Building students’ Learning Power is about creating a culture in your classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable your students learn confidently and face difficulty calmly, and creatively. By a ‘culture’ we mean all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’.
So ‘culture’ concerns the details of the micro-climate that you create in your classrooms. What you do and say, what you notice and commend and what you don’t, what kind of role model of a learner you offer: all these are of the essence. The micro-climate of a classroom can inadvertently stifle or, specifically enhance, the very behaviours you are seeking to promote.
Does my classroom climate encourage Noticing?
Here is a selection of features that might begin to shape the emotional climate of your classroom to encourage noticing.
The diagram has 4 sections:
- Top – strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate noticing;
- Right – indications of the sort of language you might use to stimulate noticing;
- Bottom – ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of noticing;
- Left – things that you need to enable students to do.
Apply your own noticing and consider whether you already use any of these features and which you fancy trying.
What do you think?
- Which of the ‘build’ ideas (top) are already features of your teaching?
- Which of the ‘talk’ prompts (right) do you regularly use when talking about noticing?
- Which of the ‘celebrate’ ideas (bottom) are already in evidence your classroom?
- Which of the ‘enable’ behaviours (left) are you intentionally enabling in your classroom?
Make a note of…
- Any ideas that look as if they might help your students to become better at noticing.
- An idea that you want to start doing.
- An idea that interests you, but you are uncertain what it means or how you might do it.
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