Chess-squared is a brilliant project

Steve Tobias is a Senior Lecturer at James Cook University in Queensland. He has taught at all levels of schooling. For the past two decades he worked in pre-service teacher education in the field of mathematics education. His recent research is in self regulation and building resilience and persistence in open ended and problem solving situations. He recently flew down to Castlemaine to meet the Chess-squared group.

I conducted an email interview with Steve about the chess initiative, CHESS-SQUARED, that began in a cluster of schools in Mount Alexander Shire, Central Victoria in 2006. The project is coordinated by Steve Carroll, Harry Poulton and Sam Grumont.

The chess -squared group have been invited to be keynote speakers at the Chess in the Schools and Communities International Conference At Aberdeen University. The main aims of the conference will be to explore the particular contribution of chess play within the school and home environment to the development of thinking skills, health and well being and the creative imagination of children and young people.

Sam What is your involvement in the project?

Steve I guess my main role is to support Steve, Harry and Sam with collecting research information about the students', teachers' and community's responses to the Chess program. It is a unique program and we would like to collect broad evidence that it has some positive effect on teaching and learning, particularly in mathematics. I am interested in students’ ability to self-regulate their learning, their ability to persist when the going is tough and their resilience when they lose a game. In a similar way I would like students to see that in learning mathematics - failure is actually okay and a starting place for developing a richer understanding of the task.

Sam What are your thoughts about how it's gone so far?

Steve This is a brilliant project. There are some facets that should be acknowledged. The main organisers are very passionate and committed to the project. It seems to more about bringing the community together through the schools. Playing games is important for developing logic, reasoning and strategizing skills. However, it also encourages 'play' with others including friends, mates, people you didn't know, parents, siblings, grand parents. I think the importance of the project is in the how the students build confidence through play and how this effects the relationship (learning opportunity) between students and teachers.

Sam Tell me about the Scotland Chess & Community Conference

Steve It is being held in Aberdeen. The organisers of this conference invited the Castlemaine project as guest keynote speakers for their international conference. This is an honour and a tribute to the schools and organisers and huge indication that what is happening in the Castlemaine area is unique and very important for not only building skills but also community.

Sam Do you think the teaching and learning that is happening with Chess-squared is worthwhile?

Steve Absolutely. Without question their is a direct link between playing chess and teaching and learning. In this case students and teachers whether they be a chess tutor or fellow student - the teaching and learning will be intertwined. We would like to collect evidence about the richness of this interaction and the effects on student motivation. Hopefully the process will 'enable' students to learn for enjoyment and teach them something about persistence, resilience and the power of thinking through different strategies.

The Importance of Learning Slowly

Currently I'm working as a Teaching and Learning Coach and I know it takes me time to think things through if I am to get a deeper understanding, which is why I titled my blog 'Slow learning'. I'm always on the lookout for material about thinking and recently I came across a blog post by Gary Woodill titled The Importance of Learning Slowly , which is a review of Manfred Spitzer's book The Mind within the Net: models of learning, thinking, and acting. From Gary Woodill's review:

Manfred Spitzer’s The Mind within the Net is one of the best non-technical narratives on how minds work using the neural network model. Some of these explanations are startling, while others reinforce positions of strong advocates of individual freedom and the power of informal learning, such as Stephen Downes, George Siemens, and Jay Cross.

Like neural networks, the brain is based on vector algebra, rather than numerical computations. Vectors have strength and direction, and many vectors, representing multiple inputs, unite to form a result. The result in the brain is strengthening or weakening of a set of neural connections, a relatively slow process. While a single event can have an impact, it usually takes many events to have a relatively permanent change in the brain (aka “learning”) and to extract general features and generate rules from experience.

So there you go.

Learners shall inherit the earth

In times of change, learners inherits the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.'

--the late writer Eric Hoffer

Asking the good question is key

Teachers in Victorian schools are coming to grips with formative and summative assessment which are now called:

• assessment of learning (summative)
• assessment for learning (formative)
• assessment as learning (formative)

I recently read an ASCD brief blog by Marge Scherer on Dylan Wiliam co-author of Inside the Black Box , about a session he ran at a conference. It's all about formative assessment:

Some kinds of assessment raise achievement, and some merely measure it, Dylan Wiliam told the educators at his session, titled "Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute and Day by Day."
The assessments that researchers have found most effective at raising achievement are those that teachers make minute by minute and day by day in the classroom and then use almost immediately to adjust their lessons. For example, teachers who walk the aisles to check on what the class needs to work on next are gathering more helpful data than they would if they used the same time to help two or three individuals with specific problems, he said.

Asking diagnostic questions is another way to find out what students do and don't know. A simple technique like an exit question (a question every student answers before leaving class) can help the teacher know how many students have grasped a basic concept or skill and whether to reteach the concept the next day.

Asking every student to choose one of several answers is another way to make sure students are engaged throughout the lesson. Teachers should not allow students to choose not to participate. Research shows that the more students think and talk in class, the more they learn. But questioning should not be scary, Wiliam reminded the group. If the student answers "I don't know," a good reply might be, "I know, but if you did know, what would you think?" The point is that no student should be able to "choose not to think."

To demonstrate some of his strategies with the audience, Wiliam had the group predict which of several answers were correct and then explain why they chose the answers they did. Such reflection and analysis are part of learning, he said.

Wiliam's final message: Classroom instruction matters most in boosting achievement, and improving questioning and feedback techniques will improve the effectiveness of teachers.

Mindset a growth mentality

Tonight I came across comments on Bruce Hammond's Leading and Learning blog about recent research by Stanford Professor Carol Dweck and her colleagues , published in her book ,'Mindset: The New Psychology of Success', which recommends that students need to become aware of how their brains work. According to Bruce, Dweck suggests:

• "That we teach our students to think of their brains as a muscle that strengthens with use forming new connections every time they learn.This certainly fits in with those who hold a constructivist view of learning.
  
• That we teach students appropriate study skills and convey to them that by using these methods it will help their brains learn better.
  
• That we should discourage using labels ( and streaming) that convey to students that their intelligence is fixed.
  
• That we should encourage students to appreciate that there is wide range of ways of being intelligent - schools that are aware of Howard Gardner's research on multiple intelligences will be aware of this. Schools that focus on narrow literacy and numeracy targets will be giving students the wrong message.
  
• Teachers ought to focus more on student's effort, strategies and progress rather than praising their talent or intelligence . Students need to see mistakes as positive rather that negative events - something to learn from and not to fear making
  
• Most of all teachers need to give students relevant challenging work that students see as fun."
  

The blurb from Random House notes that Carol Dweck says that our mindset is not a minor personality quirk: it creates our whole mental world. It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential. Dweck has found that everyone has one of two basic mindsets.If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone–either you have them or you don’t. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity–and success.Dweck demonstrates that mindset unfolds in childhood and adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from work to sports, from relationships to parenting. She reveals how creative geniuses in all fields–music, literature, science, sports, business–apply the growth mindset to achieve results. Perhaps even more important, she shows us how we can change our mindset at any stage of life to achieve true success and fulfillment. She looks across a broad range of applications and helps parents, teachers, coaches, and executives see how they can promote the growth mindset.

So, we need to work on developing the growth mindset of our students. Way to go!

Too much talking by teachers

The last two days I've been at a professional development project called "Building Learning Capacity of Professional Learning Leaders". This is a 10 day program running over the next few months.

The building leaning capacity is from Guy Claxton and one of the readings we had was his keynote address for the British Educational Research Association last year. One of the key ideas Claxton discussed in his book 'Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less' is slow learning. We started the first session with a handout of 5 pages to be shared between two people and were expected to read and discuss it in ten minutes. I turned to my partner and asked, "What was your reaction to the task?"

She replied, "I like to have my own copy to read and write notes on."

Precisely my thoughts. I kept thinking that this was the opposite of slow learning, of slowing down, savouring the ideas, tossing them around before talking about them. But this seems to be the case of education everywhere - speed up, data, analyse, react, get it down quickly. At the end of the two days when we were asked to reflect a comment made at my table was that we talked too much. And this was coming from teachers. We all agreed we'd like more time to think; quiet time.

Interactive whiteboards may not improve learning

Technology is a great thing but we always need to ask has it made difference in learning? A number of schools in my cluster, have purchased interactive whiteboards with the goal of enhancing teaching and learning.

From some of the whiteboard sessions I've seen, students are engaged, kids can move things around the boards easily and the visuals are stimulating. However some teachers are concerned that the interactive capability of the boards are used fully and that they don't become glorified, expensive data projectors.

A recent UK study commissioned by the English Department of Education found that computerised whiteboards failed to boost student achievement.

I came across a report of the report in a BBC News item, "Doubts over hi-tech whiteboards".

The study group visited schools only a year after a government project introduced the boards. "Interactive whiteboards can even slow the pace of learning," and result in "relatively mundane activities being overvalued", the Institute of Educatiion study suggested.

Another finding was that "although the newness of the technology was initially welcomed by the pupils, any boost in motivation seemed short lived".

A crucial statement is that "when the use of the technological tools took precedence over a clear understanding of their purpose for teaching, IWBs were not used in way that could enhance learning," it said.

Does this apply to the use of weblogs in the classroom?

Critics of teachers turn people away

Well it's been a while between posts and I must say a very enjoyable holiday at the beach in Airey's Inlet. I rarely thought of teaching at all but mid-January one article caught my attention.

During the past couple of years I noticed that there seems to be a prolonged systematic attack on the teaching profession by politicians and columnists, particularly in Rupert Murdoch's newspaper 'The Australian'. Every problem in society seems to be the fault of teachers and in the case of the Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, it's left-wing ideologues who have hijacked the curriculum with some themes "straight from Chairman Mao". We've heard it all before: a drug problem - introduce drug education; road accidents - introduce driver education; racism - get rid of multi-culturalism; rude behaviour - introduce values; and literacy and numeracy levels - get back to phonics. However for teachers one academic made a statement.

Professor Sue Willis, Dean of Education at Monash University and president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, rode to the rescue in an article in The Sunday Age which was reported in a related article 'Criticism endangers teaching.

"The capacity to attract our brightest and best young people into teaching, and to keep them in teaching is directly related to the way (the profession) is constructed both in the media and by politicians," Professor Willis said.

"It's absolutely clear that we have downturns in applicaton rates for university courses), and an increased loss of teachers from the professon, when they are constantly being slammed.

"Why would people want to go into a profession where they're treated like shit? Where they're treated as though no matter what they do, everything is their fault. If there's high unemployment, if kids are rioting at the beaches, schools are the problem.

"if we really want to attract the brightest and best into state schools, we've got to start talking them up - and the constant talking them down is actually causing the problem it's supposed to be pointing to."

As I remember some teaching colleagues saying out loud in New York, "go girl!"

Principals' Collegiality at Daylesford

Last week principals of the Mount Alexander Cluster of Schools met at Daylesford for an end of year reflection and setting some plans for 2007. I was involved as educator for the cluster's Innovations and Excellence Initiative and ran a session on evidence-based teaching and learning. The principals group has been meeting as a collegiate for fifteen years and over time a sense of trust has resulted in an openness in sharing school data.

The focus on evidence-based teaching and learning is the result of wanting to improve our students' literacy and numeracy skills. You can ask a teacher if she can identify students in her classes who are learning at a higher level as a result of the teacher's work and if the answer is "yes", the next question is "How do you know?" We can only know if we have evidence and i don't mean anecdotal evidence. I first used this strategy with student readers after reading Aidan Chambers book Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk. If you haven't read it, you should.

At the conference I used the THINK-PAIR-SHARE strategy with cluster principals after they read a paper "An evidence-based approach to teaching and learning" presented by Michele Bruniges at an ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) conference in Melbourne last year.

Teachers are moving along the path of using evidence but in my experience most of the energy so far is in looking at results and comparing them with past years' results or state-wide results. The important development I think is what do you do with the data? It should lead to identifying weaknesses in the students responses, agreeing on strategies for improvement, having a go at teaching the strategies and then seeing if there is an improvement.

Mike Schmoker argues that there is a way for this to happen by focused structured teacher collaboration:

This simple, powerful structure starts with a group of teachers who meetregularly as a team to identify essential and valued student learning, developcommon formative assessments, analyze current levels of achievement, setachievement goals and then share and create lessons to improve upon thoselevels.

Picture these teams of teachers implementing these new lessons,continuously assessing their results and then adjusting their lessons in lightof those results. Importantly, there must be an expectation this collaborativeeffort will produce ongoing improvement - and gains in achievement.

If there is anything that the research community agrees on, it is this: theright kind of continuous, structured teacher collaboration improves the qualityof teaching and pays big, often immediate, dividends in student learning andprofessional morale in virtually any setting. Our experience with schools acrossthe nation bears this out unequivocally.... Mere collegiality won't cut it. Even discussions about curricularissues or popular strategies can feel good but go nowhere. the right image toembrace is of a group of teachers who meet regularly to share, refine andasssess the impact of lessons and strategies to help increasing numbers ofstudents learn at higher levels.

This is the direction we are going. Early next February the collegiate is meeting to develop a plan for improving our approach in improving teaching and learning through the effective use of data.

Anne Tyler and writing

The blogosphere has lots of posts about writing and in Failbetter.com fiction editor Margo Rabb grabbed the chance to ask Anne Tyler about her work, her approach to her craft, and, in particular, her latest novel, Digging to America. The last sentence in this extract will resonate with many of you:

You have said that you go through a "refilling" stage after finishing a novel - how long does this stage generally last? Once you return to work, how do you start -- by outlining, drawing up character histories, or jumping right into writing?How many hours do you write each day?

I spend about a year between novels. My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations. I'll say, "It's time I stopped lolling about. I'd better think something up." Then for a month or so I'll jot down desperate possibilities. "Maybe I could write about who does such-and -such. Or wait: I think I already did that. Well, then maybe about about that woman I saw in the grocery the other day. What was she up to, exactly? what might her story have been?"

Eventually, one of these possibilities will start flowering in my mind, and I'll manufacture what's initially a very trumped-up,artificial plot. I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.

My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages. At most I'll spend three or four hours daily, sometimes less. The ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning. If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

You can check out the full interview at Failbetter.com.

Use a fountain pen to improve your thinking

I have always enjoyed writing with a fountain pen. When most, well virtually all, of my friends and colleagues use biros, roller balls, and felt tip pens I stick to my fountain pen. When I was a secondary school student I loved pulling pens apart and checking the bits and then putting it together, hoping it would work. Didn't always work.

The Lamy Safari, with a fine nib shown above, is my favourite. I've got Watermans and Parkers in my collectin but it's the Lamy Safari I return to use always.

Not everyone likes handwriting and I've been told at times that writing notes in a notebook and then typing them is double work. But I like the feel of handwriting, I can doodle, draw arrows, make connections, and quickly jot notes in the margin. In fact I think differently when I handwrite. Jack Vinson in a blog about thinking while notetaking. He talks about typing being more linear and careful but

Writing, on the other hand, allows me to make more jumps and smash thoughts
together even when they are not discussed in the same sentence. You might talk about X-Y-Z-A-B-C-Y, and I can lump the Y's together by simply smashing some text into the margin. Or I can draw lines and arrows and conceptually group things with circles and squares. I can also doodle. I can't draw at the computer without finding a different application that breaks my chain of thought.

I came across this in a post of Angela Booth's titled: Writing is thinking: switch to pen and paper and use both sides of your brain.

Success for low achieving kids with chess

Yesterday I met with Dr Steve Tobias, Senior lecturer in maths education at James Cook University, Townsville, to review the chess numeracy initiative in our cluster of schools. Steve is keen to explore the data we have been collecting on the connection between playing chess and maths thinking.

All thirteen schools in our cluster took part in the project. We mainstreamed chess in grades 5 & 6 as part of the initiative, paid for tutors to take the students through strategies and playing games, all the while making connections to maths. The knowledge and passion of the tutors coupled with enthusiastic classroom teachers made for a heady and successful mix.

One of the successes, which we are keen to explore, is that in a number of schools, students with low academic achievement found success playing chess. A number of boys in different schools told us that this was the first time in their school life they had been successful at something mentally challenging. We're not sure exactly what's going on here but plan to conduct surveys gathering some quantifiable information and follow it up with quantitative data by interviewing students.

It is possible that the spatial relationships is an area these kids are good at. I came across a piece by David Cohen on chess education which i have yet to read but I intend passing it on to my chess experts. You see the irony of the situation is that I'm coordinating the initiative but I don't play chess. One of the sections in his paper deals with maths and visualisation:

Children develop math skills with chess because of a common requirement of chess and math: visualization. This usually occurs in
Grade 2 (at age 7). Chess develops visualization abilities as follows:
Chess board - The chess board is laid out in a checkered pattern of a large square comprised of 64 smaller squares arranged 8x8. Children can be taught their way around the board through its various patterns(ranks, files, diagonals, colouring of squares).
Moves of the chess pieces - The child first learns the movements of the chess pieces which travel in straight lines: pawn, rook, bishop, and queen. But then the child is introduced to a movement that is quite different from the others: the L-shaped jump of the knight. The movement is not only different from the child’s previous chess experience, but is also likely an entirely new experience for the child. The child must learn to visualize the movement.
Moving chess pieces around on the chess board - Moving a chess piece from a starting square to an ending square forces the child to visualize the patterns and movements.

I found this information through a google alert which led me to the Waterfront Juniour Intermediate Chess Club. I'm beginning to see what the web 2.0 - read, write web, is all about.