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Showing posts with the label skills

Strategies to avoid exam stress and anxiety

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As we have noted in earlier blogs on this site, exam stress and anxiety is built into this mode of assessment. That's partly because the exam is typically a two or three hour endurance test in which you are deprived of home comforts and familiar supports. For many students exams present an image of clinical discipline and dehumanisation. Sitting exams may also cause you to revisit similar occasions in the past that involved a traumatic sense of disempowerment, defeat and failure. But despite the huge potential downside of exams presented in these terms they do mimic real life experiences where you may have to work under pressure, use your wits, or demonstrate that you can plan and manage your time. Exams are here to stay! Nonetheless, it will be helpful to recognise that there are some common anxieties that exam candidates experience. They may fear that there isn't a question that they can answer, or they may fear being seized with writer's block as they stare at a b

Are you a connected learner?

A quick-reference list of the qualities and actions of a connected learner : Mindful of others’ beliefs and interests Able to step back from conflict and reposition debate Share what you find useful Adopts essential technical and hardware skills for interactivity and participation Updates knowledge of appropriate software and other interfaces Distinguishes between more and less relevant or reliable sources Builds networks Increases valued connections Foster community development Joins and connects in order to make meaning Filters and selects information Asks difficult questions Explores the opportunity to rethink Pushes solutions beyond initial proposal Fosters appreciative inquiry Open to new ideas rather than aloof and disengaged Takes delight in having a responsibility for the direction of your learning

Persuasive Writing and a Letter of Complaint

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The Rep Theatre and the Library of Birmingham This blog briefly shares parts of a recent exercise with students. The first aim was to undertake reading and writing exercises in order to gain a better understanding of techniques of persuasion . The second aim was to turn the exercise upside down by writing a highly critical review , or a letter of complaint . We also deployed speaking exercises in the form of  radio-style interviews, a phone-in, and social media interactive engagement such as short text and tweet responses. The underlying aims were vocabulary building and confident use of language. Our first task was to study the vocabulary used in advertisements and marketing/advertising material. These were drawn from a Children's Guide to Leisure Activities in the Black Country (West Midlands, UK);  Rewriting the Book - Discovery Season - Library of Birmingham; and What's On at the beacon Arts centre, Greenock, Scotland. Initially students were asked to s

What's that myth about boys not wanting to read anything?

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Boys are underperforming by 10% or more, compared to girls' literacy. My experience working with boys and adolescents (9-15) in the last year has taught me that they do not have an insurmountable problem with reading or writing. But far too often they are being forced to answer tedious comprehension questions. Or they are pushed into commenting critically on subjects that do not relate at all to their interests. Research shows that often boys visualize reading as a female activity. So some of the problems are part of the current culture and construction of reading as an activity. At first, the key to success, in my view, is to work with their existing interests. That means that you need to find out what fires their imagination. In an overcrowded classroom that is sometimes difficult, and there is a tendency for the whole class to work on the same topics such as "Africa," or "Environment," or "Superheroes." The young people I've worked wi

SMART Revision Planning for Exams - 16 Tips

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You have probably come across the SMARTER model as a way of organising a project.  It works like this S          Specific              Significant, Stretching, Simple M         Measurable              Meaningful, Motivational, Manageable A         Attainable Appropriate, Achievable, Agreed, Assignable, Actionable, Ambitious, Aligned, Aspirational, Acceptable, Action-focused R          Relevant           Result-Based, Results-oriented, Resourced, Resonant, Realistic T          Timely Time-oriented, -framed, -based, -bound, -Specific, -tabled, -limited, Trackable, Tangible E          Evaluate, Ethical, Excitable, Enjoyable, Engaging, Ecological R          Reevaluate, Rewarded, Reassess, Revisit, Recordable, Rewarding In order to apply these practical strategies to your revision work for exams, I would also recommend: Short blocks of time for work A balanced workload between all subjects means variety  Days off work for leisure Writi

The School Shakespeare Newspaper / Activities

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In recent years we have moved a long way from teacher-led Practical Criticism Q&A. As learners we are always searching for fun ways to explore texts. Experience demonstrates that allowing children to be creative is an excellent way to build critical engagement. Fun means deeper learning, and in my view, play cultivates questions. So let's have the courage to allow our students to play with plots and create their own interpretations of them. This approach need not displace traditional literary/critical writing exercises. Rather, it serves as a way of incubating enjoyable and engaging point(s) of entry to the text. How does this approach work? I'm not going to write up a detailed lesson plan, but you will find a short case study below. The newspaper model can be adapted to any text. (I recently worked with this approach using Charles Dickens's Great Expectations .) The project briefly sketched below will also help the learners to be more aware of style, tone, a