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Let's Think professional development

Two Let’s Think Maths programmes will be running in London next year for primary teachers:

  •  A six day programme for teachers in Years 3-4: cost £450
  • A programme for Reception teachers with two full days and four half days, including a coaching visit to your school: cost £450

 A new Let’s Think Science programme will also be running in London next year for primary teachers. This will be a four-day programme and the cost will be £350.
 
Please contact info@letsthink.org.uk to reserve a place on one of these programmes.

News

Do you want to get involved? 

Are you an experienced Let’s Think practitioner who is interested in getting more involved with Let’s Think?  The Let’s Think Forum is a registered charity led by a group of academics, teachers and tutors.  You can find out about our members here. We meet three times a year to develop and deepen our own understanding of Let’s Think and to take important decisions about how best to further the cause of the charity.
 
If you have time to get involved with us, please contact info@letsthink.org.uk

Responses to Ofsted's consultation on its new Inspection Framework

The Let's Think Council Forum welcomed Ofsted's closer focus on the realities of teaching and learning in schools and its move away from looking at schools' data. However, we had several concerns about inconsistencies in Ofsted's approach and its failure to require schools to provide good quality CPD. Let's Think in English also responded with two concerns about English, chiefly Ofsted's lack of focus on how schools promote enjoyment of reading which is widely accepted as the basis of literacy and is a central feature of the National Curriculum.  These concerns were shared by other organisations which submitted a joint response through the Common English Forum. Click here for details.

Let's Think in English and The British School, Rio de Janeiro

The British School, Rio de Janeiro, hosted its third biennial Education Conference for three days in April 2019. The theme of the Conference was "Think, Imagine, Inspire" and there were over 600 delegates from the three British School campuses as well as a number of other Brazilian schools. Michael Walsh,

presenting on behalf of Let's Think in English, led the keynote outlining the history of Let's Think and the pedagogical approach. There were also daily workshops on Let’s Think in English. Teachers were enthused by Let's Think and could see how the programme would support their pupils: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=cAkA8-xzx7Y.

Let's Think in English Secondary Network meeting

For the first time the Let's Think in English Secondary Networks will hold a joint half-day meeting on 27th June, exploring how Let’s Think can help respond to Ofsted's new focus on the curriculum.

There will be sessions on the power of narrative to increase understanding and recall led by Laurie Smith and a King's PhD student, Emma Browning.  These are followed by workshops on the Assessment Companion for Thinking Skills project on which the team is working with European partners (Leah Crawford); a new non-fiction GCSE Let’s Think lesson and creating lessons on non-fiction texts (Michael Walsh); and teaching academic vocabulary in a Let’s Think context (Diane Leedham).

Let's Think in English Primary Network Day

Let's Think in English trained primary schools are attending a network day at Horn Park primary school in Greenwich on 5th July. 25 schools are attending including teachers from Cornwall, Devon, Hampshire Nottingham and Vietnam. The morning will consist of LTE lesson observations as Horn Park teachers welcome visitors to their classrooms while the afternoon will be a celebration of schools' LTE developments led by teachers.

Let's Think Maths for reception teachers

A research project funded by The Institute for Effective Education to explore the impact of Let’s Think teaching on Reception teachers and pupils is drawing to a close. 

The team are currently gathering data in order to measure impact, but there is already feedback from participating teachers about the positive difference the intervention had made to learning in their classrooms.  The impact evaluation report is likely to be published in September. 

Introducing Let's Think Early Years

An introduction to Let’s Think Early Years will be held at Four Marks Primary School in Hampshire on 14 June.  The taster morning will involve:

  • An overview of the programme and training
  • Observation of a live Let’s Think session with Reception pupils followed by shared reflection
  • The opportunity to explore the resources and lesson plans
  • The opportunity to book your school on to the full Let’s Think Early Years course running in Hampshire from September 2019

 Cost: £50 per school.
 
To find out more or book a place, contact info@letsthink.org.uk

Do you love CASE, are you interested in CASE, do you want to help others with CASE?

In response to many schools revisiting and seeking help to start with CASE we are launching a discussion group. CASE is long established so we now need a flexible

forum that supports new and old advocates and one that facilitates the further development and evolution of CASE. 
 
It is envisaged that this forum will be the first port of call for those who are new but it will also carry out its activities in a way that is comparable with Let's Think pedagogy with challenging content and problems and space for social construction. In this way the network will encourage the involvement of keen practitioners, and old friends, who have always been the life blood of the approach. The network will be a collaborative space for tips, shared practice, research and information that broadens and extends thinking beyond the Let's Think approaches.
 
The CASE network will be active from June 2019, so please email Alan Edmiston if you would like to be part it.

Research and Reading

Collaborative Learning

This latest paper on collaborative learning focuses on the role of the teacher during collaborative learning and how this impacts on pupil learning. The paper confirms the earlier work on Slavin, and Johnson and Johnson.

It finds that teachers should focus on collaborative processes as well as on the content.  It also finds that both too little support and too much support can be detrimental to pupil learning: teachers should support but not take over. Getting this balance right is something that Let’s Think teachers frequently grapple with.

van Leeuwen, A. and Janssen, J., 2019. A systematic review of teacher guidance during collaborative learning in primary and secondary educationEducational Research Review.

Bracha Kramarski

Bracha Kramarski presented her work on the effects of fading away of metacognitive scaffold questions at an EARLI conference, in Zürich last September. Teachers always talk about the need for scaffolding and Let’s Think teachers obviously think hard about when and how much scaffolding to give during a lesson. Her latest work has just been published.
 
The paper makes very interesting claims that learners in primary school can be successfully shown how to regulate their own learning and that this is best achieved by a fading of the question prompts. Also, they discuss the open question of whether a linear set of prompts (questions that show how to plan, monitor and reflect) should be compared to a cyclical representation of these type of questions. They also discuss how scaffold fading strategies could be applied at different ages and in different subject domains. Their work can help us fine tune how we mediate important aspects of metacognition during Let’s Think lessons.
 
Gidalevich, S., & Kramarski, B. (2018) The value of fixed versus faded self‑regulatory scaffolds on fourth graders’ mathematical problem solving, Instructional Science

Interview with...

Georgie McHale
Reception Teacher
Charles Dickens Primary, Southwark

I was offered the very exciting opportunity to engage with a Let’s Think maths research project, beginning in September 2018. I was very excited because it was all about developing metacognitive skills in reception aged children. Apart from knowing that metacognition was very in vogue in educational research, I didn’t know much else so I was extremely keen to find out!

I am also very passionate about carrying out my own research as a class-based teacher, so I was desperate to get involved!
 
Let’s Think has hugely changed my teaching practice. It draws upon Vygotsky’s research whereby social interaction amongst peers is seen to enhance the learning experience for children. When we do the Let’s Think sessions, I don’t decide what the solutions are but am merely the facilitator that ensures everyone has a voice in the group. The rich learning and ‘lightbulb moments’ that have occurred from these groups have given me some of my most treasured teaching experiences. At first, it was very difficult not to jump in and give the answers. However, I am now much more open to embracing the mess and seeing what learning emerges. The respect the children have for their own thinking and that of their peers has been an amazing transformation to witness. After every LT session, I have recorded key moments and quotes from the children. This has formed an important part of our assessments, alongside the other observations that we usually gather in Early Years.
 
I am fully on board with Let’s Think having seen the transformative results. I will be using the Let’s Think approach in my teaching practice as I move forward with my practice. It has ignited a passion for learning more about child development which I hope to pursue further next year.

www.letsthink.org.uk


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