Panama
Canal, a Galapagos turtle, a Venezuelan oil well, Lima, a Nicaraguan
coffee farmer and some Argentinean tango dancers. To give a clue, I
also included a picture of a bull fight. There was quite an interesting
discussion which touched on issues of cultural identity and history
among other things. with greater interest since it provided the key to
the mystery". |
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