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6/24/2004
refs to lit

"To be playful and serious at the same time is possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition."

John Dewey, How We Think

And more up to date:

"Many teachers continue to equate playfulness with frivolity, then complain when students are quiet and un-responsive. They offer examinations and grades as the goal of the class, then are surprised when students are concerned more about what will be on the final exam than larger conceptual issues. Students remember more, think more, and understand more when they enjoy the process."

Alex Halavais

Posted at 6:26:36 pm by lmhartley
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Play and delight

I have had some more thoughts on this but still not very coherent.
  • Play doesn't have to be delightful. In fact children's play can be quiet cruel and painful.
  • This painful play can still be a learning experience.
    So I am still struggling with the concept of 'delight' in this context.

    Can creativity be taught?


    See Blair's blog for more details
    This may seem a million miles away fom what I should be working on for report 5 but I am starting to think that this is what I want to do in the longer term. To teach (or perhaps 'enable' is a better word) people to be creative and perhaps to do it using digital tools. This makes sense of my growing interest in blogging, web design etc. The only way I can cope with this module is to make it as real as possible and part of that reality is accepting that I do not want to stay doing this job forever.

    Some one was telling me recently about being taught to be creative and what a painful experience that had been. It had involved letting go of many preconceptions about what the participants wanted to produce and accepting the limitations of the technology they were to use to produce their work. The implication was that these limitations actually forced them to learn to be creative. It reminded me of learning to write poetry and the demands that using a particular form such as the sonnet (or the hiaku) places on the writer.
    Another incident also made me think more about this issue. I watched an adult 'playing' with technology to produce a piece of art and saw a very similar kind of intensity of concentration, frustration and pleasure to that displayed by the reception class.

    Richard Millwood's The New Learning Landscape gives some interesting insights into why we all need to play. I saw this last week but he has added a lot more detail since then. In a comment on an earlier entry to my blog Richard says of play
    "We need this because it allows mistakes to be made with delight, and sustains improvement / perfection of ideas."
    I think this permission to make mistakes is key, at least in this culture. Not sure about in the US or even New Zealand.


    • Posted at 3:25:49 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (1)  

    6/16/2004
    For Gina

    This is a flourless chocolate cake for Gina as she has to be wheat-free and is missing chocolate cake.

    Chocolate and Almond Cake


    (in imperial measures because I've had it for years)
    1/4 lb of chocolate (Lindt or similar)
    3onz butter
    3onz castor sugar
    3onz ground almonds
    3 eggs
    1tblsp rum or brandy
    1 tblsp black coffee
  • Set oven to very low: Gas mark 1 290 F
  • Grease a 7 inch shallow sponge tin
  • Break the chocolate into small pieces put them into a bowl in the oven to melt with the rum and coffee.
  • Stir well and put in a saucepan with the butter sugar and ground almonds.
  • Stir over a very low heat until melted.
  • Leave to stand
  • Separate the eggs
  • Beat the whites until very stiff
  • Stir the beaten yolks into the choclate mixture
  • Fold in the egg whites
  • Pour gently into the tin
  • Place the tin on a metal baking sheet and put into the oven
  • Cook for 45 mins.
  • Leave in tin until cool
  • Turn cake out very carefully!!!! It is very fragile because of the lack of flour.
    So there it is and very nice too I'm assured by the choloate eaters for whom I've made it. I am allergic to chocolate so I wouldn't know!
    Amazing the uses to which you can put a blog!!

    • Posted at 8:51:56 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (7)  

    6/15/2004
    Reflection on positive handling

    I am curled up in a ball on the floor banging hard with my fists. I know that if I get up I will hurt her really badly and I don't want that to happen. If I touch her I might not be able to stop until she is dead. My rage fills the whole world, everything has shrunk to this small area of floor that I can see my fist smashing into. Beside me I hear a voice. Someone is kneeling down next to me, not too close, but near enough for me to know they are there. From a long way off I hear
    "Do you need some help there Mrs T?"
    "Yes, please Mrs H."
    There is someone kneeling on the other side of me too , and the classroom is empty now.
    "Can you get up J or do you need some help?"
    "I am going to kill her" I hear my voice. It sounds strange and distant, like it belongs to someone else.
    There are firm hands on each of my elbows. Mrs T and Mrs H have moved really close to me now. It feels safe. Slowly I find myself moving onto my knees.
    "Come on J you are doing really well. Up on to your feet next."
    And so I am... not really sure how I got here. Now I am walking with Mrs H, she's put her arm round my shoulder and is holding my elbow. She's holding me close. I feel odd, numb now, nearly crying.
    "Mrs B, J needs to stay here for a little while. I'll just be round the corner if you need me J."
    Now I am in Mrs B's room on the big cushions. I feel sleepy and I have a dry mouth. I'm going to stay here till I feel better. My hands are sore.
    Team Teach positive handling course

    Posted at 7:21:55 pm by lmhartley
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    More play

    I spent part of today taking photographs of some children from yr5 dressed up as characters from Hansel and Gretel. I'd dearly love to post some of them here but images of other people's children are really not ok. I might see if I can by obscure their faces and post them. The photos really are delightful.
    The interesting thing was that two of the children are quite tough nuts and consider themselves (at 10) too old for playing. However provide them with good costumes, the role play room and a story that they know really well and what happens? Instead of just taking a group photo of the 3 children I end up taking 10 shots of them as they act out the whole story which they do with great attention to detail and once again (like yesterday's reception children) total concentration. So what might have taken 10 minutes took 30 and 3 children and one TA had a 'delightful' time.
    So what did I learn?
  • That 10 years old still need to play.
    Well, put like that it seems obvious but easy to forget when they behave like teenagers most of the time.
  • That it might be worth taking small groups of them into the role play area next year when we re-do this block of work and build this play into it.
    I talked this through with my yr5 teacher and she agreed that this would be a valuable addition to the project.

    These insights have made me think about how I want to write about informal learning in Report 5. Tom's comment yesterday encouraged me as well. I think I want to write about the way that my play is important for my learning too. It is not just for children. I need to look at this more deeply, to start to formalise my ideas about learning through play and what that means for me as an adult. Not sure where this is going but it it at least going somewhere at last!! Time to look for some literature perhaps?


    • Posted at 6:20:37 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (2)  

    6/14/2004
    learning through play

    I was watching the reception class during role-play today. I was asked to stand in at very short notice and I haven't worked in reception for nearly 3 years. They were being fire fighters, receptionists, and people being rescued. It was very interesting watching the concentration with which they played out these roles. They were engrgrossed and enjoying themselves but this was definitely a serious business. Maybe this sort of play is a combination of acting out things we would not otherwise be able to do (like be a 5yr old fire fighter), making sense of adult behaviour and building a more complete picture of the world and their place in it. I'd be hard put to say exactly what they learned today but I am sure they were learning. I am also sure that I was learning to by watching them at play and providing input when they needed it.

    This is my problem with the informal learning stuff for report 5. Incidents like this happen all the time in my job. Sudden insights are parr for the course. So how can I possibly list them all? And where am I supposed to get evidence for them?


    Posted at 10:48:29 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (3)  

    6/11/2004
    Back to work on LA2

    Significant Learning

    Significant learning Telling into Writing project Team teach safe handling course 3d display course Water safety course Using Ecologger
    Artifact Hansel and Gretel resource pack certificate display photo collection certificate 'Teacher-friendly' instructions
    Reflection to do mind map to do to do to do

    So this is the second part of LA2. The first part was to upload the artifacts to the file cabinet but I have mostly put them on my web pages and linked to them here.

    Next I need to do the reflections. Wonder which techniques to use?


    Posted at 3:22:10 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (1)  

    5/27/2004
    Off on Holiday

    This might be the last entry for a few days and if I am really good for more than a week. I'm not sure I'll manage that. My last week off I managed to update my blog twice and log on to First Class fairly often.

    I got 83% for my Action Enquiry and I am really happy about that. It is my lowest mark so far but I decided that I needed to spend less time fussing at this stage of the degree and so did not do all my usual last minute revisions. I might aim for 75% next time:-)


    Posted at 10:04:48 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (1)  

    5/24/2004
    Lunchtimes got better

    I started going out everyday at lunchtime a few weeks ago and it has made a real difference to my day. I found a place to walk by the canal very near to school. Although it is almost in the city centre it feels quite tranquil. Mostly used by people from the local estate as a traffic free route to the city shops, it feels a really safe space.
    On with the Learning list:
  • Monitoring the buddy system
    attended meeting with cluster, feedback meeting with head, wrote plan for monitoring system,designed questionnaires for the current buddies, made lists of questions for learning mentor and lunchtime supervisors, research into other school's methods of running the system, attending and writing up the yr5 training sessions. Writing a short report for feeding back to cluster.

    Year 5 Informal Learning

  • Ecologger
  • Adhd Links and research
  • dyslexia research
  • space links
  • springboard maths

    Year 3 Informal Learning

  • dyspraxia research
  • dyslexia research
  • speech and language: meetings with speech therapist

    • Posted at 10:50:43 pm by lmhartley
    Comments (2)  

    5/23/2004
    Informal Learning

    So how best to list informal learning?

    In my job as I have such a varied role it is hard to work out if I am constantly learning or hardly learning anything!

    I'm going to split it into my 3 job roles I think:

    Research Assistant

  • Magical spelling
    On line literature search, statistical analysis of the spelling mistakes made by class in optional SATs, research into learning styles, one to one training on Magical Spelling method, planning and recording sessions, investigating action research methods, reporting back to the cluster, giving feedback session and demonstration to staff, helping set up new spelling policy for school.
  • Telling into Writing
    4 meetings with literacy co-ordinator responsible for project, improving on-line search techniques (including investigating new search engines such asKartoo.com), investigating copywrite law and its implications for the visual aids required for the project, working out best gestures to use for teaching the class a narrative poem, using the experience gleaned from this to decide on the best gestures for the Hansel and Gretal story, working as a TA during the two week block whilst constantly reviewing the techniques being used with class teacher, designing evaluation questionnaires for staff and pupils, working with small groups on computers to faccilitate their production of individual stories told from the viewpoint of either Handsel or Gretal, investigating ways of putting these stories on-line, reporting back to the cluster on the project.

    That's enough for now, I'll put the stuff about Monitoring the Buddy System later.


    • Posted at 6:29:07 pm by lmhartley
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