Unit 3 explores what getting better at learning looks like.

• What are the key aspects of progression in learning behaviours? (Essential Read about 1)
• How do the progression charts work? (Find out 1)
• How do groups of my students differ in that progression? (Find out 2)
• Where are my students strengths and weaknesses in four key behaviours? (Try out 1 to 4)

Structuring and using the ideas below with your students over the next month or so is your third step in becoming a skilled learning power practitioner.

Building the powers to learn

The whole point of building better learners is to do just that, to build the learning behaviours, not just name them. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of this journey showing the reluctant learner on the left and the learning powered learner on the right. It’s a long but exciting journey from what can sometimes be negative behaviours on the left to rich, skilled and positive attitudes on the right. This journey covers students’ emotional learning habits, their cognitive/thinking habits, their social learning habits and their ability to manage the learning process itself.

There are three key facets to the progression of learning behaviours;

1. the frequency/how often the behaviour is being used (How much)
2. the range/scope of contexts in which it is used (Wheres)
3. the skilfulness with which it is employed. (How well)

Our understanding of what the journey might look like in practice has emerged and taken shape over the past seven years. The stages of the journey are ‘borrowed’ from Bloom’s taxonomy of the affective domain of learning. It is this scaling of the learning dispositions that will help you make sense of the journey as you track, and influence, your learners’ progress over time.

It’s useful to remember the essentials of building powerful learners include:

• recognising that learning is a learnable craft; you can get better at it.
• learning how to learn involves attitudes, values, interests and beliefs.
• developing better learners is done with and by learners rather than to learners;
• it involves cultivating dispositions and values rather than training skills;
• it is not an inevitable by-product of ‘traditional effective teaching’;
• it is about making students ready and willing as well as able to learn.

So now ask yourself…

• What sort of learning characteristics do my learners have?
• What sort of learning characteristics do my more successful learners have?
• Which characteristics or behaviours do my struggling learners have?
• Which learning behaviour contributes to the success of most of my learners?
• Which learning behaviour is used less than any of the others?
• How do the answers to these, and similar questions, apply to my teaching and the curriculum?

You as a learner

To get a better sense of the growth of these learning behaviours use the chart to think about yourself as a learner. Start slowly and think:

• where would I place myself on each of these 4 trajectories?
• do I understand the statements well enough to answer? Any I need to check?
• can I really say that the statement is secure? [By secure, we mean that these are behaviours that you exhibit in a range of different circumstances.]
• does it actually describe what I do most of the time, or does it describe something I can do but tend not to? (what I do do, rather than what I can do).
• have I ever thought about myself like this before?
• would my partner or colleagues see me in the same way?
• colour in your secure statements on the chart.

This has now become your Learning Behaviour Profile.

• Now ask...
  • which learning behaviour is particularly strong, or weak?
  • am I substantially lower or higher in some? Which?
  • are there any surprises or disappointments?
  • what questions is this raising for me?
  • where would I like to improve?
  • what may have shaped my current learning characteristics?
  • if I hadn’t used this chart how would I have described myself as a learner?

Your students as learners

Now turn your attention to some of the learners in your class just to get an idea of how useful such profiles can be.

Begin by identifying 4 students you wish to focus on. Choose 1 lower achieving boy, 1 higher achieving boy, 1 lower achieving girl, and 1 higher achieving girl.

Download and print 4 copies of the behaviour chart opposite.

Using your knowledge of these 4 students, colour in and create a learning profile for each student.

Now ask...

• • which learning behaviours are particularly strong or weak?
  • are the profiles of the girls different from the boys?
  • are the profiles of the higher attainers different from the profiles of the lower attainers?
  • what questions is this raising for me?
  • has this exercise changed or sharpened your understanding of these students as learners.

If this activity has piqued your interest and you want to find out more about your students as learners, have a go at the Extended Find Out that follows.

Traditionally curriculum planning has identified what is going to be taught, how it is going to be taught, and how success is going to be assessed. Such planning has traditionally been wholly content and teaching related, with no reference to the learning behaviours necessary for accessing the content.

In this section we consider the transition from content-only planning through to curriculum planning that integrates progression in content with progression in learning behaviours.

Here’s an outline of the whole transitional journey.

Planning at this simplistic level describes what is to be taught, and in what order. The content is defined and sequenced. There’s little reference to how the curriculum might be delivered or how it might be assessed, and certainly no reference to the learning behaviours necessary for success.

In terms of the teachers’ palette diagram:

Outcomes for teaching…responsibility for learning lies exclusively with the teacher, talk is about content, lessons are constructed to ‘deliver’ the curriculum according to individual teacher’s preferred delivery styles, performance is celebrated.

Outcomes for learning…students are there to be taught what they need to know, students don’t think about or know how they learn, learning is about knowing stuff and getting it right.

Adding the ‘how’ of delivery to the content to be delivered serves to guide teaching and maybe define the activities that will be undertaken. This level of planning ensures greater consistency of delivery across different teaching groups, but is still teaching-focused.

In terms of classroom culture, this level of planning creates a teacher-focused classroom, and depending on the nature of the planned activities, some limited elements of the learner-focused classroom.

Outcomes for teaching…responsibility still lies exclusively with the teacher, talk is still about content, lessons are constructed to ‘deliver’ the curriculum, but delivery is less dependent on individual teacher’s preferred delivery styles and activities are planned / agreed in advance of delivery, successful content acquisition is celebrated.

Outcomes for learning…learning is still focused on content, learners have no awareness of the learning behaviours they are exercising, learning activities are becoming more consistent and engaging.

Linking subjects and learning behaviours can be seen as a step-change in terms of curriculum planning.

At this level, consideration is given in advance to how students will need to be as learners in order to access the prescribed content.

Mostly this is at the level of identifying the key learning behaviours necessary for or activated by different subjects. For example, Mathematics frequently requires students to employ their reasoning and their pattern seeking skills, but some maths topics may also require attentive noticing, or critical curiosity etc. Other subjects will have a different blend of learning behaviours that they exercise on a regular basis.

Still at an early stage, planning now links content with learning behaviours, but at a fairly simplistic level. Subject planning is beginning to include ‘go-to’ learning behaviours, but at least these behaviours are being identified in advance and as such it is now possible to alert students to the learning behaviours that they are expected to employ – it fosters the beginning of dual-focused teaching (sometimes called split-screen teaching), in which both the content to be studied and the learning behaviours to be employed can be built into lesson planning.

Learning is brought out of the shadows and made visible, to both students and teachers.

Outcomes for teaching…responsibility is beginning to shift towards the learner, talk is predominantly about content, but learning behaviours are beginning to figure in classroom discourse, lessons are constructed to help students to understand how they will be learning the content and learning behaviours are built into lesson objectives. There is a growing recognition that lessons have twin intentions – to learn content and to exercise specific learning behaviours. Successful learning behaviours are discussed and celebrated.

Outcomes for learning…learners are becoming aware of the learning behaviours they are expected to exercise and are coming to understand that there is more to learning than just ‘knowing stuff’. They are beginning to be able to talk about the process of learning, although in relatively simple terms at this stage. Their role is changing as they begin to understand that success is dependent on their learning behaviours.

Linking learning behaviours to delivery strategies takes planning beyond linking learning behaviours to the content that is to be delivered. It recognises that the way that the content is delivered also activates / requires learning behaviours that could / should be identified, planned for and made visible in advance.

Consider a Science curriculum that involves, at some stage, students undertaking a practical experiment.

The skills required to observe the teacher conduct the experiment and then faithfully recreate the experiment as an individual requires skills of observation, listening, attention to detail, following a prescribed plan etc.

Contrast that with the skills required when the teacher puts students into small groups and challenges them to work together to plan how to do the experiment, to identify and gather the resources needed, to conduct the experiment, and to reflect together on how they could have planned it more efficiently.

Same experiment – with different learning behaviours stimulated by how the teacher chooses to organise the activity.

At this phase, the learning behaviours identified will be drawn from a framework like the Supple Learning Mind.

Outcomes for teaching…responsibility is becoming increasingly shared, teachers are expecting more of learners, direct teaching is diminishing, and teachers increasingly see their role as a learning coach, guiding both content acquisition and understanding of learning, talk is a balance between what is being learned and how it is being learned, and the learning language is becoming ever more sophisticated, lesson construction is dual-focused and makes both the content to be learned and the learning behaviours to be employed visible to learners. A wide range of learning behaviours are noticed, discussed and celebrated.

Outcomes for learning…learners have sensed a shift of focus, away from ‘being taught’, towards taking responsibility for their own learning, they are increasingly aware of their learning strengths and relative weaknesses, they are coming to understand the learning process and themselves as learners, and understand that learning about learning is at least as important as ‘knowing stuff’.

The holy grail of curriculum planning is: carefully sequenced content related planning that ensures that students’ understanding of their growth as a learner is of equal importance as their progressive understanding of the content matter.

Consider the example of the science planning in 3A5, above. The second strategy included ‘working together’ [or Collaboration as we would call it in terms of the Supple Learning Mind].

But we have a much more elaborated understanding of ‘Collaboration’ through the collaboration progression chart. Depending on the collaboration skill levels of learners, ‘working together’ might become ‘listen carefully to others and share your own ideas’ or ‘contribute to creating and agreeing a realistic team plan’ etc.

At this depth of planning, both the content specific learning behaviours and the activity specific learning behaviours are differentiated by reference to learning behaviours drawn from the relevant progression trajectories.

In terms of making learning visible, planning has moved beyond ‘today you will need your reasoning skills’ to ‘today you will need to able explain your thinking to neighbour and offer evidence to support your thinking’. We have moved beyond simply naming the skill to identifying a particular aspect of the learning behaviour.

Where 3A5, above, was a little blunt-edged, here references to learning behaviours are specific and differentiated to support learner progress.

Outcomes for teaching… learning is a shared responsibility, and has become a shared endeavour between teachers and learners. Teachers make learning and how to get better at learning visible to learners – through talk, feedback and display. Teachers ensure that the curriculum is constructed so that it stretches both content and learning behaviours. Teachers value the growth of learning behaviours equally alongside progress and attainment. The growth in a wide range of learning behaviours is noticed, discussed and celebrated.

Outcomes for learning…learners have taken control their own development as learners. They have a deep understanding of, and can talk fluently about, the process of learning. They are aware of their learning strengths and which aspects of learning behaviours they are seeking to improve, and understand how improving as a learner supports and strengthens their progress and attainment.

Whole school strategies are always a double edged sword – the advantages of creating a consistent approach across all teachers is counterbalanced by the possibility of stifling creativity in teachers keen to push the boundaries, to tweak practice, and so develop new and improved approaches.

Given that the school has elected to follow the phase 3 route of Building Coherence, it is reasonable to assume that there is a will, at leadership level at the very least, to achieve a consistent approach to tracking student learning behaviours.

This is your chance, as the development team, to create a consistent approach that is sufficiently effective to stand the test of time. Student learning profiles, created during the reception year and revisited annually as student learning behaviours grow over time, will become an ongoing record of how your students are developing as learners. Think of it not as a one-hit issue, rather as something that will track your students’ learning as they move through your school, guiding practice and establishing development targets.

The creation of learning profiles from scratch for all students in all years is necessary at the outset, but thereafter new profiles will only need to be created for your intake year. All other teachers will be engaged in updating existing profiles, modifying them as learning behaviours mature and grow.

Is the school ready for this long-term development? With whom will it find favour? Who might be more resistant? What might the school need to do to achieve buy-in?

Given that most teachers have a new class of students each year, ask yourself if all colleagues know their students, as learners, sufficiently well to complete their students’ learning profiles.

This is particularly pertinent for inexperienced colleagues, especially those who have not already undertaken phase 1 and phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners, but also for experienced colleagues who have only recently joined the staff.

Consider 2 questions:

• Will we need a buddy or mentor system to support less experienced colleagues?
• How will we share our own learning with each other annually as colleagues are creating/updating student learning profiles?

This is a significant shift in the systems and rhythm of the school year and requires careful consideration. Issues to address are:

• When in the school year will we all create/update student learning profiles? [It may be that the school will consider creating all student profiles for the first time late in the autumn term, but thereafter plan to update those profiles every July in readiness for the new school year.]
• How this can be accommodated within the directed time budget.
• How will the updated profiles be kept? Will this be the responsibility of individual teachers, or will they be kept centrally, perhaps in the school’s management system?
• If they are not kept centrally, how will senior leaders maintain oversight and spot emerging patterns?
• What information needs to be added to the individual profiles to support such ongoing monitoring? Obviously the name/class/age/gender of the student, but think about the other individual student characteristics that might be relevant – EAL; SEND; Pupil Premium; More Able; Ethnicity; anything else that the school wishes to explore.
• How will the profiles inform a) learning behaviour target setting b) reporting to parents?

It is likely that oversight of the annual creation/updating/collection of profiles and for the ongoing monitoring of the impact and identification of emerging trends will rest with a senior curriculum leader.

If not, the school will need to consider adding this role to someone outside of the core leadership team. Either way, oversight and coordination will need to be an ongoing management responsibility for at least one person in the school.

The school will need to decide if the person managing the process (above) will also be the one who identifies and leads on developing/exploiting the potential of all students having their own learning profiles.

These potential benefits may not yet be apparent, but will surely include:

• gathering quality information of how learning behaviours are growing and what teachers are doing to achieve this;
• modifying observation proformas to support this;
• agreeing and setting learning targets for a) individual students and b) whole classes;
• how responsibility for growing learning behaviours can be increasingly devolved to learners and include student voice;
• the impact on reports to parents in terms of how learning behaviours are reported – can/should the text in the profile sheet be converted into a statement bank to support reporting, for example?

The question is about where responsibility for identifying and then weaving the potential benefits into school routines and practices will lie. What will your team recommend?

As a team you have developed your understanding of the issues around creating learning profiles and have begun to consider the implications for doing this across the whole school.

Can you now contribute to your team as they put together a proposed strategy for implementation and for ongoing management/leadership, taking into account the issues raised in the 6 sections above?

This will be the focus of the upcoming team meeting.

Asking yourself the hard questions:

You could begin with a quick SWOT analysis. In terms of developing student learning profiles:

• What are the current strengths of our teaching team and existing school systems and how might we exploit them;
• What are the current weaknesses and how might we overcome them;
• What are the opportunities afforded by developing individual student learning profiles;
• And what are the potential threats?

Take your thoughts to the final team meeting when together you will put together a proposed strategy for implementation.

In the previous section, you created your own learning profile and the profiles of a couple of students. Since you know yourself well, completing your own profile should have been relatively straightforward. But what of the profiles of your 2 students? Did you know them sufficiently well to be able to complete their profiles? Did you perhaps need to observe them to check out your initial perceptions? Or ask what your TA thinks? Did you even need to set up a situation where you could check out a skill you were unsure of with an individual student?

Moreover, some students stand out from the majority of your class – for better or for worse! Is it easier to describe the learning behaviours of your most successful and your least successful learners than it is to identify the individual learning strengths and weaknesses of the ‘silent majority’?

This is, of course, a function of how well you know your students and the extent to which you attend to how they learn. Completing profiles in September shortly after taking on a class might be considerably harder than doing so towards the end of the school year after you have had multiple opportunities to witness their learning in action.

However, it is now time to begin to complete learning profiles for all members of your class. Do not rush this – it may take a couple of weeks or more. Your aim should be to have time to complete all of your profiles and to look at any emerging patterns before you meet as a team to discuss your findings.

As you start colouring in individual profiles, keep an eye out for any emerging patterns;

• for areas of learning strength
• for areas of learning weakness
• for fallow areas
• for significant variations for some students or groups of students.
• for things that just make you feel uneasy

Ask yourself – ‘What questions are bubbling up in my mind?’ as you work through your class one by one. You’ll find yourself beginning to form some tentative hypotheses about your students’ learning behaviours.

Download and print sufficient charts – one for each student in your group. You’ll need to think carefully about each student in relation to each of their 12 learning behaviours. Colour in the behaviours that you think are secure. By secure, we mean that these are behaviours that the student consistently exhibits in a range of different circumstances. BUT if they use a behaviour in, say, maths but not in other subject areas you cannot count it as secure. You might find it easier later if you use different colours for say, boys and girls etc.

Things to consider in gathering the data:

• can / will I involve TA’s and other staff in order to gain other perspective(s)?
• if so will we do it together or at different times
• might I need to discuss these students with their previous or other teachers?
• am I confident about what is ‘a secure behaviour’? How frequently, and in how many different circumstances, do I need to see a behaviour to consider it ‘secure’?

When completed the learning behaviour profiles for each of your students will look something like the one to the right – some cells identified as ‘this is a secure skill / behaviour’ with others left blank. (Here the ‘secure’ cells are coloured pink).

Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:

What is this profile telling me about this student? 

Explore each student profile and ask yourself:

• Which behaviours appear relatively weaker/stronger? Well developed, hardly started?
• Which behaviours might explain why this student is successful / unsuccessful, effective/ineffective?
• Which are the weakest learning behaviours for this student?
• What might I need to do to help this student to help themselves to become a more effective learner?

Now that you have had a close look at each individual student you will have noticed several things, more of an inkling really, that seem to be showing up across the group. So before getting into a rigorous class analysis it will be useful to let your mind go into that receptive kind of imagination that’s a bit like daydreaming. Let the problem slip to the back of your mind and let your mind play with ideas and images about your class of students and their learning behaviours.

Play with what you have recorded and wonder:

• are there any patterns that I’m picking up
• what if I just think about girls and boys?
• are there really any significant differences?
• which column has scored lowest on many/most charts?
• which colour (phase) is the most prevalent across the class?
• what are my overall thoughts about the learning characteristics of the class?

In the next section we will help you build on this reverie and make a close interrogation of the patterns.

Having been through the important stage of reverie it’s now time to take a hard look and jot a few things down. First, you’ll need to interrogate your data through the lens of different groups of students. It might be an idea to take your pile of charts and divide them firstly into girls and boys, then into high and low attainers (however you designate that label), then isolate, separately, groups like Pupil Premium. EAL, SEND, G&T, (if you still use this), and other groups that may have significance in your area.

Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:

Can I discern any patterns across groups of learning profiles?

Ask yourself:

• What questions would I want to ask myself about each of these groups?
• What do I suspect might be happening?
• What are the learning behaviours of successful learners that appear lacking in less successful learners?

You might be thinking:

• How do my higher attaining learners differ from my lower attaining learners?
  • i.e. do they score higher in the columns? Is the range of higher scoring columns different in the 2 groups?
• How do my boys’ learning behaviours seem to differ from my girls’?
  • use the same ways of looking as above.
• Do my pupil premium learners’ behaviours differ from other students?
  • if so how? Is this more about progress in learning behaviours or using a different range of learning behaviours?
• Move on to look at other groups if you are interested or think they may be relevant in your school
• Do my EAL learners’ behaviours differ from others?
• Do my SEND learners’ behaviours differ from others?
• Do my G&T learners’ behaviours differ from others?
• Are there any ethnicity related differences?
• Do my summer-born learners differ from older learners?
• Or you may want to explore another pattern that you suspect might be relevant to your class.

Whatever your area of interest, shuffle the profiles and look for common features in one group of profiles that are different from the other group of profiles.

Having spent an interesting hour or so looking at your students’ learning charts it would be well worth your while to try and capture some of your main findings. You will have discovered far more than you can capture in your short term memory so a quick synthesising exercise would be well worthwhile.

Summarise your findings about:

• What you noticed about the individual learning profiles of your students? E.g. Which phase of behaviours appear to be more / less secure across the board? Which learning behaviour is the least well developed across the whole class?
• What you have learned about groups of students. E.g. boys/girls, pupil premium, and others. Have you noticed any significant differences that merit further investigation? E.g. the differences in types and phases of learning behaviours used by high and low achieving students?

When you meet with colleagues, compare and contrast your findings. Ask yourself:

• What are the main similarities between your impressions of student learning behaviours and those of your colleagues?
• Ditto the main differences?
• Are others sensing the same issues for groups of students as you are?
• Are students becoming better learners as they move through the school? E.g.. are the phases of growth used by Yr 6 students higher that Yr 3?
• What questions does this raise for you?
• These are just a few questions to set you off. As you get going, your data and interest will stimulate an almost never ending stream of them.
• See opposite for a completed example just to start you off.

Take your completed Summary to the team meeting so that you can share your impressions with colleagues.

Being an effective learner isn’t something that switches on on good days and off on bad days; it grows and builds when it’s nurtured and supported. Furthermore, being a learning powered learner involves gaining control of a range of linked dispositions and skills and emotions.

Over the last ten years we’ve tried to capture the essence of that growth and make it useful for teachers and learners. Take a look at the progression chart alongside. Here you can see all 12 key learning behaviours together.

Each of the 12 learning behaviours are briefly described at one of 5 levels of proficiency shown in the rows. These levels of proficiency grow and flourish when they are cultivated by teachers in learning friendly classrooms and supported by families.

Download the chart and take a closer look at it. You’ve probably never considered yourself, let alone any students, in this way before. Take your time just absorbing what you see. Don’t think too hard about the progression levels at this stage, but rather try to absorb the nature of the descriptions of across learning behaviours and the different areas of learning.

To get a better sense of these learning behaviours and their growth use the chart to think about yourself as a learner. Start slowly. Refer to the learning behaviour descriptions and progression notes in the previous section for help. Now just think:

• where would I place myself on each of these 12 trajectories?
• do I understand the statements well enough to answer? Which ones will I need to check?
• can I really say that this/that statement is secure? Does it actually describe what I do most of the time, or does it describe something I can do but tend not to? (what I do do, rather than what I can do).
• have I ever thought about myself like this before?
• would my partner / colleagues see me in the same way?
• colour in your secure statements on The Learning Behaviour Chart. This becomes your Learning Behaviour Profile. Now ask…
  • which learning domain is the strongest? (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic)
  • which learning domain is the weakest?
  • which particular learning behaviour is strong or weak?
  • am I substantially lower or higher in some? Which?
  • are there any surprises or disappointments?
  • what questions is this raising for me?
  • where would I like to improve?
  • what may have shaped my current learning characteristics?

When you think you understand the progression charts well enough try using them to consider a couple of students.

• Think of two students you know fairly well, but whose attainment differs.
• Download two learning behaviour charts (describing 12 learning behaviours) and indicate which descriptors seem best to describe each student’s current secure behaviours.
• Come back to them after a day or so and check them again to convince yourself that you’ve identified the most appropriate descriptors.
• It might be useful to have a word with a colleague who also knows the student well, especially if you’re uncertain about your answers.

Pink… a relatively weak learner, still negative aspects of learning (perseverance, imagining, meta learning) and elsewhere in need of adult support (ie they are broadly just into the purple phase);

Blue…illustrates a well-rounded learner, secure at the purple and blue phases, and moving into the green phase for some behaviours. This might be typical of a well-rounded, high attaining learner who is disposed to behave in learning-positive ways. Do not expect to see much beyond the green phase, as the uppermost 2 phases require levels of maturity and independence rarely accessed by younger learners.]

Ask yourself:

• what do these profiles tell me about these students as learners?
• do the students appear to do things differently?
• do any of the columns seem to show use of later phases growth for the higher achieving student?
• which learning behaviours appear to make the higher attaining student more successful?
• does any learning domain (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic) dominate for either student?
• which learning behaviours appear to need boosting most for each student?

Now that we have moved beyond seeing learning as a performance to it being an interesting process going on in our brains, we turn towards the growth of this supple learning mind. The whole point of building learning powers is to do just that, to build the learning behaviours, not simply to name them. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of this journey; building students’ emotional learning habits; building their cognitive/thinking habits; building their social learning habits and their ability to manage the process of their learning. The reluctant learner on the left and the learning powered learner on the right show the beginnings and ends of a long, exciting, but far from inevitable, learning journey.

Our understanding of what the journey might look like in practice has emerged and flowered over the past seven years. The stages of the journey are ‘borrowed’ from Bloom’s taxonomy of the affective domain of learning and summarised opposite. It is this scaling of the learning dispositions that will help you make sense of the journey as you document, and influence, your learners’ progress over time.

To help schools make the collection of learning data more manageable we have selected 12 of the original 17 characteristics for you to take a closer look at over time. In this section you can find out more about these fascinating learning characteristics and how they grow under the influence of a learning friendly environment. Understanding more about them will increase your confidence to collect valid data about how these characteristics are growing in your students.

Attention can be broken when learning gets blocked, but good learners have learnt the knack of maintaining or quickly re-establishing their concentration when they get stuck or frustrated. Perseverance is often undermined by two common and erroneous beliefs. Firstly, learning ought to be easy. If learners think that they will either understand something straight away, or not at all, then there is simply no point in persisting and struggling. Secondly, bright people pick things up easily, so if you have to try it means you’re not very bright. Clearly the idea that effort must be symptomatic of a lack of ability makes persevering an unpleasant experience. Good learners develop perseverance when their parents and teachers avoid conveying these messages, even unwittingly. Perseverance is about:

Keeping going in the face of difficulties; channelling the energy of frustration productively; knowing what a slow and uncertain process learning often is.

Noticing involves being ready, willing, and able to: be attentive to details and subtleties in seeking to understand things; seek underlying patterns patiently, understanding that connections may take time to emerge; actively use all the senses to gather information to build understanding of the world around; gain a clear sense of the ‘what’ of something before considering the ‘why’ and ‘how’; recognise that learning is often complex and difficult and takes time and effort to accomplish. So students need to learn how to focus their attention; to look patiently beyond the obvious to see detail and subtlety; to be able to identify the relative importance of what they are observing; to develop the ability to see detail in the context of the bigger picture; and to develop the ability to explain, hypothesise about and explore what is being noticed. When looked at from these diverse angles, growing noticing moves well beyond encouraging a student to ‘look carefully’.

Effective questioners are motivated and not afraid to ask questions about the past, the present and to explore the future. They have an extensive range of question types and techniques at their disposal, which they use with discernment and sensitivity to occasion. A well-formed questioning habit involves being ready, willing and able to; not take things at face value; be less likely to accept answers uncritically; ask questions of oneself as well as of others; get under the surface of things; be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity; not be afraid of the ‘don’t know’ state of mind; be playful, yet systematic and analytical; be socially aware of the impact that questions may have on others; challenge others’ thinking; understand and use different types of question for different purposes; recognise that revealing their own uncertainties helps them learn.

Making links between different things comprises not only the ability to see or make relationships but also the inclination to look for them. Trying to hook up new experiences with what you already know is what some people call ‘making meaning’. New ideas become meaningful to the extent that we can incorporate them within our own mental webs of associations and significances. Good learners get pleasure from seeing how things fit together. They are interested in the big picture, and how new learning expands it. They experience them through the ‘ah ha’ experience of seeing a connection between two previously isolated concepts, or the satisfaction of seeing the connection between an abstract idea and a ‘hands-on’ concrete experience. It’s how you make sense of the world. To be a good link maker you need to keep stimulating your brain and enriching your experiences because through active learning you quite literally ‘build’ your own mind. At the heart of all this is your attitude to knowledge; whether it is bound up in rules and ‘is-language’, or whether you see knowledge as provisional, ever building and changing.

A well formed Reasoning habit involves being ready, willing, and able to: resist jumping to conclusions; seek justifiable evidence to shape sound, well-honed arguments; scrutinise your assumptions; seek evidence and counter evidence, look for false steps and carefully draw conclusions; remain suspicious, doubting and self-doubting in order to avoid unwarranted certainty; convey your logical thinking clearly, through dialogue, symbols, analogies, prose and pictures. So, at a less abstract level, students need to learn the inclination to resist impulsive responses; to respond logically and thoughtfully; to apply logic by explaining, justifying and, ultimately, proving what they think; to utilise a range of reasoning tools; and to develop strategies for presenting their reasoning to others persuasively.

Imagining is an important way of thinking but one that seems to be afforded too few opportunities in classrooms. Imagination isn’t just a cute faculty that children use to weave fantasies: it is one of the most effective tools in the learner’s toolbox. Scientists, designers and executives need a powerful imagination just as much as painters and novelists.There are two kinds of imagination: active and receptive. In active imagination, you deliberately create a scenario to run in your mind’s eye. Sports people use this kind of mental rehearsal and experiments have shown it to be very effective at improving their level of skill. The second kind of imagination is more receptive, like daydreaming: letting a problem slip to the back of your mind, and then just sliding into a kind of semi-awake reverie, where the mind plays with ideas and images without much control on your part

A well formed Imagining habit involves being ready, willing, and able to: use the mind as a theatre in which to play out ideas and possible actions experimentally; use a rich variety of visual, aural and sensory experiences to trigger creative and lateral thinking: explore possibilities speculatively, saying ‘What might …’, ‘What could …’ and ‘What if …?’ rather than being constrained by what is; retain a childlike playfulness when confronted with challenges and difficulties; be aware of intended outcomes whilst adopting a flexible approach to realising goals; rehearse actions in the mind before performing them in reality.

Effective resource users learn with the help of many different sources – other people, books, the internet, music, the environment, experience…and making intelligent use of all kinds of strategies and things to aid learning. In the early stages, it means selecting and making the best use of known strategies and classroom resources but this swiftly moves on to embracing a much wider and varied range of possibilities. This involves being able to seek novel ways of solving problems by exploiting the potential of known strategies and what is around them including things they may never have thought of as a resource.

Hearing and listening are different. Whereas hearing is an automatic and effortless process when sound waves strike the ear drum and cause vibrations in the brain, listening is about the brain giving those sounds meaning. It’s unnatural, and it requires effort. There’s all sorts of faulty listening. Sometimes we fake it or pretend to listen; sometimes we only respond to the remarks we are interested in and reject the rest. Sometimes we listen defensively and take innocent remarks as personal attacks. Or, we listen to collect information to use to attack the speaker, or we avoid particular topics, or we listen insensitively and can’t look beyond the words for other meanings, or we turn the conversation to ourselves. So, listening is indeed hard and requires effort. To be a good listener you need to be able to listen for information, listen to judge the quality of the information and listen empathetically to build a relationship and help solve a problem. When looked at from these diverse angles, growing Listening moves well beyond encouraging a student to ‘do good listening’ or ‘now listen carefully’.

Effective collaborators are adept at learning with and from others. They help to:

• shape the ideas of the team
• decide what needs to be done
• contribute to getting the job done
• keep an eye on how things are going
• improve team performance through reflection.

A well-formed collaboration habit includes being ready willing and able to: work effectively with others towards agreed, common goals, acting flexibly in response to circumstances; adopt different roles and responsibilities in pursuit of agreed goals and the well-being of the team; hold and express opinions coherently, compromising and adapting when appropriate; seek to understand what others are saying; sharing, challenging, supporting and building on ideas.

Planning is the ability to take a strategic overview of your learning, and make sensible decisions. It means:

• taking stock of the problem and the parameters within which you must work
• assessing the available resources, both inner and outer, and deciding which you think are going to be needed
• making an estimate of the time the learning will take, and the competing priorities that may have to be delayed or sacrificed
• imagining a route-map for the learning
• anticipating hurdles or problems that may arise along the way.

Good learners like taking responsibility for planning and organising their learning. They welcome opportunities to decide for themselves when, where, why and how they are going to learn—and to get better at doing so. Research shows, for example, that people who can make a reasonable estimate of how long a task will take are more likely to finish on time, and to do better work.Training the process of thinking ahead often starts simply by asking students to find the resources they will need to carry out a task. But planning your own learning is a sophisticated task. It involves a personal, silent assessment of your learning skills (‘What can I feasibly achieve? What am I capable of doing? What resources would bolster my chances of success?’) The more timid, less confident or lower achieving students may find such planning a daunting prospect. Introducing and requiring students to work learning out for themselves will take time and careful planning on the part of the teacher.

A well formed Refining habit involves being ready, willing, and able to: self-monitor how things are going, keeping an eye on the goal; expect the unexpected, having a readiness to re-shape, re-order, re-form plans to take account of new circumstances; remain alive to new, unforeseen opportunities and ideas; look at what you are doing with a critical eye; strive to be the best you can be; make sure things are on track and make improvements along the way.

So students need to learn how to deal with change, emotionally and practically. With an inflexible frame of mind they are unlikely to recognise the need to change their ideas or the way they do something. They also need to know what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going and the willingness to evaluate how things went against external standards. Growing revising moves well beyond encouraging a student to ‘have another go’.

Meta-learning involves drawing out of your learning experience a more general, explicit understanding of the process of learning, and specific knowledge about yourself as a learner. Becoming a meta-learner is about being able to assess the effectiveness of your own learning process and regulate it for greater success. It has several strands; how you become and stay motivated and plan your learning, how you build and organise your ideas; how you learn with and from others; how you manage your learning environment and how you monitor your learning process itself in order to improve. When looked at from these diverse angles, growing meta-learning moves well beyond encouraging a student to ‘think about your learning’.

• What sort of learning character do my learners have?
• What sort of learning characteristics do my more successful learners have?
• Which characteristics or behaviours do my struggling learners have?
• Which learning behaviour contributes to the success of most of my learners?
• Which learning behaviour is used less than any of the others?
• How do the answers to these, and similar questions, apply to me, my teaching and the curriculum?

Before you start making use of the learning behaviour charts that can address these questions you’ll find it helpful to take a quick look at the background of learning domains and learning behaviours or powers. It’s an approach to learning that looks at the building blocks of learning, what they are, the part they play and why they matter. Read on to find out about the basic learning behaviour framework, known as the Supple Learning Mind, the importance of learning dispositions and where all these ideas have come from and why they matter.

Learning Power has been described as the raw ‘building blocks’ of learning; not abilities, not styles, but the actual components of learning itself; the raw energy of learning. Through a systematic programme of research over several years, and with the co-operation of thousands of research participants, researchers at Bristol University turned this ‘learning power’ inside-out until finally it was broken down into the four domains of learning and seventeen identifiable learning capacities; key psychological characteristics that were and are judged to be of the highest value in helping students to learn and thrive in a complex world. These learning behaviours are inherent in us all, not fixed at birth, or when we leave school: they can be developed by everyone regardless of ‘ability’, social background, or age. There are no limits to extending our learning power.

Underlying this approach is a recognition that learning how to learn involves more than skills, it involves students’ attitudes, values, interests and beliefs as well. It’s about helping students to help themselves to be disposed to persist, to question and be curious, to collaborate harmoniously and to be open to new ideas.

From there to here

An enthusiasm for ‘better learning’ has motivated teachers for a long time. In attempts to help students learn more or learn better, teachers tried to understand learning styles, multiple intelligences, and the like. In attempts to help students improve their organisation of knowledge or the effectiveness of their memory, teachers used tools like mind maps, mnemonics, and other study skills. These approaches laid the ground for a deeper, more permanent set of approaches, whose aim is to get beyond learning more, or learning better, to helping students to help themselves become better learners.

“I can’t think of anything more worth learning than learning to learn. It’s like having money in the bank at compound interest” David Perkins. Project Zero, Harvard University

Research in the learning sciences shows that learning is itself a learnable craft; that we can all get better at learning. This means that schools, teachers and parents can enable young people to help themselves to develop as better, more effective learners.

Skills and techniques aren’t enough. Students must not only possess the requisite capabilities; they must be ready, willing and able to use them when the time is right.

Schools today need to be educating not just for exam results but for a life of learning. To thrive in the twenty-first century, it is not enough to leave school with a clutch of examination certificates. Students need to have learnt how to be tenacious and resourceful, imaginative and logical, self-disciplined and self-aware, collaborative and inquisitive.

‘Students throughout the world need now to reach higher levels of achievement, not only to find fulfilling work but also to empower themselves to thrive in an increasingly complex world’
– Dylan Wiliam

• Employment requires being able to enhance and transfer knowledge and to operate collaboratively.
• The capacity to learn and adapt needs to be lifelong because change is a permanent state, and the pace of change is moving more rapidly.

The key differences between this phase 2 unit, Building Coherence, and phase 1 of the Building Powerful Learners programme.

• Building Coherence is a programme containing 2 substantial units designed to be undertaken by teams of teachers with a view to researching and developing whole school approaches. This could be achieved by two teams operating concurrently, or by one team that tackles the 2 units one after the other.
• The goal is to create consistency across the school in terms of the complex areas of:
  • a) how learning behaviours are integrated into curriculum planning and lesson design;
  • b) how the school tracks student learning behaviour growth.
• The blended learning approach and cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 is necessarily changed.

1. Shared Values – How does phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners fit with our school’s ethos?

Given that the school has decided to continue Building Powerful Learners, it is reasonable to assume that this sits well with the school’s ethos and aspirations.

Leaders would do well to consider, in advance, how they are going to mirror the 4 aspects of classroom culture in their leadership approach. To align their leadership behaviours with the classroom culture developed in Building Powerful Learners, how will leaders:

• devolve responsibility to teams and coach their development?
• support team members to understand and exercise their team responsibilities?
• build challenge and reflection into their leadership of the programme?
• share emerging developments and celebrate successes?

2. Skills – What sort of skills/competencies would the programme enhance?

Building Coherence is a step change from phase 1 of Building Powerful Learners. It seeks to enable schools to develop consistent approaches to: planning learning behaviours into curriculum/lesson planning; and to tracking students’ growth as learners as they move through your school.

The impacts, in the longer term, will be considerable in terms of weaving the development of learning behaviours into delivery, and in terms of the monitoring and evaluation of learning behaviour growth over time.

3. Staff – How could we accommodate the staff development approach suggested?

Team members will begin to trial some aspects of building learning behaviours into curriculum delivery and of monitoring the growth of learning behaviours as they engage with the Building Coherence units. But what of those teachers who are not directly involved in these teams?

The risk here is that you may, unintentionally signal that Building Powerful Learners has ‘done its job’ and all that is left is to build a couple of new systems to implement it.

As the phase 2 programmes Building the Scope and Building Depth readily show, phase 1 was a great place to start, but a terrible place to finish. There is still much to do to develop the early stages of Building Powerful Learners into a school-wide approach to becoming a learning powered school.

Give careful consideration to adopting a twin track approach – some teachers in teams working on Building Coherence, while those who are not Building Coherence team members continue to build on phase 1 by exploring strategies for further developing their classroom culture and their students’ learning behaviours.

You could choose to use either of the phase 2 programmes, Building the Scope or Building Depth, to ensure that the gains from phase 1 are advanced further while your Building Coherence team undertake the more strategic developments.

4. Systems – How do we need to adapt our existing working practices?

Inevitably, this depends on the approach the school plans to take.

If the school is planning to work on Building Coherence without adding either of the other phase 2 units:

• Redirect the time allocated to phase 1 of Building Powerful Learners to give team members time to explore the Building Coherence units;
• Change the monthly meeting cycle to requiring teams to create an interim report after around 3 months with a view to making final recommendations after around 6 months.

In order to maintain momentum among teachers who are not part of the Building Coherence teams, challenge them to continue working on the phase 1 Building Powerful Learners package – there are more than sufficient materials in units 4, 5, 6 & 7 to keep things ticking over. The upside is that everyone stays engaged, but the downside is that neither teachers nor students will be expanding their understanding of learning beyond the foundational 4 behaviours.

5. Structure – Who will lead it and what accountability may be needed?

• Building Coherence implies a small team approach. Each team will need oversight / leadership.
• Decide on the extent to which this requires senior leader involvement.
• Whoever you choose to lead the teams, how will you ensure that they have sufficient time to familiarise themselves with Building Coherence before it is launched to staff?
• Will there be a written job description for the team leaders?
• How will you ensure that the team leaders have sufficient time to discharge their responsibilities?

6. Style – How are we going to support the programme?

• How will leaders create the conditions where development teams are encouraged to take risks, to try things out, to fail in safety?
• How will leaders demonstrate an ongoing interest in the enquiries that teams are undertaking?
• Given that the monthly meeting cycle from phase 1 no longer enables leaders to keep a close eye on emerging practice, how will leaders keep close to the ideas being developed by the teams?

7. Strategy – How do we expect phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners to work? How will we create and agree a plan to pull all this together?

• Will this be a top-down ‘initiative’, or will we involve all staff in the forward planning?
• How will we keep the strategy ‘tight but loose’? – tight enough to create momentum and maintain sustained interest, yet sufficiently loose to flex and accommodate emerging needs as necessary.
• How are you planning to maintain the interest of teachers who are not involved in the working party(s)?
• The level of detail contained in your plan is important. It sends a message to staff and to Governors that you have considered a wide range of programme related issues and provides a route map for implementation.

The key differences between this phase 2 unit, Building Depth, and phase 1 of the Building Powerful Learners programme.

• Building Depth is a programme designed to encourage teachers to focus on developing their classroom culture and on how their students are responding to the changes they make.
• There is no prescribed route through the online materials and teachers are encouraged to explore them in relation to their perceptions of their current classroom culture and how their students are responding.
• Moreover, it is nearly impossible to focus on any one of these aspects of classroom culture to exclusion of the other three. Developments in any area of culture almost always trigger developments in others. Hence teachers will inevitably move between the 4 units as necessary.
• The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 is necessarily changed.
• Keeping an eye on developments and sharing emerging good practice requires attention.

1. Shared Values – How does phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners fit with our school’s ethos?

Given that the school has decided to continue Building Powerful Learners, it is reasonable to assume that this sits well with the school’s ethos and aspirations.

Leaders would do well to consider, in advance, how they are going to mirror the intentions of the 4 culture units in how the programme is run. To align their leadership behaviours with the classroom culture teachers are developing, how will leaders:

• devolve responsibility to teachers and coach their development?
• talk about learning, about classroom culture, and structure feedback on their observations?
• build challenge and reflection into their leadership of the programme?
• spot and share emerging best practice and developments, celebrate successes?

2. Skills – What sort of skills/competencies would the programme enhance?

Building Depth is designed to impact:

• on teachers’ classroom culture and teaching behaviours. The 4 units address the four aspects of classroom culture (Relating, Talking, Constructing and Celebrating), supporting teachers to build on the cultural changes made in phase 1 of the Building Powerful Learners programme;
• on students’ learning behaviours. As the classroom culture develops, the materials encourage teachers to introduce 8 further learning behaviours beyond the 4 foundational behaviours from phase 1, enabling students to expand their understanding of learning and of themselves as learners.

Schools might do well to consider if all teachers are ready for this development. Teachers new to the school or those who have failed to engage fully with phase 1 may need additional support and encouragement. If so, might it be helpful to consider ‘buddying up’ teachers to ensure no teachers (and their classes) are left behind?

3. Staff – How could we accommodate the staff development approach suggested?

Teachers are encouraged to explore the 4 units in any order, in line with their perceptions of their existing classroom culture and how their students are responding. It follows that every teacher will carve their own way through these materials.

The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 is necessarily changed. We suggest a system of termly written feedback so that programme leaders can maintain an overview, and to identify emerging good practice. The school might well consider swapping the directed time formerly devoted to monthly phase 1 meetings for termly ‘development showcases’ when teachers can share their classroom experiments with each other.

4. Systems – How do we need to adapt our existing working practices?

Teachers are encouraged to explore the 4 aspects of classroom culture in any order / combination, in line with their own assessments of their existing classroom culture.

The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 cannot continue. Instead, we propose termly written feedback to senior leaders / coordinators, and schools should consider introducing staff development ‘events’ that enable the sharing of experiences and emerging developments.

5. Structure – Who will lead it and what accountability may be needed?

• Building Depth will need to be overseen by someone, or maybe by a small group of people. Whether it is an individual or a small team may well be determined by the staff development approach that you decide.
• Decide on the extent to which this requires senior leader involvement.
• Whoever you choose to lead the programme, how will you ensure that they have sufficient time to familiarise themselves with Building Depth before it is launched to staff?
• Will there be a written job description for the programme leader?
• How will you ensure that the programme lead has sufficient time to discharge their responsibilities?

6. Style – How are we going to support the programme?

• How will leaders create the conditions where teachers are encouraged to take risks, to try things out, to fail in safety?
• How will leaders demonstrate an ongoing interest in the enquiries that teachers are undertaking?
• Given that the monthly meeting cycle from phase 1 no longer enables leaders to keep a close eye on emerging practice, how will leaders keep close to developments?

7. Strategy – How do we expect phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners to work? How will we create and agree a plan to pull all this together?

• Will this be a top-down ‘initiative’, or will we involve all staff in the forward planning?
• How will we keep the strategy ‘tight but loose’? – tight enough to create momentum and maintain sustained interest, yet sufficiently loose to flex and accommodate emerging needs as necessary.
• The level of detail contained in your plan is important. It sends a message to staff and to Governors that you have considered a wide range of programme related issues and provides a route map for implementation.

The key differences between this phase 2 unit, Building the Scope, and phase 1 of the Building Powerful Learners programme.

• Building the Scope is a programme designed to encourage teachers to introduce 8 further learning behaviours beyond the 4 foundational behaviours introduced in phase 1, and to monitor the impact of these changes.
• There are 2 possible routes through the online materials:
  • Route A: Teachers are encouraged to explore and introduce these additional learning behaviours in any order, in line with their curriculum priorities. The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 is necessarily changed. Hence, keeping an eye on developments and sharing emerging good practice requires attention.
  • Route B: The school decides in advance on the order in which the units will be tackled, thereby maintaining the phase 1 meeting structure.
• There is a ninth, complementary, information unit that elaborates on progression in the four foundational learning behaviours from phase 1.

1. Shared Values – How does phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners fit with our school’s ethos?

Given that the school has decided to continue Building Powerful Learners, it is reasonable to assume that this sits well with the school’s ethos and aspirations.

How the school selects which Route to follow is important. Will this be a top-down decision, a decision made after consultation, or maybe a decision made by the entire staff?

Give some thought to how teachers can be informed and consulted as these early decisions are taken. Time taken now delays the start time, but may be worthwhile in terms of gaining buy-in.

These are all choices for the school to make – you know what will work best in your own particular circumstances.

2. Skills – What sort of skills/competencies would the programme enhance?

Building the Scope is designed to impact:

• on teachers’ teaching behaviours. The materials are organised around the four aspects of classroom culture (Relating, Talking, Constructing and Celebrating), supporting teachers to build on the cultural changes made in phase 1 of the Building Powerful Learners programme;
• on students’ learning behaviours. The materials introduce 8 further learning behaviours beyond the 4 foundational behaviours from phase 1, enabling students to expand their understanding of learning and of themselves as learners.

Schools might do well to consider if all teachers are ready for this development. Teachers new to the school or those who have failed to engage fully with phase 1 may need additional support and encouragement. If so, might it be helpful to consider ‘buddying up’ teachers to ensure no teachers (and their classes) are left behind?

3. Staff – How could we accommodate the staff development approach suggested?

This depends on the ‘route’ the school decides to adopt.

Route A: Teachers are encouraged to explore and introduce the 8 additional learning behaviours in any order, in line with their curriculum priorities. The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 is necessarily changed. We suggest a system of termly feedback so that programme leaders can maintain an overview, and to identify emerging good practice. The school might well consider swapping the directed time formerly devoted to monthly phase 1 meetings for termly ‘development showcases’ when teachers can share their classroom experiments with each other.

Route B: The school decides in advance on the order in which the units will be tackled, thereby maintaining the phase 1 meeting structure. Teachers feed in the 8 new learning behaviours at the same time, and we suggest a half termly meeting to review progress. This half termly cycle means that all 8 behaviours will be introduced over a 4 term period. Schools will need to consider how the order of introduction will be determined and who will do this – decide on all 8 at the outset? determine the first one or two, then subsequently agree the next ones etc?

4. Systems – How do we need to adapt our existing working practices?

This also depends on the ‘route’ the school decides to adopt.

Route A: Teachers are encouraged to explore and introduce these additional learning behaviours in any order, in line with their curriculum priorities. The cycle of monthly meetings embedded in phase 1 cannot continue. Instead, schools should consider introducing staff development ‘events’ that enable the sharing of experiences and emerging developments.

Route B: The school decides in advance on the order in which the units will be tackled, thereby maintaining the phase 1 meeting structure, although we would suggest moving from monthly to half termly meetings.

5. Structure – Who will lead it and what accountability may be needed?

• Building the Scope will need to be overseen by someone, or maybe by a small group of people. Whether it is an individual or a small team may well be determined by the staff development approach that you decide.
• Decide on the extent to which this requires senior leader involvement.
• Whoever you choose to lead the programme, how will you ensure that they have sufficient time to familiarise themselves with Building the Scope before it is launched to staff?
• Will there be a written job description for the programme leader?
• How will you ensure that the programme lead has sufficient time to discharge their responsibilities?

6. Style – How are we going to support the programme?

• How will leaders create the conditions where teachers are encouraged to take risks, to try things out, to fail in safety?
• How will leaders demonstrate an ongoing interest in the enquiries that teachers are undertaking?
• If you are going to encourage teachers to tackle the units in any order, the monthly meeting cycle from phase 1 no longer enables leaders to keep a close eye on emerging practice. How will leaders plan to keep close to developments in this case?

7. Strategy – How do we expect phase 2 of Building Powerful Learners to work? How will we create and agree a plan to pull all this together?

• Ensure that the decision around whether teachers are free to explore the units in any order, or whether there will be a predetermined order, is included in the plan.
• Will this be a top-down ‘initiative’, or will we involve all staff in the forward planning?
• How will we keep the strategy ‘tight but loose’? – tight enough to create momentum and maintain sustained interest, yet sufficiently loose to flex and accommodate emerging needs as necessary.
• The level of detail contained in your plan is important. It sends a message to staff and to Governors that you have considered a wide range of programme related issues and provides a route map for implementation.