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At Home With MARGE: Exploring Shimamura’s approach to learning with Nimish Lad

Teaching and learning are something that has been happening since the dawn of time – or thereabouts. And we do it all the time in non-school contexts, as do our children. But that doesn’t mean, necessarily that the things we need to learn stick, especially when there is an entire world of excitement and interest out there competing for our attention. So, just how can we focus our efforts and be more deliberate about our learning?

This week we’re looking at what was called a whole-brain learning approach and how it can help students.

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Nathan McGurl, Founder of The Study Buddy, is joined by Nimish Lad. A Physics teacher by training, Nimish is an experienced and passionate senior leader with a particular interest in curriculum design, research and leadership. In addition to maintaining a blog – researcher teacher – Nimish is about to release his first book – Shimamira’s MARGE: Model for Learning in Action.

It can be difficult for teens to study and learn. Not all of them, granted, and not all the time. And there is something odd in the seeming inconsistency that a teen might not appear to learn about the periodic table, but be able to recite transfer values of footballers or lyrics from every song in the charts effortlessly. However, being able to focus their attention and hone their abilities is an important part of their progression – and also key for lifelong learning. Or is it? With access to the wealth of technological resources perhaps we don’t need to. And that is certainly something we hear from our students – why bother, when I can ask Siri?

In this episode we explore the 5 aspects to the MARGE approach to learning:

  • Motivate
  • Attend
  • Relate
  • Generate
  • Evaluate

Nimish Lad explains what each meant to Shimamura and how we can apply the principles in study and revision. We talk about being “comfortably lazy”, a phrase Shimamura uses. And we also look at the science behind learning. All this while providing some top tips that parents & students might apply to studying and revising.

IT’S TIME FOR PLAN A

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