ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) showed some interest in our project and wanted an article. 2500 words later a nice little article features in their latest edition.
The full article outlines HOW the 'Generating Genius' principles were incorporated into program development.
If you would like a FREE copy of the magazine, add a comment to our blog and tell us who you are.
How easy is that?
If you want to read an on-line shorter version visit: http://www.acer.edu.au/publications/acerpress/teachermagazine
Click: Current issue > Maths,Science,Environment
And there it is!
5 comments:
Had an incredible conversation with my yr7 student with a mild intellectual disability. Its been difficult to engage her in maths all year.
She beat me once (wink) at has been asking regulalry if she can play me again. We had another game today on the last game of term where I was playing two students at once.
She beat me again, but I was amazed how much her game had improved. She knew all the piece movemnts, and was watching the board and really thinking, and making really good moves. Without exaggerating this is a 1000% improvemnt from the start of the year. (Sam this is the kid who was too freaked out to play- and only counted the pieces!)
At recess she told me she has been playing before school- and her mum is thinking of buying her a chess set so she can play chess with her mother.
I find this really quite amazing!
Hi Steve,
This is brilliant -even inspiring! Isn’t it wonderful when they go home and off there own bat start to play and study chess. There is a boy in one of my tutoring schools who has a reading age of 6 and he is 13 years old, and still in primary school. My class teacher Bryce is amazed at the high levels of engagement he displays at chess and he mastered the notation system as fast as the best students. He is progressing rapidly on the D&D Progression Table. I think students like him are a vital part of our research.
Regards Harry
Ross Allengame, from Castlemaine P.S. showed me a 'Progression Table Model' which I now use with all my classes and it works brilliantly. There are 8 columns. The kids start off in Dungeon then when they win they move up to pawn, then Knight and so forth until they reach the Dragon column. They cannot progress with out a win and they can only play students in the same column. This enables me to monitor their chess skill level and help slow developers improve.
From the research perspective what is great about it is it can be cross referenced with other 'Progression Tables' in maths, for example the times tables where students are graded by levels of competency. Thus far generally (there are some interesting exceptions) their playing level on the Dungeon and Dragons 'Progession Table' reflects their levels of competency on the Times Table 'Progression Table'. Now, here is an interesting angle a couple of the boys who are not achieving high levels on the Times Table 'Progression Table' are thriving on the Dungeon and Dragons 'Progession Table' and my class teacher Peter, at Chewton P.S. says that the times table exercise is rote learning, what he described as Blooms Knowledge, whereas the chess cognitive processes are higher up on Blooms Taxonomy. Therefore these boys are thriving in an intellectually challenging game-play situation.
Hi Harry,
this is exciting. I would like to have a close look at Ross's model. Perhaps we can get together sometime next week and discuss how you can determine and grade skill level. If this is the case then we do have a methodology that can be tested. It could form the basis for any study you might like to undertake. We need to talk about that.
Let's meet soon.
Regards, Steve
welcome to the blogosphere. Good luck in your efforts.
TCG
Post a Comment