1. Internships - the 10 year olds have developed their CVs and covering letters and have been interviewed for a range of opportunities including graphic design, architecture and journalism. Dev's article on Sports Day was published in the Times of India today and he has another print deadline for 12 hours time!
2. Composting - Year 3 are developing their own compost - exploring the difference between aerobic and anerobic composting and the use of organic matter. They will be planting trees in this compost later in the term.
3. Year 1 are looking at the digestive system. They explored how it is that pizza turns into poo and today they put some food in a blender to see what happens when it all gets mashed up. They will be mapping the journey of food over the next few days.
4. Guest kids from the local school are learning IT skills - they do not have computers at their school. They have developed powerpoint presentations and today learned how to put these on a pen drive and transfer them to a different computer.
5. Year 2 are in art class. They are doing self portraits using mirrors to examine their own faces. They will then do a goethian observation of what they notice and what they like and why.
6. Tara m'am taught physics today using a pendulum suspension to explore how friction, resonance and gravity work. I have never seen a science class so gripped - ages - 7-11.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Monday, 14 February 2011
Design in Education Conference 2011
Hey there,
Just deivered a workshop as part of the Design in Education conference Kiran and the Riverside Team have organised.
Design in Education offers an opportunity for both students, practitioners and educators to make use of design systems to explore making education more meaningful and effective. There is a four stage process which goes like this:
1. Feel
empathise with the users - talk to parents, listen to students, try to get into the shoes of everyone concerned and find out what their needs are.
2. Imagine
How would we like this to be? how could we make it work better to get more needs met? This could be about classroom design, curriculum design or lesson planning.
3. Do, Do, Do
Prototype, experiment, try things out, ask what if, have a go, reflect and try again
4. Share
Share your findings, reflections, achievements with others.
An example:
How can we make lessons more interesting?
1.
Ask teachers where they feel students are disengaged and why.
Ask students why lessons work or don't work
Ask policy makers and examiners why they design education the way they do.
2. Explore how you could innovate to build a more interesting format.
What are others doing?
What would be fun to try?
What have you seen work elsewhere?
What is really out of the box?
3. Do, Do Do
devise some plans and try them out.
reflect on how they go and get feedback and try again
4. Share
Ask others to observe, give feedback and try out what you have created.
Kiran will be part of our conference programme, sharing her insight on person centered education - please visit www.thelifeproject.co.uk/conferences for more info.
Just deivered a workshop as part of the Design in Education conference Kiran and the Riverside Team have organised.
Design in Education offers an opportunity for both students, practitioners and educators to make use of design systems to explore making education more meaningful and effective. There is a four stage process which goes like this:
1. Feel
empathise with the users - talk to parents, listen to students, try to get into the shoes of everyone concerned and find out what their needs are.
2. Imagine
How would we like this to be? how could we make it work better to get more needs met? This could be about classroom design, curriculum design or lesson planning.
3. Do, Do, Do
Prototype, experiment, try things out, ask what if, have a go, reflect and try again
4. Share
Share your findings, reflections, achievements with others.
An example:
How can we make lessons more interesting?
1.
Ask teachers where they feel students are disengaged and why.
Ask students why lessons work or don't work
Ask policy makers and examiners why they design education the way they do.
2. Explore how you could innovate to build a more interesting format.
What are others doing?
What would be fun to try?
What have you seen work elsewhere?
What is really out of the box?
3. Do, Do Do
devise some plans and try them out.
reflect on how they go and get feedback and try again
4. Share
Ask others to observe, give feedback and try out what you have created.
Kiran will be part of our conference programme, sharing her insight on person centered education - please visit www.thelifeproject.co.uk/conferences for more info.
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Top Ten Tips From Riverside
Rigour...Relationship....Relevence ....Three Common Sense Notions from The Riverside School.
I continue to be hugely impressed by the Riverside approach.... here's some tips for other enthusiastic educators on how to adopt their style. www.schoolriverside.com
1. Reflection and checking understanding - every day "close the loop". Let the students express, in their own words, what they have learned. Next morning, make sure you recap.
2. Teaching as Learning - ask them to explain their learning to the rest of the class or to their parents - parents then send in detailed feedback about what their child has learned.
3. Involve the parents - in getting feedback, coming on school trips, keeping them in the loop on learning topics - this expands the number of stakeholders.
4. Use a variety of learning languages - e.g. Year 2 are exploring their characters - they have found new adjectives in the dictionary to describe themselves. They then made a visual colour chart to demonstrate the amount of each characteristic within their personalities. Then they got into groups and made a chart for the character of the group. Today they are making sandwiches reflecting character traits, using a range of food and mapping their tastes to each characteristic e.g if i am strong i need a strong taste like pickle.
5. Share WHY you are learning something - find a "hook" that explains and gives context before learning starts e.g. If you are learning about weather, show the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth
6. Learn using interactive methods e.g. Shadows - trace around your shadow with a chalk, how does the shadow move and change and why does it move that way?
7. Report findings in a variety of formats.
8. Use buddy pairs - each year group works to solve problems working with students 3 years younger than them. This develops responsibility, communication and partnership.
9. Design for Change - have the children develop and implement their own solutions to social problems using a design framework.
1o. Encourage mistakes, prototypes, experiments...amongst both staff and students.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
At Riverside Today
So I am at Riverside School in Ahmedabad, Kiran Sethi's innovative school has just celebrated its tenth year. The school's emphasis is on practical, real world, interactive education that meets the needs of the whole child.
The day starts at 8am and so far:
Grade 5 are having interviews for local internships - they have written their CV's and covering letters and are being interviewed by an independent visitor
Grade 6 got into a discussion about the value of a President and a Prime Minister in the delivery of legislation in the best interests of the people
Grade 9 are choreographing a routine for their performance at assembley next week to the music of Amelie ( all boys included!)
Grade 3 are embellishing a tale using their understanding of what the components of a good story are and
I am off with Pre - Kindergarten are off to the zoo.
The vibe here is very relaxed and joyful. When kids are asked to get on with something they quite happily do and are even unsupervised in later years, much like Graeme Whiting's Acorn School in the UK.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Indian Adventures
Hi Everyone
Greetings from Ahmedabad, in Gujerat, India!
I have been out in India now for five weeks, having delivered workshops to around 350 students and 400 adults. These have ranged from 21 year old automobile deesign student to ten year olds wanting to find their skill set and direction. Clients on the adult front have included Tata consulting and Synergy Electrics.
It has been fascinating offering interactive soft skills programmes here - the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
People feedback that:
1. They really enjoy interactive ways of learning
2. They love the practical tools as they can immediately make use of them in their lives
3. The informal education style makes learning a lot more fun than the traditional "chalk and talk" or " mug it up and chuck it out" forms of rote learning.
My aim being over here is to explore the market for alternative educational approaches and to offer schools, Universities, NGO"s and businesses an opportunity to try out the tools and seminars I have designed.
For the next week, I will be based at Riverside School, providing workshops and coaching for teachers and presenting at the Design in Education conference on the 12th and 13th. I have met with Kiran Sethi, the very inspiring Head here and will be giving you the full low down on their radicaly, interactive and person centered approach to learning. Kiran is one of the experts sharing their wisdom on our films in preparation for The Soul of Education conference, so keep an eye out for that here!
The key points on Riverside, as described by the students:
1. Segregation of play areas for each year group to meet their needs for safety and freedom
2. Self created student led projects including furniture designed from bottles and bespoke personal training programmes
3. Learning demonstrated by various forms of informal assessment including skits, presentations, projects and other creative methods
4. No school uniform and a school co-designed and built by the children, for the children, that resemble their home environment.
5. Focus not just on knowledge, but understanding from which innovation is encouraged.
In ten years the school has gone from 30 kids to 300.
Oh and I was in the paper today, together with 100 kids at the British Library!
Keep in touch!
Greetings from Ahmedabad, in Gujerat, India!
I have been out in India now for five weeks, having delivered workshops to around 350 students and 400 adults. These have ranged from 21 year old automobile deesign student to ten year olds wanting to find their skill set and direction. Clients on the adult front have included Tata consulting and Synergy Electrics.
It has been fascinating offering interactive soft skills programmes here - the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
People feedback that:
1. They really enjoy interactive ways of learning
2. They love the practical tools as they can immediately make use of them in their lives
3. The informal education style makes learning a lot more fun than the traditional "chalk and talk" or " mug it up and chuck it out" forms of rote learning.
My aim being over here is to explore the market for alternative educational approaches and to offer schools, Universities, NGO"s and businesses an opportunity to try out the tools and seminars I have designed.
For the next week, I will be based at Riverside School, providing workshops and coaching for teachers and presenting at the Design in Education conference on the 12th and 13th. I have met with Kiran Sethi, the very inspiring Head here and will be giving you the full low down on their radicaly, interactive and person centered approach to learning. Kiran is one of the experts sharing their wisdom on our films in preparation for The Soul of Education conference, so keep an eye out for that here!
The key points on Riverside, as described by the students:
1. Segregation of play areas for each year group to meet their needs for safety and freedom
2. Self created student led projects including furniture designed from bottles and bespoke personal training programmes
3. Learning demonstrated by various forms of informal assessment including skits, presentations, projects and other creative methods
4. No school uniform and a school co-designed and built by the children, for the children, that resemble their home environment.
5. Focus not just on knowledge, but understanding from which innovation is encouraged.
In ten years the school has gone from 30 kids to 300.
Oh and I was in the paper today, together with 100 kids at the British Library!
Keep in touch!
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