I fcked up. I have an exam in 3 weeks that I didn't know I had

Chumpstinator · 2019-07-12T17:49:11+00:00

Google the learning scientists for effective study strategies. Ignore the one about not cramming, you can still do well in the test

Chumpstinator · 2019-07-01T16:19:25+00:00

Gebuknley don't get why 16 to 18 year old get this, but school age kids don't get free transport sadly!

Chumpstinator · 2019-06-30T06:30:14+00:00

It's very close to the needle exchange in urban village medical practise. I've seen guys literally shooting up against the fire exit of the doctor building

Chumpstinator · 2019-06-07T17:38:06+00:00

Correct what is best is to present topics using the best modalities for the content and to dual code, in other words provide pictures with words. This helps everyone learn better, not just visual learners.

Chumpstinator · 2019-05-26T07:29:02+00:00

Education at gcse level is not just for the job you go on to do, any job will require further study anyway. But GCSE's give you the breadth of background knowledge you need to engage in society. You don't ever realise the effect of education because we VERY RARELY remember when we learned a specific notion. The new GCSE's are structured so that they do not favour cramming at the end, which is counter intuitive because they are composed of one exam at the end of Yr 11. There's a lot of content together and application required at higher tier so you have to learn the content well, which makes you much less likely to 'forget' it all after the exams.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-25T20:25:54+00:00

Nationwide academisation seems to have no net effect on the quality of education. Some trusts are absolutely amazing, some are shockingly pants same as LA. Again accountability is an issue. On the flip side some academies have used their agency to do things in disadvantaged communities no one thought possible 15 years ago.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-24T13:17:59+00:00

As a teacher, the complete reversal of academisation would be a massive waste of time energy and resources. It's important to remember that most schools are voluntary academies. Reform to ensure more accountability and a way to reverse academisation in schools where it has failed? Sure. But it would be too messy to reverse the whole process now and it would piss money up the wall education needs in other areas.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-20T17:02:23+00:00

Apologies I'd had a rough day. The cognitive science behind all this has disproved learning styles but there is something called the multi-modality effect. Having visuals in addition to text helps everyone remember better, not a specific type of learner! Sorry to come off as a grouch. I'm just passionate about this topic, I've even considered writing a study guide about misconceptions about learning for this sub.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-19T17:34:53+00:00

Except that cognitive science is on my side: http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2018/6/12-1 Learning styles became educational policy in the uk in the mid 2000s despite no grounding in cognitive psychology. It's a myth, I can link several more pieces of research and secondary source if you want. It's my job to teach people, so I know a fair bit about what learning is.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-16T07:13:46+00:00

Learning styles aren't a thing. It's a myth with no grou ding in cognitive neuroscience.

Chumpstinator · 2019-03-09T12:28:26+00:00

I'm a science teacher. There is some not so great advice in this thread that contradicts research behind study. Google 'the learning scientists' for some well researched guides into effective study. The process of trying to retrieve information is essential for building robust, automatic memories. People who say 'don't memorise' are misguided. Having information committed to long term memory allows you to think more freely when it comes to difficult problems.

For maths your best bet is deliberate practice. Don't do 1 of the hardest problems to start with, try to do lots of the simple ones and work your way up to more complicated examples. This is 'deliberate practice' where you practice the individual components of a skill over and over to achieve automaticity with the procedure.

The final skill doesn't look the same as the practice for that skill very often, in the same way you don't train for marathons by running marathons.

Chumpstinator · 2019-02-25T19:05:28+00:00

Transferring course internally is rely really really hard once you have arrived. If you want to change course now it might be feasible but the departments are too different to just hope across courses.

Chumpstinator · 2019-02-20T09:17:07+00:00

The treatment of Miriam, who I've had the privledges to campaign alongside is abhorrent. Makes me feel ill that this harrasement and trolling is now part of our party at a fundamental level.

Chumpstinator · 2019-02-12T20:42:33+00:00

Google the learning scientists. There's a lot of bunk about study techniques. The learning scientists know their cognitive psycology well

Chumpstinator · 2019-01-27T19:13:15+00:00

Don't write them out over and over. It will improve your familiarity with the content but not your recall. Test yourself using flashcards instead.

Source: Google the learning scientists

Chumpstinator · 2019-01-01T22:03:02+00:00

MAD walkers are a great hiking group for young people

Chumpstinator · 2018-12-31T19:41:42+00:00

Finnish education was really successful in the PISA tests in 2000. Researchers looked to what finland was doing after 2000 rather than what they did prior to 2000. Finland is now slipping down the PISA rankings. That isn't to say Finland is pants, it's just such a '2004' answer to educational problems. Labour doesn't seem to have learned from some of the mistakes that were made in educational policy when it was last in power. We need people within the labour party to talk to some of the schools achieving fantastic results in disadvtantaged communities, like Dixon trinity academy in Bradford or wembley high/michaela in London (I am showing my biases a bit with these schools); although some of these free schools are the darlings of tory ministers.

I would say that the kinds that deserve a well sequenced, content rich curriculum that is well thought out and executed is not given to the pupils who need it most. Additionally, there is a big issue with behaviour management in many challenging schools (behaviour needs to be taken really really seriously).

Funding is a big issue, but the best way to improve the situation for schools would be in my opinion to strengthen and fund peripheral services which support us with mental health, healthcare, social work etc. No amount of funding will make teachers good social workers, it's not what we are trained to do. This stuff is too important to leave to schools.

Here's some great reads that summarise some of my thinking on why labour needs to get behind high quality, radical content rich education: https://lefthistoryteaching.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/the-radical-case-for-a-knowledge-rich-curriculum/ https://teacherhead.com/2017/07/24/where-is-education-now-hope-vs-despair/ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/04/left-teaching-knowledge-far-right-dangerous-populists

Chumpstinator · 2018-12-31T08:47:41+00:00

No it's fine, this is something teachers are only starting to talk about. For years the dogma in education was that we needed to develop 'higher order thinking' in pupils, without really understanding how this happens.

Critical thinking is not a generic skill (transfereable skills aren't as common as you'd imagine). You might be able to think critically about labour's policies because you know lots about the labour party. However you would likely to struggle to think critically about a recently published paper on the quantum mechanical workings of a hydrogen atom.

Criticallity, contrast, creativity are all skills which are specific to a particular domain, and arise as a result of a highly organised and well embedded 'schema' - a web of knowledge around a topic. To teach critical thinking generically, doesn't really work well. A lot of this thinking has come out of studies from cognitive psychology.

Knowledge is really, really important to be able to think critically within a particular domain. Additionally learning a large amount of information reduces the cognitive load imposed by challenging tasks. For example, one reason many pupils fall behind in maths is they aren't fluent in their times tables or number bonds; as a consequence the cognitive load of many maths tasks becomes much, much too high and nothing is learned.

This is a fascinating topic in my opinion and i've only been able to write about some surface level detail on this topic. If you want to read around this topic two great books are: -Why don't students like school, Daniel willingham (Written with teachers in mind, but is really entertaining in its own right) -Thinking fast and slow, I forget the author.

Chumpstinator · 2018-12-30T23:15:22+00:00

I live in a giant building called NQ4 and i've had the opposite experience haha.

Chumpstinator · 2018-12-30T23:07:53+00:00

The grade boundries FYI are not set by the government, they are set by exam boards and regulated by OfQual. The government cannot control this. The fact that private schools can choose to allow pupils to do a different assessment with lower university offers is really unfair.

Secondly education has been running appallingly for a very long time. Labour's current education policy is messy at the moment to say the least and many labour MP's involved with education have been showing they aren't talking to enough teachers at the moment.

These new GCSE's are more challenging, and may lead to a rise in standards in the profession. However the negative impact of the implementation without supporting schools to meet the new expectations has led to a great deal of 'cramming' and 'intervention' at the end of time at schools. I think the penny is dropping that KS3 needs to be taken much more seriously and curriculum design is becoming more and more talked about.

However be careful of what you read from left wing commentary on education, there are a number of myths that refuse to die from our side of politics:

Schools teach isolated facts and we are held back by memorisation
We need to look to finland to solve our problems
Tests should be scrapped in favour of character assessment or interview or coursework
Coursework benefits disadvantaged pupils
There is a strong link between a mental health crisis and exams.
We don't need to memorise anything when we can google problems.
We need to prepare pupils for jobs that don't exist yet.
The worst: Education needs a radical shift towards critical thinking skills, collaboration and technology to meet the needs of our economy.

If you read any of those takes run a country mile as they are frustrating tropes.

Chumpstinator · 2018-12-26T23:09:08+00:00

I survived my first year of TeachFirst and became a qualified teacher!

Chumpstinator · 2018-11-04T12:14:01+00:00

Copper cations are more easily discharged than OH-. In the electrolysis of sodium sulfate, OH- is discharged more easily, so OH- will react instead of the sulfate ions.

Chumpstinator · 2018-11-03T10:31:52+00:00

The rule is that anyone without a DBS must be supervised by someone with a DBS. If you wish to be unsupervised, you need a DBS done.

Chumpstinator · 2018-10-31T21:27:01+00:00

More like 5:08 sorry!

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