Posts by Mark Taylor
207: 5 Wellbeing principles with Maria Brosnan
Maria Brosnan is an educational leadership and wellbeing specialist, author, coach, speaker.
Over a 30-year period, Maria has worked in a variety of wellbeing capacities; from counselling end-stage cancer patients to whole school wellbeing training.
She created Pursuit Wellbeing as a platform to offer information, inspiration and support to promote the wellbeing of teachers, leaders and all school staff.
She hosts the podcast ‘Pursuit of Wellbeing’, and is author of the book ‘Pursuit of Sleep’ for teachers.
Maria takes us through 5 wellbeing principles:
- Small everyday choices matter
- Wellbeing requires action
- Your wellbeing is your responsibility
- Wellbeing is journey
- Your wellbeing affects others
To get a FREE pass to Maria’s Instant Calm session please visit https://pursuitwellbeing.com/instant-calm-free-pass/
Website
Social Media Information
Twitter @MariaBrosnan
LinkedIn – Maria Brosnan
Instagram – @pursuitwellbeing
Resources Mentioned
The Untethered Soul – Michael A. Singer
Show Sponsor
The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. Get a FREE e-copy of their professional journal at nape.org.uk/journal
Teach Active to launch the UK’s largest active learning day
As part of the Youth Sport Trust’s National School Sport Week (19-25th June 2021), Teach Active is set to host the largest active learning day for schools on Wednesday 23rd June.
Jon Smedley from Teach Active was my guest on episode 182 of the Education on Fire podcast .
On this day, English and maths lessons in primary schools around the country will be transformed into active lessons where children move around the classroom and have fun while they learn. Activities include setting up multiplication stations, and pupils must run to each station to pick up a multiplication problem card to solve, aiming to complete the whole course in less than 30 minutes. In another lesson, children play at being punctuation police. They march around, noting down punctuation errors written out on cards around the class or playground.
Jon Smedley, a former teacher and founder of Teach Active, said: “After a year of so much inactivity, we want to use the day to show that being active is not just about PE and sports but reducing the amount of time we spend sitting down overall.
“Any primary school can join in and see the benefits of active learning. It helps children engage with lessons, learn more effectively and improves their overall mental health by having fun with their classmates.”
Ali Oliver MBE, chief executive officer at the Youth Sport Trust, said: “We’re delighted Teach Active are supporting this year’s National School Sport Week.
“Young people have missed out on so much and had their worlds turned upside down by the pandemic. It is brilliant that Teach Active are helping more young people benefit from the important role physical activity has to play in their recovery.”
To help teachers prepare, Teach Active will provide 50 free active English and maths lesson plans for pupils from foundation stage through to year 6.
All schools who download the lesson plans and pledge to take part on social media with the hashtag #ActiveLearningDay2021 will have the chance to win £100 Decathlon vouchers to spend on school sports equipment. The top prize of a school visit from one of the Youth Sport Trust’s athlete ambassadors will be on offer for the school that posts the best video of their active learning day on Twitter with the hashtag #ActiveLearningDay2021.
The largest active learning day lesson plans are free to download to all schools here: https://www.teachactive.org/active-learning-day/.
Schools can register to take part in the Youth Sport Trust’s National School Sport Week by visiting www.youthsporttrust.org/join-us/national-school-sport-week
#ActiveLearningDay2021 @TeachActive #NSSW2021 @YouthSportTrust
206: Independent Thinking with Ian Gilbert
Mark Taylor chats to Ian Gilbert, a patron of National Association for Primary Education.
Since founding Independent Thinking in 1994, Ian has built a global reputation as an educational thinker, innovator, entrepreneur, speaker and award-winning editor and writer. He was listed by the IB magazine as one of their top 15 ‘educational visionaries’.
Never happier than when he is making children’s brains hurt, he has a unique first-hand perspective on the world of education having lived and worked in schools and universities in the UK, the Middle East, South America and Asia.
He is now sharing his time between Rotterdam, where his wife is an international school principal, and their home in the middle of nowhere deep in West Wales.
He wasn’t always interested in exotic foreign travel and meeting interesting people from different countries, as he started off his educational career teaching French in Northampton. He didn’t really want to be a French teacher and, while you would think not wanting to teach French to people who didn’t want to learn it might be a match made in heaven, it was only ever really a stepping stone. His main ambition was to work with young people in the areas that most fascinated him then and in which he has become such an important figure today – thinking, learning, motivation, creativity and helping all members of the school community be the best they can be.
Through his many books including the ever-popular Thunks collection, his ongoing classroom work with children and young people, his keynotes and workshops at conferences around the world and his continuous work with teachers and leaders in schools, Ian has shown a whole generation of educators that there is always another way.
Following a chance meeting in the staff room, Ian was encouraged to set up Independent Thinking in 1994 and, since then, has built up a unique educational organisation that acts as a platform for some of the UK’s leading innovative educators and school leaders as well as serving as a ‘lighthouse’ for so many practitioners who might otherwise fall prey to the idea that silence is respect, obedience is behaviour, grades measure education and teaching and learning are the same thing.
Website
Social Media Information
@ITLWorldwide on Twitter
independentthinkingworldwide on Instagram
You can listen to all NAPE podcasts on their website nape.org.uk/nape-podcast or any podcast platform. Links available here https://nationalassociationforprimaryeducation.captivate.fm/listen
For everything Education on Fire please visit www.educationonfire.com/
International Montessori Institute Scholarships – NAPE 068
Leonor Stjepic, is an award-winning social enterprise entrepreneur, whose career has spanned both the private and NGO sectors. She is Chief Executive of the Montessori Group as well as Chair of the Board of Directors of Montessori Centre International.
James Archer is the Centre Director of the International Montessori Institute. Prior to this he was the Course Director of the BA Primary Education Accelerated (2 Year) degree. He has worked on and written various validations of innovative programmes in the Carnegie School of Education.
The International Montessori Institute, a centre within the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University (LBU), has launched a scholarship programme to support the next generation of Montessori educators. The Institute was established in August 2020 and will provide the UK’s first dedicated undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Montessori education.
Funded by the Montessori Group, the first scholarships of £2,000 each will be awarded to 25 students who are studying on the BA (Hons) Primary Education Accelerated Degree (Montessori) in the 2021/22 academic year. The relationship between the Carnegie School of Education and the Montessori Group means that further scholarships will be awarded in the future years of the partnership.
This scholarship will be first awarded in the next academic year, with applicants to LBU able to apply for the scholarship as part of their application to the university.
Website
https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/the-international-montessori-institute/
Social Media Information
Leonor Stjepic
Twitter: @LeonorStjepic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonorstjepic/
James Archer
Twitter: @mrjamesarcher
International Montessori Institute
Twitter: @Montessori_LBU
The Montessori Group
Twitter: @MontessoriUk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/montessori-uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/montessoriUK
Instagram: @MontessoriUk
To get your FREE e-copy of the professional journal Primary First please visit https://nape.org.uk/journal
205: Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize
Maddy Kavanagh, Education and Skills Programme Manager at Nesta Challenges and Gordon Taylor, a STEM technician at Walton Priory Middle School are talking to me about the The Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize.
The Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize, delivered by Nesta Challenges, calls on young bright minds to put their passion for science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to the test, to create and develop technological innovations to help solve some of the biggest issues of our time.
Young people aged 11-16 are encouraged to apply their creativity and ingenuity in four key areas: supporting people living independently in old age, helping people lead healthier lives, tackling climate change and pollution, and helping people stay better connected.
Now in its fourth year, and supported by Amazon for the first time, the Longitude Explorer Prize pairs classroom STEM learning with valuable entrepreneurial skills to help young innovators make their great ideas a reality. The Prize helps teachers easily incorporate the programme into lesson plans by providing an array of free online resources aligned with the school STEM and citizenship curriculum – adapted to the Covid-19 classroom restrictions schools currently face.
Teams are asked to create solutions based on one of four prize themes:
• Living Longer – technological solutions to support an ageing population
• Living Healthier – technological solutions that help people live happier and healthier lives
• Living Greener – technological solutions that tackle pollution and climate change; and
• Living Together – technological solutions that help people stay better connected in a way that is easy, safe and environmentally friendly as well as solutions to deliver more sustainable transport.
The top 40 teams will be selected as finalists, where Amazon will provide expert mentoring on topics ranging from data analytics, software engineering, robotics, and app development to create prototypes of their concepts to determine the winner in July 2021. The winners will be awarded £20,000 for their school or youth group, and three teams of runners up will be awarded £5,000 each for their school or youth group.
The Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize aims to reach students across the UK and address the lack of diversity in STEM industries by providing young people from all backgrounds with an introduction to the possibilities of entrepreneurship in STEM and becoming the disruptors of the future. According to a report from EngineeringUK earlier this year, only 12% of engineers in the UK are women and, according to the Intellectual Property Office, fewer than 13% of patents are made by women. More than half (55%) of entrants to the 2020 Longitude Explorer Prize were girls.
About Nesta and Nesta Challenges
Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society. We’ve spent over 20 years working out the best ways to make change happen through research and experimenting, and we’ve applied that to our work in innovation policy, health, education, government innovation and the creative economy and arts.
Within Nesta, Nesta Challenges exists to design and run challenge prizes that help solve pressing problems that lack solutions. We shine a spotlight where it matters and incentivise people to solve these issues. We are independent supporters of change to help communities thrive and inspire the best placed, most diverse groups of people around the world to take action.
We support the boldest and bravest ideas to become real, and seed long term change to advance society and build a better future for everyone. We are part of the innovation foundation, Nesta. We are challengers. We are innovators. We are game changers.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion or invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalised recommendations, Prime, Fulfilment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit aboutamazon.co.uk and follow @AmazonNewsUK.
About Amazon in the Community
Amazon has long been committed to communities where our employees live and work and we focus on building long-term, innovative, and high impact programmes that leverage Amazon’s unique assets and culture. We want all children and young adults to have the resources and skills to build their best future. We concentrate on “right now needs” – via programmes that address hunger, homelessness, and disaster relief efforts – as well as programmes like Amazon Future Engineer, designed to inspire and excite children and young adults from underrepresented communities to pursue careers in the rapidly growing field of computer science. We are committed to inspiring and educating students across the UK to try computer science and coding, and pursue a career in this field.
Website
www.longitudeexplorer.challenges.org
Social Media Information
Twitter: @NestaChallenges
Show Sponsor
The National Association for Primary Education speaks for young children and all who live and work with them. Get a FREE e-copy of their professional journal at nape.org.uk/journal