Teaching Excellence

by Richard Bandler

  Rachael extends the range and scope of anchors for tidying up, home time and conflict resolution.

  Rachael Coull teaches at Northburn Primary School, Cramlington, Northumberland

  Research plan

  My focus is on the use of anchoring and the impact this has on behaviour.

  Throughout the project my aim is for the children to become more aware of expectations in relation to behaviour at specific points in the Nursery session. Because of more explicit expectations and increased consistency between staff, it is hoped the children’s behaviour will improve, which will offer them greater opportunity to access the curriculum.

  During my morning Nursery class, since the January intake the behaviour of some children had become increasingly challenging, especially at times where it was necessary to gain whole class attention and calm in order to carry out a routine task such as home time or tidy-up time.

  Action

  Initially, I pinpointed two particular times where the class was not as calm or organised as I would have liked. I already use a countdown technique in order to get whole class attention when they are in the middle of play. Although this worked for the majority, there were still some children who consistently did not follow this routine and would carry on playing or chatting, making it a more lengthy process than it needed to be. The other main time was home time, which had become a pretty stressful occasion – trying to give out pictures, asking the children to remain seated and calling out their names to dismiss them. I decided to carry on using my countdown technique as this was already partly successful so I set about designating a specific spot to stand in when I wanted to gain the class’ attention.

  I chose one spot inside and another outside (which became the “tidy-up time spot”). The more I used this technique, the quicker the children reacted and the less I had to say. After a couple of weeks of using the spot outside I would put my hand in the air, say ‘five’ and the children began to run to where I was standing and sit down on the floor, ready for their tidy-up task.

  As this anchor became embedded, I watched other staff use the same technique but in random positions and saw it to be less successful, with some children taking a long time to respond and some not even coming to the spot. As I made my intentions explicit to the other staff, they began to take on this concept and also saw the benefits, also introducing their own ideas. One day, because the children had spilt water on the area we usually stop at, I stood a couple of metres away and used the same technique and the children still responded quickly, however instead of coming to sit in a group, they all came and sat in a perfect circle. I later discovered that the previous day, the TA in my class had gathered the children in that spot to play some ring games – they had in fact created their own anchor, which we continued to use successfully for that purpose.

  As for home time, I decided to anchor the experience with music – initially making my intentions clear to the children, telling them what behaviour I would see and why before turning on the music. This process was a little more gradual and I never fully established the “ideal golden silence”, however this time proved to be a lot calmer than previously. The children were able to receive their pictures more quickly, hear their names being called more easily, and the parents were visibly impressed, commenting on the calm and peacefulness as they entered Nursery at home time, and the staff felt less stressed.

  As these anchors became embedded, others followed, including the “rant and rave chair” - a stool which I only sat on when I was “feeling a little bit cross!” and needed to talk to the class as a whole. I was unsure whether this particular anchor would have as much effect as the others because only on rare occasions does the class need to be addressed as a whole in relation to behaviour. However, after only using this technique a couple of times in a four-week period all I have to do now is sit on the stool in front of the children, their faces drop and there is silence as one child asks, ‘are you feeling a bit sad?’

  A further anchor which came about throughout this project as a team effort, was to help deal with children in conflict situations as and when they happened. The anchor came in the form of 3 chairs placed in a triangle formation. The two children sit facing each other and the third chair is for a member of staff to mediate between the two. Again, this technique quickly became embedded, with some children at times going to get their own chair when they realised they had done something wrong! The main benefit of this technique is that the children appear to calm down more quickly after an incident and, through structured questioning and discussion, are able to resolve conflict. I found that children were increasingly able to own up to what happened and seek a resolution acceptable to themselves, meaning they did not quite as readily go and do the same thing again.

  Impact

  Throughout the project there has been a great positive impact on the staff and children. Routine tasks throughout the session are carried out in a more focused manner and the children’s behaviour at these times has improved. Along with this, staff are able to deal with situations in a calmer manner and are more explicit about the reasons for doing things and this has made us as a team more focused on what we want to achieve and how.

  This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, dluzi@managementalchemy.com on 10/18/2018

  chapter 19

  Primary and Elementary School,

  5 to 11-year-olds

  Subject-specific teaching strategies

  The Primary education sector provides a wealth of experience and good practice in applying NLP. It was difficult to choose from so many really excellent projects, so here is an inspiring selection:

  A whole class strategy for Spelling

  This project demonstrates how NLP can be applied to spelling with amazing results in a whole class situation and has made the Durham Project famous around the world

  “Maybe with NLP techniques we can have parents queuing up to send their children to our school”

  Headteacher

  Andrea Pearson and Kelly Field work with Y4 at Framwellgate Moor Primary School, Durham

  Research Plan

  Spelling had always been taught in a structured way throughout the week and I felt the attainment in spelling could be improved by implementing simple changes in the approach, and using the ideas put forward during our NLP course.

  Some children struggle when learning spellings so strategies need to be found and employed which work for them. I felt I was doing my utmost to support the children and if my approaches did not suit particular learners, they needed to be changed or adapted.

  Within school we worked closely together to ensure that ideas were used with all pupils, including those with special educational needs, and we were able to discuss ideas and plans.

  We had the full support of the Headteacher, including time given for analysis.

  The aims of our project were to:

  Find more effective approaches to teach spelling

  Ensure pupils would learn and retain spellings more easily

  We planned a 3-week project using the weekly spelling activities as a focus. We decided to make small changes each week to the structured approach, and to test the children each time so we could measure the impact. The spellings would be scored out of 8, and our success criteria were:

  To improve the full mark score

  To improve the ‘more than 5 out of 8’ score

  Action

  week 1 - baseline

  • Spellings were given as usual. A spelling test was carried out and the results were used as a baseline for the research.

  • Spelling pattern was ‘i before e’

  week 2 - start of project

  Spellings were written on the right hand side (from the children’s point of view) of the whiteboard with the spelling pattern written in a different colour , eg., change / ge rm

  Children copied the spellings in their spelling logs using coloured felt tips to show the spelling pattern

  Children worked in pairs, spelling
out letter by letter - ‘spell change…

  c..h..a..n..g..e..’ - other child jots down spelling

  Children wrote spellings in handwriting books (joined script)

  Children used Look, Cover, Write, Check sheets and wrote ‘ge ’ in a colour. Children encouraged to look upwards to recall the ‘look’ of the spelling - ‘can you see the word?’

  Spelling test

  week 3

  Spellings were written on the right hand side (from the children’s point of view) of the whiteboard with the spelling pattern written in a different colour. The children all moved seats during the spelling session to allow all a direct ahead view to the whiteboard.

  Children were given fragranced felt tips to record the spelling pattern, eg., giant engine

  Because the children with special educational needs did not seem to be responding to the changes introduced so far – ie., their scores were not particularly changing - they were given spellings on cards with the target blend highlighted in textured materials (net, corrugated card, bubble wrap, string, and fur)

  Spelling test

  Impact

  Below is the data illustrating the changes in the pupils’ spelling scores, and there are a number of conclusions we have come to as a result of the project and analysis of the scores

  The evidence has proved so overwhelming that this strategy can make a huge difference to a child’s ability to memorise spellings

  An awareness of eye accessing cues, where to place the spellings, how and where to ask children to visualise words etc., also improved their ability to remember spellings.

  The extra time element involved when using these activities is minimal (with the SEN (special educational needs) group being the exception, but it would be manageable).

  Because they were changing the pen within each word, the children were more focused when learning spellings.

  This will have an impact on the teaching of spelling within our school. Many of the problems some children had retaining new spellings will be addressed.

  The added effect will be a much more open and flexible approach to the teaching of a range of primary curriculum content.

  The use of test results and observation gave the most appropriate forms of evidence with which to analyse the effect of implementing these approaches.

  % Full Score

  % Over 5 correct

  Week 1

  18

  46

  Week 2

  66

  81

  Week 3

  71

  92-5

  Variations in the total number of children are because of absence

  Spelling success in the Netherlands

  Here is a practical and detailed case study of using the spelling strategy as a whole class approach over a longer period of time. Notice in the transcript the language Riejan uses to enthuse her learners.

  Riejan Smits is a teacher in The Netherlands specialising in intervention work with children who are not reaching their potential

  Research plan

  In September 2010 I started with a new group of students; 9 children in group 5 (age 8 and 9) and 12 children in group 4 (age 6 and 7). The previous year was a troubled year; 31 children in one classroom and an inexperienced teacher who received no help with her teaching.

  The spelling results of the children in my group were dramatically low. 80% of the children got an E score. In the Netherlands we use standard testing. The results are shown as A-B-C-D-E scores. A and B are good scores and should be accomplished by 80% of the students. C score means you have to examine the results and make a plan to get the child to an A or B score. D and E scores are very low and you can have no more than 5% of the children in that score. For the D-E children you have to make a repair plan and show it to your director. You can imagine that I was in a shock when I learned the results of this spelling and I wanted to raise the results. Learning to spell correctly is an important part of our language education.

  Together with my director we aimed for an improvement of 40% in the spelling results in this year. I wanted a higher outcome but my director wanted a more realistic outcome. The results of the spelling test were unacceptable to me. I wanted to teach the children the right strategy for spelling and have a lot of fun while learning. I also wanted them to feel successful, capable and proud of their achievements with spelling (and all the other learning of course).

  The elements of NLP I built into the plan were: Go into the right state, go first, inoculate against failure and/or negative beliefs, nested loops, trances, timelines , anchoring, Milton patterns.

  I have already taught my children a lot of NLP techniques, so I can tell them to go into a state of curiosity where they feel comfortable, and they will. I use timelines to make sure the kids are in a state of trust in the future, showing them how, when and why we are doing things.

  The kids love this stuff; flying over the timelines, building strong powerful beliefs and feeling good about themselves. I also use the timelines for other subjects such as Maths, History, Drawing, Planning and much more.

  At the start of the new school year I told my children that I had been to school again myself and that I had learned a lot of very useful tricks and magic to make learning easier, funnier, faster, more successful, and that I was ready to start sharing that information with them. (Getting them into the right state, I was there already - the Milton patterns are there, you will recognise them ):

  …“I know for a fact that children are very quick learners, so let’s start with the first secret - we are going to be excellent spellers and we will make the best cheating list possible; the cheating list that no one will discover, because we will make the list inside our minds. We are going to be like magicians... are you ready? Let me tell you what my plan is - we have to learn 20 words, every 2 weeks, so we have 10 days for 20 words. Piece of cake! At the end of the 2 weeks we will exactly know how to spell the 20 words because we practised the strategy I learned from Richard Bandler every day. He is a doctor and knows how our minds learn… He is always investigating how he can make learning easier and whenever he finds out, he tells it to his students and they tell their students, so it is like a stone you drop into the water. So my plan for the next two weeks looks like this (drawing on my digital board):

  Day 1 Today we will read all the 20 words, so we already are starting to know them. Then we will categorise them and we will learn the first strategy:

  The Perfect Spelling Strategy

  Richard Bandler is a smart man, for example, if I want to become a great singer, it would be a great idea to go to a teacher who sings beautifully herself, wouldn’t it? Do you think it’s a smart idea to go to a singer who sings out of key? Don’t think so. Richard went out to ask really good spellers - how do you spell so well? And he was amazed and glad because all good spellers said, ‘well it is very easy, if I want to spell the word “natuurlijk” (the spelling problem is uur; you spell uur, but you say uu translation: of course) ‘I just look in my mind and there is the picture of the word’ . And Richard noticed that all good spellers looked right above. So I have put all the 20 words on the digital board and I will show you with each word how I do it, because I’m a great speller too:

  Natuurlijk

  This is too small, I will make it bigger…

  This is better. Now I change the spelling problem into a beautiful colour…

  So, that looks really awesome. We are going to do this together! Make a picture of this word. Close your eyes when your picture is made.

  Open them and do it again.

  This is cool. Close your eyes and see the picture.

  Open your eyes and make a picture, make sure it is a bright picture and close your eyes. Now, as you sit still and watch the word in your mind, you can all point to the first letter of this image, point out the ‘a’, the ‘l’, the ‘r’. Excellent!

  Wow, I think we are so good. Now, here comes the magic; you can make the picture smaller:

  and s
maller:

  so you can copy the word into our book. Compare it with the picture in your mind, compare it with the picture on the board. And that’s the famous cheating list. We are so going to be THE best spellers ever! The spelling category was - eer, oor aar, uur (eur). You spell the r, but you don’t say it. We took all the words of that category and practised them. Then I got back to my timeline on the digital board.

  Day 1 Making pictures in our minds and practice with your neighbour

  Day 2 Practise in your book - you can work in pairs and you can work

  with colours

  Day 3 Practise on the computer

  Day 4 Hand in your book after you have checked the words; you will win a sticker if you have all the words correct

  Day 5 You make a test for someone else in the classroom with a maximum of 10 words. You will work in pairs. And you may work with a lot of different children.

  Day 6 Make the practice exercises in your book

  Day 7 A small test of all the 20 words

  Day 8 Practise the words you weren’t really sure of yet

  Day 9 Practise on the computer with other children; make a game with the words or look at the back of your book. All the words we have to learn this school year are there, so you can learn ahead and gain an advantage!

  Day 10 Test successfully made!

  Oh, I have to finish my story; Richard told me that it is really important to reward students after they did a great job! So what would you like me to give to you after we worked really well? Would you settle for some sweets? Okay, deal!

  Let’s go to work.

  I also use visual and kinaesthetic anchors. All the children have a table illustrating these on their tables and they use it very frequently. I have added a picture of it.