Daily Archives: February 29, 2008

I love you, Miss. I love you, too

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 http://www.tes.co.uk/2577471

TESS reports that teachers should not be afraid of saying they “love” the children they work with, according to two of Scotland’s most influential figures in young people’s lives. ‘Margaret Doran, Glasgow City Council’s head of education and social work, and Kathleen Marshall, the Commissioner for Children and Young People, argued that love was an important factor in working successfully with children. They made their comments at a leadership event for primary school heads last week, creating a talking point that dominated the coffee breaks and split delegates into two clear camps.’

Many struggling pupils suffer from poor memory – report

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http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2260317,00.htmlThe Guardian reports that children who under-achieve at school may just have a poor working memory rather than low intelligence, according to researchers who have produced the world’s first tool to assess memory capacity in the classroom.

The researchers from Durham University surveyed more than 3,000 primary school children of all ages and found that 10% of them suffer from poor working memory, which seriously impedes their learning.

Nationally, this equates to almost 500,000 children in primary education being affected. But the researchers found that teachers rarely identify a poor working memory and often describe children with this problem as inattentive or less intelligent.

Working memory is the ability to hold information in your head and manipulate it mentally – for example adding up two numbers spoken to you by someone else without using pen and paper or a calculator, or memorising verbal directions.