Surprised by a Sum

Surprised by a Sum

A young girl I know has been working on chimney sums. (They are called chimney sums because the numbers are stacked vertically.) I was always curious about the strategies she was learning and how her mind was working. One day I offered her the iPad with the Explain Everything App open, explained that I didn’t really know what a chimney sum was and asked her to explain to me what she was doing as she worked it out. She was excited to teach me and got to work immediately.

Using Explain Everything she explained the chimney sum in great detail. She told me about each number, whether they were units, tens or hundreds, and how we were going to add them together. The result really made me smile. Not only was her explanation really clear, but  one particular bit of what she did really took me by surprise. She demonstrated a different way of working things out that I thought was really cool. You can see this bit in the video below…

It’s amazing to actually hear a thought process. I was able to experience a young learner’s mind actually thinking and working things out in real time. I love … Read more...

The power of a musical experience – part 1

The power of a musical experience – part 1

School is soon to start for another year, and one of the first activities I would often do with my new music classes is a piece called the ‘Doggy Walkin’ Blues’. It’s a fun 12 bar blues with a short, repetitive melody based on a pentatonic scale and once mastered (it takes about 30 seconds) leaves room for incredible improvisation by everyone involved. This structure provides a safe environment for kids just to let themselves go. A shared musical experience is a special thing – it brings people together in all sorts of ways. These experiences help to excite curiosity about music and sound in my learners and encourage confidence in their own abilities. Sometimes we are so into this piece that we keep it going for the whole class!

Music is motion – just keep going. Bobby McFerrin

Which brings me to this inspiring video which I saw a while ago and pops into my head every now and then. It’s Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival in 2009 playing around with the audience and a pentatonic scale. What’s curious about it is how do we know what to do? How did we know what note that third … Read more...

Evelyn Glennie on Being Human

Evelyn Glennie on Being Human

Another run, another great episode of Jeremy Vine’s Being Human. This time solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie set out her thoughts on what it means to be human, and I was excited by her mention of curiosity:

Curiosity plays a large part in what defines us as human beings… This sense of curiosity is my main stay. I have found other ways to feel and sense sound using my body as a resonating chamber. I have achieved my hopes and dreams of becoming a musician due to my innate sense of curiosity. I’ve learned to hear by lip reading, and I’ve learned to use my body to feel sound, as if it were a giant ear.

It took a few hundred metres to get the image of running along the road dressed up as giant ear out of my mind, but how brilliant that Evelyn was curious enough to explore listening in other ways that we now can enjoy the amazing sounds she creates and performs to audiences all over the world, in whatever way we hear.

Whilst looking around Evelyn Glennie’s website I found her blog and a post entitled ‘Are you coming from the heart?‘ She … Read more...

Brand Wisdom

Brand Wisdom

I was listening to Russell Brand on Desert Island Discs last week (click here to listen), and something he said stuck with me. He was asked by Kirsty Young if he would like to have children, he answered emphatically yes, and went on to say:

I like people that don’t have social constructs that I have to carve my way through to get to the truth of what they actually are and what they actually mean and what they are actually afraid of and what they actually care about, and children haven’t been taught to encode yet, so the only language they know is truth and love.

This brought home just what an honour it is to teach, to have those young minds in our care that we can help shape and form, inspire and excite curiosity in. What an opportunity!… Read more...

Chomsky Style

Chomsky Style

Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and enquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. Noam Chomsky

I was struck by the above quote by Noam Chomsky which I read in a tweet by Brian Bailey (@EdTechEmpowers). Inspired to investigate further, I found the video ‘The Purpose of Education’ in which Chomsky talks about various topics around education including the purposes of an educational system, the impact of technology and thoughts on assessment. (The video was presented at the Learning without Frontiers conference in January 2012.)

The Daily Riff has a good breakdown of various aspects of the talk and you can watch it there too (click this link to watch on YouTube), but the parts that stuck out for me were:

  1. That “passing tests doesn’t being to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests. If that’s the kind of educational career that you are given the opportunity to pursue you will remember what you have discovered.”
  2. That “teaching ought to inspire students to discover on their own, to challenge if they don’t agree, to look for alternatives
… Read more...