Suggested content areas

This lesson invites students to think harder about what, when and where they use their learning behaviours; consider some ideas they might try; make a formal 6 month plan with materials to help.

1. A re-look at where students think they are now
2. Careful consideration of the phases of growth
3. Selection of appropriate activities
4. Construct an action plan
5. Monitor their success

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• the diversity and choice of Questioning practice across various phases
• the importance of estimating the most appropriate phase for them as an individual
• how to construct a simple do-able action plan

What did you discover about your Questioning habits?

At the end of the last lesson you asked students to use the ‘Spot yourself Questioning’ resource to help them become more aware of themselves as learners. We leave it to you how best to manage this session but we can guarantee the resulting information will be fascinating and useful to both teachers and students.

It is useful to hone the wider discussion to:

• which aspect of Questioning seemed to be used most often by students
• which subject seemed to come out well i.e. where students used more of the behaviours
• which behaviours were used less frequently and call for most improvement.

Whatever the results this research will have made students far more aware of how they learn. They’ll be ready to move on to what they need to improve.

Things to remember about the stages

It’s worth thinking and talking about the phases with these overarching ideas in mind.

• Students’ development as learners isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, they have to make them happen.
• Each stage takes quite a while to work on and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next phase.
• These Questioning behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits.
• Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Questioning into their learning character could easily take four or five years of supported and focused development.

Take time to help students think about how they behave across a range of school subjects and even activities outside school. They need to be honest with themselves before deciding which coloured row or phase best describes their current Questioning habits.

Why do this?

• Because you are trying to help students to come to know themselves well enough to judge this, and they will gain from seeking advice from friends or their teachers.
• And secondly, where they decide they are now should determine what they do next.

For example, if they think that the Purple row/phase best describes them at present, then their immediate target should be to consider ideas that will move into the Blue phase.

If you think you have time you might start this further reflection on the phases with a Think Pair Share activity (see slide 5) If not it is worth talking about the issues mentioned below. These are also captured on slides 6 and 7.

Take it steady

If students aren’t sure where they are on the chart, and as this is their first plan, it’s better to pitch their first plan low rather than high.

There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where their goal will be to listen carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But they could also try some of their own self-talk phrases to help them take some responsibility for thinking about their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from purple to blue their aim will be to rely on their own nudges and prompts to make sure they are monitoring and reflecting on their learning.

If they think they are already doing this in some subjects they could focus their plan on covering more or trickier subjects.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from blue to green they must be confident that they are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Their aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to their learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a beneficial thing for their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving beyond green they must be sure they’re ready to look at what they are doing with a critical eye and make their own improvements along the way. Their aim here will be to constantly be on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.

This is a tricky part of your lesson, and may well depend on:

• how realistically your students evaluate their starting points for Questioning, and
• the range of those evaluations.

Things to consider as you plan the lesson is to ensure students achieve a realistic understanding of what they currently do, what they currently do not do, and what actions might improve their Questioning skills:

• If the overwhelming majority of your students believe they are at the same phase of development, planning, for say, small group discussion, will be straightforward.
• If there is wide variation on starting points, organising small group discussions will need to consider whether you:
  • partner up students who are at the same phase
  • just run with ‘mixed phase’ groups
  • structure these discussions
  • offer guidance and how much
  • will need to produce the guidance in advance (e.g. download PDF resource below)

Also, ask yourself:

• Is a whole class discussion viable?
• What will you do about students who appear to have an unrealistic impression of their Questioning behaviours? [It is highly unlikely that students are already functioning at the Green phase – so be alert to over-optimistic student evaluations! Decide in advance how will you challenge such evaluations.]

Resources

The information in the toggle boxes below give a few suggestions for activities and self-talk for each phase of the growth chart. It’s worth acquainting yourself with the ideas.

The same information is also available in a downloadable PDF resource which you can print for students to use in the lesson.

There are slides of the same information should you want to use them in the lesson.

The next stage of the lesson involves students putting an Action Plan together

Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for students to complete. This means that what they are planning will be put into action by them, over about six months. At the end of six months they will need to review their plan, estimate their progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or strengthen the growth in the same phase.

Invite them to:

• Record name and class
  • the date the plan was made
  • the date the plan will be reviewed
• In the little table students should indicate the phase of Questioning where they feel secure. This shows their starting point. If they mark Purple to Blue it means they think they are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
• What they want to improve should be shown as Goals and notes made of:
  • any actions they intend to try
  • the sort of self-talk they want to say quietly to themselves.

Reviewing the plan:

• After about 6 months the plan should be reviewed to prove to students that they are taking action which is having effect over time.
• It’s useful to note down how the plan worked:
  • what went well and
  • what could have been even better.

Here’s a completed plan to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like. Feel free to design your own Action Plan format.

The best way of keeping their plan going will be by students getting used to looking at the changes they are making and their impact on their learning.

This amounts to Self-monitoring. It’s about students keeping track of the actions or self-talk they are trying in their classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming. For example, they could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times they use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help them become more conscious of the actions they are taking.

Bit by bit, the more they question themselves about what they are doing the more they will consolidate their approaches to developing these learning behaviours into learning habits.

In six months time

A lesson at the end of the six months should enable students to look back at their plan, and any notes they have made, using this useful technique.

Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.

Think about:

• Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
• Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
• Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
• Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.

b) Suggested content areas

1. What does Questioning mean?
2. What are the different Questioning habits?
3. How do teachers help students to develop Questioning habits?
4. How Questioning habits grow?
5. Where students’ Questioning strengths lie now.

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• what the learning habit Questioning is really all about
• how it can develop
• where they are now in the growth of this habit

In the sections below you will find: explanations of how the learning habit works; a quiz to help students spot themselves Questioning in lessons; ideas about how teachers help students become better at Questioning; a chart showing how Questioning habits grow, given the right circumstances.

Being ready, willing and able

Revising is about the way we work on something to improve it. Whether it be icing a cake, solving a tricky maths problem or creating a well-crafted essay, all require effort, retries and determination to satisfy ourselves that the result pleases us; that it comes up to scratch. How we tackle such a job isn’t just a case of monitoring as we go along or reviewing the result: it will be influenced by other qualities. Our attitude to change, whether we have a sense of quality and what sort of validation we need.

Use this resource to help to get students tuned in – offer them time to think about their Questioning habits. Unpack each of statements. Use of the chart could be extended into other lessons too. At the end of this lesson encourage students to take it with them into lessons and make a note of whether and how often they display these characteristics.

Students will take the outcomes of using this little questionnaire into account when they tackle lesson 3.

UPDATE

As teachers you will:

{UNCERTAIN WHERE THIS CAME FROM]

• encourage students to change the way you are doing things if necessary
• help students to view change as a natural part of learning
• want students to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
• focus your feedback on what students need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what they got right
• offer students checklists that help them to keep an eye on how their work is progressing
• create opportunities for them to stop and to consider how things are going

Feel free to add your own ideas to this list.

Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you’re someone who just wants or likes things to stay the same you’re unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.

A good reviser needs to know/understand what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going; be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing students’ revising habits is much more than encouraging them ‘having another go’.

A progression chart for Questioning

It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Questioning habits – that either you are inflexible and reluctant to change, or that you are flexible and open to change. This could not be further from the truth!

The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.

The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the development of a good Questioning habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Questioning, to the highly aware and Questioning savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Questioner to an expert Questioner.

UPDATE

Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from an attitude of ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.

Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills, behaviours, habits look like as learners become increasing more effective as Questioning.

Column 3 is a really important one. It shows how attitudes and self-talk change as Questioning skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s one’s own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of the learning behaviours. If you don’t know or care about it it’s unlikely to improve.

UPDATE

Looking closely at grey from the learners’ viewpoint

In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you are not aware of doing things well or differently, you just do things. You’re not too bothered about outcomes and you’re not interested in revisiting something in order to change or improve it. You very much just do your own thing and you’re not aware of external standards or expectations. You may be reluctant, or even afraid, of changing the ways that you do things. But don’t think of this as a negative start. Most learners start like this before making a start on their journey of learning how to learn.

Looking closely at purple

In the Receives (purple) phase, you are beginning to make checks on how you are doing against given criteria when you are prompted to do so. Your teachers are kick starting your Revising learning journey. You can talk about what you did and sometimes how you did it. You rely on your teachers or parents to tell you that what you have done is valuable or worthwhile. You have learned to accept and act on your teacher’s advice to have a second go at something and/or to pause and check how things are going. You have to go through this phase before moving on to the next.

Looking closely at blue

In the Responds (blue) phase you have overcome any fear of mistakes and you’re more able and willing to monitor what you are doing. You’re beginning to develop what you mean by ‘good’ and to understand why given standards are important. You enjoy supportive feedback and you talk about how you could improve with support. You are increasingly willing and able to check how things are going even if your teacher doesn’t tell you to do so. You are becoming inclined to make your own changes to improve your work.

Looking closely at green

In the Values (green) phase, you understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet your goals. You see the point in making changes to reach a goal or external standard. You understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is actually all about changing your understandings; not just knowing stuff. So now you look at what you are doing with a more critical or demanding eye and have realised that being like this this is really good for you. Your positive attitudes to improving are helping you to achieve more and improve.

Looking beyond green

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, you keep progress under review but now you question the original goal of the activity. You look for higher standards and may well move to a more productive strategy or a different goal. You now use critical feedback positively and you’re keen to look back on what and how you achieved what you did in order to learn from the experience.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, you make ongoing checks, amends and rethinking, in order to meet you own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now you don’t need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because your own critical sense of standards acts as your barometer. You adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how you have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. In this final Orange phase you simply can’t help but do it in all aspects of your learning. This way of behaving has become a defining part of your learning character.

Using an effective thinking routine

Invite learners to reflect on what they have learned about themselves as a learner by using the Visible Thinking Routine ‘I used to think… Now I think’ . . . before estimating which colour row best describes their current Questioning skills, behaviours, attitudes and habits.

It’s fair to say this first estimate won’t be their last because the next lesson gives time to reassess their decisions. But it gives them a basis to work on before looking more closely at themselves learning during their lessons next week.

Using the checklist from the beginning of the lesson invite learners to take the resource with them into lessons over the next week. We suggest they use the resource after at least three lessons across the week. You could leave the choice of lessons to them or maybe suggest they select a subject they enjoy/find fulfilling and one they find tricky. Probably wise to advise them to complete the resource after rather than during the lessons.

Emphasise the need to bring the results of their observations to the next lesson on Questioning where they will be used to help them further their understanding of themselves as learners.

b) Suggested content areas

1. What does Questioning mean?
2. How do students feel about asking questions?
3. How Questioning habits grow?
4. Where students’ Questioning strengths lie now.

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• what the learning habit Questioning is really all about
• how it can develop
• where they are now in the growth of this habit

In the sections below you will find: explanations of how the learning habit works; an activity to help students to reflect on their beliefs about Questioning; to a quiz to help students spot themselves Questioning in lessons; a chart showing how Questioning habits grow, given the right circumstances.

Being ready, willing and able

Questioning is about . . .

Use this resource to help to get students tuned in – offer them time to think about their Questioning habits. Unpack each of statements. Use of the chart could be extended into other lessons too. At the end of this lesson encourage students to take it with them into lessons and make a note of whether and how often they display these characteristics.

Students will take the outcomes of using this little questionnaire into account when they tackle lesson 3.

UPDATE

As teachers you will:

{UNCERTAIN WHERE THIS CAME FROM]

• encourage students to change the way you are doing things if necessary
• help students to view change as a natural part of learning
• want students to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
• focus your feedback on what students need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what they got right
• offer students checklists that help them to keep an eye on how their work is progressing
• create opportunities for them to stop and to consider how things are going

Feel free to add your own ideas to this list.

Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you’re someone who just wants or likes things to stay the same you’re unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.

A good reviser needs to know/understand what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going; be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing students’ revising habits is much more than encouraging them ‘having another go’.

A progression chart for Questioning

It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Questioning habits – that either you are inflexible and reluctant to change, or that you are flexible and open to change. This could not be further from the truth!

The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.

The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the development of a good Questioning habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Questioning, to the highly aware and Questioning savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Questioner to an expert Questioner.

UPDATE

Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from an attitude of ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.

Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills, behaviours, habits look like as learners become increasing more effective as Questioning.

Column 3 is a really important one. It shows how attitudes and self-talk change as Questioning skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s one’s own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of the learning behaviours. If you don’t know or care about it it’s unlikely to improve.

UPDATE

Looking closely at grey from the learners’ viewpoint

In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you are not aware of doing things well or differently, you just do things. You’re not too bothered about outcomes and you’re not interested in revisiting something in order to change or improve it. You very much just do your own thing and you’re not aware of external standards or expectations. You may be reluctant, or even afraid, of changing the ways that you do things. But don’t think of this as a negative start. Most learners start like this before making a start on their journey of learning how to learn.

Looking closely at purple

In the Receives (purple) phase, you are beginning to make checks on how you are doing against given criteria when you are prompted to do so. Your teachers are kick starting your Revising learning journey. You can talk about what you did and sometimes how you did it. You rely on your teachers or parents to tell you that what you have done is valuable or worthwhile. You have learned to accept and act on your teacher’s advice to have a second go at something and/or to pause and check how things are going. You have to go through this phase before moving on to the next.

Looking closely at blue

In the Responds (blue) phase you have overcome any fear of mistakes and you’re more able and willing to monitor what you are doing. You’re beginning to develop what you mean by ‘good’ and to understand why given standards are important. You enjoy supportive feedback and you talk about how you could improve with support. You are increasingly willing and able to check how things are going even if your teacher doesn’t tell you to do so. You are becoming inclined to make your own changes to improve your work.

Looking closely at green

In the Values (green) phase, you understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet your goals. You see the point in making changes to reach a goal or external standard. You understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is actually all about changing your understandings; not just knowing stuff. So now you look at what you are doing with a more critical or demanding eye and have realised that being like this this is really good for you. Your positive attitudes to improving are helping you to achieve more and improve.

Looking beyond green

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, you keep progress under review but now you question the original goal of the activity. You look for higher standards and may well move to a more productive strategy or a different goal. You now use critical feedback positively and you’re keen to look back on what and how you achieved what you did in order to learn from the experience.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, you make ongoing checks, amends and rethinking, in order to meet you own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now you don’t need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because your own critical sense of standards acts as your barometer. You adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how you have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. In this final Orange phase you simply can’t help but do it in all aspects of your learning. This way of behaving has become a defining part of your learning character.

Using an effective thinking routine

Invite learners to reflect on what they have learned about themselves as a learner by using the Visible Thinking Routine ‘I used to think… Now I think’ . . . before estimating which colour row best describes their current Questioning skills, behaviours, attitudes and habits.

It’s fair to say this first estimate won’t be their last because the next lesson gives time to reassess their decisions. But it gives them a basis to work on before looking more closely at themselves learning during their lessons next week.

Using the checklist from the beginning of the lesson invite learners to take the resource with them into lessons over the next week. We suggest they use the resource after at least three lessons across the week. You could leave the choice of lessons to them or maybe suggest they select a subject they enjoy/find fulfilling and one they find tricky. Probably wise to advise them to complete the resource after rather than during the lessons.

Emphasise the need to bring the results of their observations to the next lesson on Questioning where they will be used to help them further their understanding of themselves as learners.

b) Many ways to introduce learning habits

There are of course many ways to introduce the habit of Questioning but here are five culture shifts to think about and get you started.

Ask yourself – how might you:

• Harness display to illustrate that first attempts are rarely the finished article
• Ensure that students act on your feedback and do things differently next time
• Encourage students to monitor how things are going, and change tack if necessary
• Encourage students to evaluate the extent to which they have met the required standards
• Deliberately create situations that require a change of mind.

See section 4t for practical classroom practice suggestions.

a) Cultivating learning habits ultimately involves:

• Providing rich and varied occasions for exercising learning habits;
• Infusing learning habits into lessons to enhance content understanding;
• Recognising and celebrating the use and growth of learning habits;
• Expecting students to take ownership of and responsibility for their own learning habits;
• Exploring the development of learning habits with students over time.

As a teacher you are an influential character builder and so need to be mindful of how you help students strengthen their learning habits. It takes most teachers between 2 or 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself because small steps often prove to be big levers for change.

b) First develop your coaching language

Below you’ll find a range of things you could say to nudge Questioning. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging your students to think for themselves. Using such statements encourages your students to:

• imitate you;
• start to think in this way;
• become conscious of these phrases and their meaning.

Gradually you will hear some of the ideas pop up in students’ self-talk….in speech or even in writing from time to time, but mostly these will go on inside their heads. As your work on Questioning gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

c) Teacher talk – as a learning coach

10 ideas to ensure your students do the thinking for themselves

1. That’s an interesting/insightful question.
2. What questions did we ask last time?
3. You might find it useful to try and predict what you think will happen.
4. Could you speculate about the possible results and solutions.
5. What sort of questions might help you get a bit further with this problem?
6. Do you believe that? Might there be more to it?
7. A closed question might focus your search.
8. How can you get to the bottom of this?
9. A hypothetical question might help to stimulate your ideas.
10. How can you phrase that so that you don’t upset people?

d) Have a think

• Which of these Questioning nudges might you start using?
• In which particular lessons would such nudging be most useful?
• How will most of your students respond to such nudges?
• Will this way of engaging be more popular with girls or boys?
• What other nudging ideas might you add to the list?

Make a note of…

• Students’ reactions to the nudges.
• Ideas about why this might be.
• Ways in which you could further encourage students to imitate this metacognitive self-talk.
• Any positive or negative impact of these Questioning behaviours.

e) What to start and stop

Here are a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of teaching can be a big but exciting shift so it’s worth doing it slowly and thoughtfully. Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas

f) What do you think?

• Which of the ideas appealed to you most?
• Can you see ways of incorporating these into your subject/class routines?
• Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
• Which would make your life easier?

Make a note of…

• Ideas that you want to try and the impact you hope they will have on your teaching and on your students.

a) Ideas to encourage a Questioning frame of mind

In the early stages of building your students’ learning power your role is to:

• make them aware of the behaviour
• talk about it (what, how, why, when, if)
• celebrate its use
• give opportunities to practise it, both in lessons and elsewhere
• reflect on it to improve it.

b) Use a staged start for using Questioning…

1. Firstly... make students aware of the use and importance of Questioning…what, when, where, why, how they are or could be doing it
2. Then… explore Questioning a little more through the language of Questioning
3. Try... using Questioning as a lesson starter to tune students into using it
4. Then start... blending Questioning into the way you teach the content. Use specific Questioning strategies to deepen content understanding.
5. Ensure... students reflect on the success or otherwise of their Questioning activities.

Primary

Primary

Put questions on display

Click to enlarge

Create a Question Wall in the classroom to illustrate and prompt questioning. For example, the question wall might focus on student generated questions about the topic in hand. Use their questions to help to focus / shape their enquiry.

Establish ground rules for asking questions e.g. speaking clearly, think before you ask…is this an important/relevant question? Do I know the answer? Get to the point. Listen to the answer.

 

Primary

Primary

Primary

c) What do you think?

• Can you see a use for any of the suggested activities?
• Have you raised awareness of Questioning with your students?
• Does your class have an agreed set of good Questioning strategies?
• Which two ideas from above do you want to try out?
• How long will you keep them going before you decide whether they have worked or not?

Make a note of…

• What happens in your classroom in response to any of the above ideas.
• How students’ behaviour changes over about 3 weeks of becoming more familiar and talking about the behaviour.
• How your behaviour in the classroom changes as you use these ideas over time.

a) Get a handle on progression

As with all learning behaviours, Questioning is not a case of ‘either you do, or you don’t’. Few learners lack curiosity about almost everything, and equally few are irrepressibly curious in all circumstances. Most lie somewhere between these two extremes. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of the whole 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.

b) Stages of growth in Questioning

The chart alongside offers a glimpse of how Questioning may grow, given the opportunity and encouragement. It is this scaling of the learning disposition that will help you make sense of the journey as you, and students, track, and influence, learners’ progress over time.

Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.

Column 2 describes how the behaviours may look if they are enabled to grow over time,

Column 3 captures the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.

c) What are the stages of growth based on?

We’ve borrowed ideas from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Objectives of the Affective Domain to generate a very condensed version of the five main phases of growth, namely:

1 ‘Lacks’ (grey) We have added this level where the behaviour is weak and the response is negative. This might translate into “I can’t or I won’t” in student self talk

2. Receiving. (purple)..which involves giving attention to something; becoming aware, not avoiding or rejecting it; being alert to something. This might translate to “Show me or Tell me” in student self talk

3. Responding. (blue)…which involves going beyond merely attending to actively attending; complying; taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action.This might translate to “I’ll try” in student self talk

4. Valuing. (green)..which involves accepting the worth of something; preferring something; being committed to the value of something.This might translate to “I see why” in student self talk

5. Organisation.(yellow)..which involves adding to, formulating and organising their values into how they live their life.This might translate to “I make sure” in student self talk

6. Embodies. (Characterisation in the original)(orange)…which involves behaving consistently in accordance with their values, living what they stand for.This might translate to “I can’t not do this” in student self talk

d) Where are your classes in relation to their levels of Questioning?

Level detail

In the ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, students are not necessarily aware of doing things well or differently. Once they get going on something they may change it but more for the joy of just doing it. Outcomes maybe rushed or lack finesse, but once completed there may be little interest in revisiting it or in any comments they are offered. External standards of what things might or should look/be like are not yet a feature of their world.

In the Receives (purple) phase, students begin to make checks on how they are doing against given criteria when prompted. They can talk about what they did and sometimes how. They rely on their teachers or parents to validate what they do/have done. So there’s a reliance on others to validate what they are doing.

In the Responds (blue) phase students have overcome a fear of mistakes and are more able and willing to monitor what they are doing. They begin to develop the idea of ‘good’ themselves and to understand why given standards are important. They respond positively to supportive feedback and talk reflectively about how they could improve with encouragement. They are now taking far more responsibility for their learning.

In the Values (green) phase, students understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet their goals. They see the point in making changes in the light of the original goal or external standard or internal feedback. They understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is all about changing understandings; not just knowing stuff. In so doing they widen the scope of external validation. Once in the green phase they have taken responsibility for what they are doing because the recognise it as a ‘win’ for them.

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, progress is kept under review but now students are bold enough question the original goal of the activity. They look more widely for validation and may well change to a more productive strategy or a different goal. They use critical feedback positively and are keen to look back on what and how they achieved, what they did in order to learn from the experience. They organise themselves to be like this. Revising has become a habit.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, students make ongoing checks and amends, and major rethinking, in order to meet their own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now they tend not to need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because their own critical sense of standards acts as their barometer. They adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how they have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. Revising has become part of the character, they can’t not do it.

a) A learning classroom culture

Building students’ learning behaviours is about creating a culture in your classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable your students to 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.

b) What sort of culture are you trying to create?

Bringing learning to the fore is to let students do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Becoming more active learners involves offering them more opportunities to decide what to do, being given a chance to talk more and actively learn by reviewing their own experience. As students are given more responsibility for their own learning the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’.

What you are doing is developing students as meta-learners who become able to understand and grow themselves as learners.

c) Looking more closely at classroom culture

There are four specific ways in which teachers can create the classroom culture to build learning habits;

• strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Questioning
• the sort of language you might use to stimulate Questioning
• ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Questioning
• actions you need to enable students to undertake to build their Questioning habits

d) A graphic summary

Here we’ve sketched a diagram to identify the prominent features of a classroom culture that’s geared towards growing students’ Questioning habits.

The 4 sections of the diagram are:

• Top – strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Questioning;
• Right – indications of the sort of language you might use to stimulate Questioning;
• Bottom – ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Questioning;
• Left – actions that you need to enable students to undertake.

Apply your own attentive noticing skills and consider whether you already use any of these features and which you fancy trying.

In the panels below you will find brief explanations of some of the more unusual terms in the diagram.

d1) Strategies to build into the way you teach

Strategies at the top of the diagram… build into the way you teach to stimulate Questioning

1. Use review points to capture student questions
2. Design lessons built from intriguing questions
3. Use VTR Think, Puzzle, Explore to identify ‘puzzles’ at the start of an enquiry
4. Use VTR Connect, Extend, Challenge to identify new ‘challenges’ during an enquiry
5. Integrate open-ended ‘wild’ tasks and enquiry-based challenges into lessons

Visible Thinking Routines (VTR) are easily remembered routines that can be applied in wide range of circumstances. The routine ‘I used to think . . . But now I think’ is explored further in section 5 of this resource. To see more VTRs, go to the VTR website.

‘Traffic Lights’ is a classic AfL strategy – Green = it is fine, Amber = ok-ish, Red = it is going badly. Use it to encourage students to keep an eye on how things are progressing.

d2) The sort of language to stimulate Questioning

Strategies on the right of the diagram… to show the sort of language you might use to stimulate Questioning

1. Use ‘could-be’ language to present ‘facts’ as tentative and open to question
2. Use VTR See, Think, Wonder to stimulate curiosity
3. Share your own enthusiasms and enquiries, modelling curiosity

Learning power is activated by the use of more tentative, could be kinds of language. Specifically, if you say definitively that something is the case, students frequently take it literally and try to remember it. But if you say, of the same thing, that it could be the case, they become more engaged, more thoughtful, more imaginative, and more critical. That ‘could be’ invites students to consider what else it could be, to consider alternatives.

d3) Ways of celebrating Questioning

Strategies at the bottom of the diagram… ways in which you might celebrate the use of Questioning.

1. Ensure a ‘no put-down’ culture where questions are not scorned
2. Build a question wall to generate enthusiasm and curiosity
3. Value good questions as much as good answers
4. Display lines of enquiry, fruitful (or discarded) questioning sequences

The ‘Editor’s Desk‘ is an area of the classroom that is reserved for re-crafting and making further improvements – not for ‘doing corrections!

The idea of displaying ‘work in progress’, annotated to illustrate the changes as the work is refined and improved, is in stark contrast to displaying the ‘finished article’. The former emphasises the processes involved in creating a good piece of work, whereas the latter focuses solely on the final product.

Both are explored further in section 5 of this resource.

d4) Actions you need to enable in students

Strategies on the left of the diagram…actions that you need to enable in students to boost Questioning.

1. Not be afraid of a ‘don’t know’ frame of mind
2. Exhibit healthy scepticism
3. Ask their own questions

By ‘change tack’, we mean being prepared to adopt a different approach when things are not going as well as expected. It requires students to monitor what they are doing as they go along, keep an eye on the end goal, and be sufficiently flexible to re-think a strategy that is not working.

e) 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 Questioning?
• 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 Questioning.
• 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.

a) About Questioning

Questioning means both the ability to ask good questions and the disposition to do so (which is sometimes called curiosity). Good learners like questions, and are not afraid of the ‘don’t know’ state of mind out of which questions emerge.

Good learners like to wonder about things. For them, it often really is a wonder-ful world. The phrases ‘How come?’ and ‘What if?’ are never far from their lips.

They value getting below the surface of things, and are less likely to accept uncritically what they are told. They like to come to their own conclusions. They are more willing to reveal their questions and uncertainties if they think it will help them learn.

Questioning can be as much non-verbal as it is verbal. Playing around with materials or ideas just to see what happens is a powerful way of asking questions. It is what artists and inventors spend a lot of their time doing. The inclination to ask questions flourishes when you are around people who are also asking questions, and who encourage and appreciate your questions too.

b) A well formed Questioning habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be curious about all experiences;
• Dig beneath the surface, asking why something is happening as it is;
• Play with ideas and possibilities;
• Be systematic and adopt a logical approach — exploring a line of thought purposefully; posing questions that follow a rational path towards an emerging goal;
• Be socially aware in asking questions of others, exhibiting genuine interest in other people;
• Be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity; enjoy different points of view and contrary evidence.

c) Spot the Questioners in your classes

Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about ‘Questioners you may know’. Make a note of students you know who display these characteristics.

Becoming a teacher who develops students’ learning power means developing a keen awareness of the subtleties of your students’ learning behaviours.

d) What do you think?

• How many of your students come to mind when looked at through the lens of Questioning?
• Is there a gender balance or have you noted down more girls than boys or vice versa?
• Are the students you have noted from across all age groups or do some dominate?
• How do these Questioning characteristics help these students to be better learners?

Make a note of…

• Those groups or classes that seem to have lots of good Questioning characteristics.
• How you think you might capitalise on this.

Suggested content areas

This lesson invites students to think harder about what, when and where they use their learning behaviours; consider some ideas they might try; make a formal 6 month plan with materials to help.

1. A re-look at where students think they are now
2. Careful consideration of the phases of growth
3. Selection of appropriate activities
4. Construct an action plan
5. Monitor their success

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• the diversity and choice of Collaboration practice across various phases
• the importance of estimating the most appropriate phase for them as an individual
• how to construct a simple do-able action plan

What did you discover about your Collaboration habits?

At the end of the last lesson you asked students to use the ‘Spot yourself Collaborating’ resource to help them become more aware of themselves as learners. We leave it to you how best to manage this session but we can guarantee the resulting information will be fascinating and useful to both teachers and students.

It is useful to hone the wider discussion to:

• which aspect of Collaboration seemed to be used most often by students
• which subject seemed to come out well i.e. where students used more of the behaviours
• which behaviours were used less frequently and call for most improvement.

Whatever the results this research will have made students far more aware of how they learn. They’ll be ready to move on to what they need to improve.

Things to remember about the stages

It’s worth thinking and talking about the phases with these overarching ideas in mind.

• Students’ development as learners isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, they have to make them happen.
• Each stage takes quite a while to work on and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next phase.
• These Collaboration behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits.
• Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Collaboration into their learning character could easily take four or five years of supported and focused development.

Take time to help students think about how they behave across a range of school subjects and even activities outside school. They need to be honest with themselves before deciding which coloured row or phase best describes their current Collaborative habits.

Why do this?

• Because you are trying to help students to come to know themselves well enough to judge this, and they will gain from seeking advice from friends or their teachers.
• And secondly, where they decide they are now should determine what they do next.

For example, if they think that the Purple row/phase best describes them at present, then their immediate target should be to consider ideas that will move into the Blue phase.

If you think you have time you might start this further reflection on the phases with a Think Pair Share activity (see slide 5) If not it is worth talking about the issues mentioned below. These are also captured on slides 6 and 7.

Take it steady

If students aren’t sure where they are on the chart, and as this is their first plan, it’s better to pitch their first plan low rather than high.

There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where their goal will be to listen carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But they could also try some of their own self-talk phrases to help them take some responsibility for thinking about their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from purple to blue their aim will be to rely on their own nudges and prompts to make sure they are monitoring and reflecting on their learning.

If they think they are already doing this in some subjects they could focus their plan on covering more or trickier subjects.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from blue to green they must be confident that they are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Their aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to their learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a beneficial thing for their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving beyond green they must be sure they’re ready to look at what they are doing with a critical eye and make their own improvements along the way. Their aim here will be to constantly be on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.

This is a tricky part of your lesson, and may well depend on:

• how realistically your students evaluate their starting points for Collaboration, and
• the range of those evaluations.

Things to consider as you plan the lesson is to ensure students achieve a realistic understanding of what they currently do, what they currently do not do, and what actions might improve their Collaboration skills:

• If the overwhelming majority of your students believe they are at the same phase of development, planning, for say, small group discussion, will be straightforward.
• If there is wide variation on starting points, organising small group discussions will need to consider whether you:
  • partner up students who are at the same phase
  • just run with ‘mixed phase’ groups
  • structure these discussions
  • offer guidance and how much
  • will need to produce the guidance in advance (e.g. download PDF resource below)

Also, ask yourself:

• Is a whole class discussion viable?
• What will you do about students who appear to have an unrealistic impression of their Collaborative behaviours? [It is highly unlikely that students are already functioning at the Green phase – so be alert to over-optimistic student evaluations! Decide in advance how will you challenge such evaluations.]

Resources

The information in the toggle boxes below give a few suggestions for activities and self-talk for each phase of the growth chart. It’s worth acquainting yourself with the ideas.

The same information is also available in a downloadable PDF resource which you can print for students to use in the lesson.

There are slides of the same information should you want to use them in the lesson.

The next stage of the lesson involves students putting an Action Plan together

Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for students to complete. This means that what they are planning will be put into action by them, over about six months. At the end of six months they will need to review their plan, estimate their progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or strengthen the growth in the same phase.

Invite them to:

• Record name and class
  • the date the plan was made
  • the date the plan will be reviewed
• In the little table students should indicate the phase of Collaboration where they feel secure. This shows their starting point. If they mark Purple to Blue it means they think they are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
• What they want to improve should be shown as Goals and notes made of:
  • any actions they intend to try
  • the sort of self-talk they want to say quietly to themselves.

Reviewing the plan:

• After about 6 months the plan should be reviewed to prove to students that they are taking action which is having effect over time.
• It’s useful to note down how the plan worked:
  • what went well and
  • what could have been even better.

Here’s a completed plan to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like. Feel free to design your own Action Plan format.

The best way of keeping their plan going will be by students getting used to looking at the changes they are making and their impact on their learning.

This amounts to Self-monitoring. It’s about students keeping track of the actions or self-talk they are trying in their classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming. For example, they could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times they use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help them become more conscious of the actions they are taking.

Bit by bit, the more they question themselves about what they are doing the more they will consolidate their approaches to developing these learning behaviours into learning habits.

In six months time

A lesson at the end of the six months should enable students to look back at their plan, and any notes they have made, using this useful technique.

Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.

Think about:

• Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
• Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
• Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
• Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.

b) Suggested content areas

1. What does Collaboration mean?
2. What are the different Collaboration habits?
3. How do teachers help students to develop Collaborative habits?
4. How Collaboration habits grow?
5. Where students’ Collaboration strengths lie now.

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• what the learning habit Collaboration is really all about
• how it can develop
• where they are now in the growth of this habit

In the sections below you will find: explanations of how the learning habit works; a quiz to help students spot themselves Collaboration in lessons; ideas about how teachers help students become better at Collaboration; a chart showing how Collaboration habits grow, given the right circumstances.

Being ready, willing and able

Revising is about the way we work on something to improve it. Whether it be icing a cake, solving a tricky maths problem or creating a well-crafted essay, all require effort, retries and determination to satisfy ourselves that the result pleases us; that it comes up to scratch. How we tackle such a job isn’t just a case of monitoring as we go along or reviewing the result: it will be influenced by other qualities. Our attitude to change, whether we have a sense of quality and what sort of validation we need.

Use this resource to help to get students tuned in – offer them time to think about their Collaboration habits. Unpack each of statements. Use of the chart could be extended into other lessons too. At the end of this lesson encourage students to take it with them into lessons and make a note of whether and how often they display these characteristics.

Students will take the outcomes of using this little questionnaire into account when they tackle lesson 3.

UPDATE

As teachers you will:

{UNCERTAIN WHERE THIS CAME FROM]

• encourage students to change the way you are doing things if necessary
• help students to view change as a natural part of learning
• want students to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
• focus your feedback on what students need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what they got right
• offer students checklists that help them to keep an eye on how their work is progressing
• create opportunities for them to stop and to consider how things are going

Feel free to add your own ideas to this list.

Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you’re someone who just wants or likes things to stay the same you’re unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.

A good reviser needs to know/understand what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going; be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing students’ revising habits is much more than encouraging them ‘having another go’.

A progression chart for Collaboration

It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Collaboration habits – that either you are inflexible and reluctant to change, or that you are flexible and open to change. This could not be further from the truth!

The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.

The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the development of a good Collaboration habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Collaboration, to the highly aware and Collaboration savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Collaborator to an expert Collaborator.

UPDATE

Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from an attitude of ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.

Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills, behaviours, habits look like as learners become increasing more effective as Collaboration.

Column 3 is a really important one. It shows how attitudes and self-talk change as Collaboration skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s one’s own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of the learning behaviours. If you don’t know or care about it it’s unlikely to improve.

UPDATE

Looking closely at grey from the learners’ viewpoint

In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you are not aware of doing things well or differently, you just do things. You’re not too bothered about outcomes and you’re not interested in revisiting something in order to change or improve it. You very much just do your own thing and you’re not aware of external standards or expectations. You may be reluctant, or even afraid, of changing the ways that you do things. But don’t think of this as a negative start. Most learners start like this before making a start on their journey of learning how to learn.

Looking closely at purple

In the Receives (purple) phase, you are beginning to make checks on how you are doing against given criteria when you are prompted to do so. Your teachers are kick starting your Revising learning journey. You can talk about what you did and sometimes how you did it. You rely on your teachers or parents to tell you that what you have done is valuable or worthwhile. You have learned to accept and act on your teacher’s advice to have a second go at something and/or to pause and check how things are going. You have to go through this phase before moving on to the next.

Looking closely at blue

In the Responds (blue) phase you have overcome any fear of mistakes and you’re more able and willing to monitor what you are doing. You’re beginning to develop what you mean by ‘good’ and to understand why given standards are important. You enjoy supportive feedback and you talk about how you could improve with support. You are increasingly willing and able to check how things are going even if your teacher doesn’t tell you to do so. You are becoming inclined to make your own changes to improve your work.

Looking closely at green

In the Values (green) phase, you understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet your goals. You see the point in making changes to reach a goal or external standard. You understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is actually all about changing your understandings; not just knowing stuff. So now you look at what you are doing with a more critical or demanding eye and have realised that being like this this is really good for you. Your positive attitudes to improving are helping you to achieve more and improve.

Looking beyond green

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, you keep progress under review but now you question the original goal of the activity. You look for higher standards and may well move to a more productive strategy or a different goal. You now use critical feedback positively and you’re keen to look back on what and how you achieved what you did in order to learn from the experience.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, you make ongoing checks, amends and rethinking, in order to meet you own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now you don’t need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because your own critical sense of standards acts as your barometer. You adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how you have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. In this final Orange phase you simply can’t help but do it in all aspects of your learning. This way of behaving has become a defining part of your learning character.

Using an effective thinking routine

Invite learners to reflect on what they have learned about themselves as a learner by using the Visible Thinking Routine ‘I used to think… Now I think’ . . . before estimating which colour row best describes their current Collaboration skills, behaviours, attitudes and habits.

It’s fair to say this first estimate won’t be their last because the next lesson gives time to reassess their decisions. But it gives them a basis to work on before looking more closely at themselves learning during their lessons next week.

Using the checklist from the beginning of the lesson invite learners to take the resource with them into lessons over the next week. We suggest they use the resource after at least three lessons across the week. You could leave the choice of lessons to them or maybe suggest they select a subject they enjoy/find fulfilling and one they find tricky. Probably wise to advise them to complete the resource after rather than during the lessons.

Emphasise the need to bring the results of their observations to the next lesson on Collaboration where they will be used to help them further their understanding of themselves as learners.

b) Many ways to introduce learning habits

There are of course many ways to introduce the habit of Collaboration but here are five culture shifts to think about and get you started.

Ask yourself – how might you:

• Harness display to illustrate that first attempts are rarely the finished article
• Ensure that students act on your feedback and do things differently next time
• Encourage students to monitor how things are going, and change tack if necessary
• Encourage students to evaluate the extent to which they have met the required standards
• Deliberately create situations that require a change of mind.

See section 4t for practical classroom practice suggestions.

a) Cultivating learning habits ultimately involves:

• Providing rich and varied occasions for exercising learning habits;
• Infusing learning habits into lessons to enhance content understanding;
• Recognising and celebrating the use and growth of learning habits;
• Expecting students to take ownership of and responsibility for their own learning habits;
• Exploring the development of learning habits with students over time.

As a teacher you are an influential character builder and so need to be mindful of how you help students strengthen their learning habits. It takes most teachers between 2 or 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself because small steps often prove to be big levers for change.

b) First develop your coaching language

Below you’ll find a range of things you could say to nudge Collaboration. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging your students to think for themselves. Using such statements encourages your students to:

• imitate you;
• start to think in this way;
• become conscious of these phrases and their meaning.

Gradually you will hear some of the ideas pop up in students’ self-talk….in speech or even in writing from time to time, but mostly these will go on inside their heads. As your work on Collaboration gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

c) Teacher talk – as a learning coach

10 ideas to ensure your students do the thinking for themselves

1. Choose different groups today so that you work with different people.
2. Who is going to be responsible for how the team gets on?
3. Time to check you are on the right lines.
4. Are you making the most of everybody’s talents?
5. How will you / did you help your team?
6. Have you worked together to discover what this task/problem is about?
7. How can you / did you help to get everyone more involved?
8. Will you / did you contribute your own ideas and listen to the ideas of others?
9. How will you find a way to agree / make a decision?
10. How and why was your team successful?

d) Have a think

• Which of these Collaboration nudges might you start using?
• In which particular lessons would such nudging be most useful?
• How will most of your students respond to such nudges?
• Will this way of engaging be more popular with girls or boys?
• What other nudging ideas might you add to the list?

Make a note of…

• Students’ reactions to the nudges.
• Ideas about why this might be.
• Ways in which you could further encourage students to imitate this metacognitive self-talk.
• Any positive or negative impact of these Collaborative behaviours.

e) What to start and stop

Here are a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of teaching can be a big but exciting shift so it’s worth doing it slowly and thoughtfully. Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas

f) What do you think?

• Which of the ideas appealed to you most?
• Can you see ways of incorporating these into your subject/class routines?
• Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
• Which would make your life easier?

Make a note of…

• Ideas that you want to try and the impact you hope they will have on your teaching and on your students.

a) Ideas to encourage a Collaborative frame of mind

In the early stages of building your students’ learning power your role is to:

• make them aware of the behaviour
• talk about it (what, how, why, when, if)
• celebrate its use
• give opportunities to practise it, both in lessons and elsewhere
• reflect on it to improve it.

b) Use a staged start for using Collaboration…

1. Firstly... make students aware of the use and importance of Collaboration…what, when, where, why, how they are or could be doing it
2. Then… explore Collaboration a little more through the language of Collaboration
3. Try... using Collaboration as a lesson starter to tune students into using it
4. Then start... blending Collaboration into the way you teach the content. Use specific Collaboration strategies to deepen content understanding.
5. Ensure... students reflect on the success or otherwise of their Collaborative activities.

Primary

Give collaborating a high profile

Collaboration Wall

Click to enlarge

Take photographs when you notice children playing and working well together. Place them on a ‘Collaboration Wall’ in the classroom or in a special book that you look at regularly with the children.

Invite the children to suggest captions for the photographs encouraging phrases that exemplify collaboration – sharing ideas, listening carefully, talking turns, everyone involved, etc.

Primary

Primary

Primary

c) What do you think?

• Can you see a use for any of the suggested activities?
• Have you raised awareness of Collaboration with your students?
• Does your class have an agreed set of good Collaborative behaviours?
• Which two ideas from above do you want to try out?
• How long will you keep them going before you decide whether they have worked or not?

Make a note of…

• What happens in your classroom in response to any of the above ideas.
• How students’ behaviour changes over about 3 weeks of becoming more familiar and talking about the behaviour.
• How your behaviour in the classroom changes as you use these ideas over time.

a) Get a handle on progression

As with all learning behaviours, Collaboration is not a case of ‘either you do, or you don’t’. Few learners are unable and unwilling to work with others in all circumstances, and equally few are consummate team players. Most lie somewhere between these two extremes. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of the whole 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.

b) Stages of growth in Collaboration

The chart alongside offers a glimpse of how Collaboration may grow, given the opportunity and encouragement. It is this scaling of the learning disposition that will help you make sense of the journey as you, and students, track, and influence, learners’ progress over time.

Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.

Column 2 describes how the behaviours may look if they are enabled to grow over time,

Column 3 captures the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.

c) What are the stages of growth based on?

We’ve borrowed ideas from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Objectives of the Affective Domain to generate a very condensed version of the five main phases of growth, namely:

1 ‘Lacks’ (grey) We have added this level where the behaviour is weak and the response is negative. This might translate into “I can’t or I won’t” in student self talk

2. Receiving. (purple)..which involves giving attention to something; becoming aware, not avoiding or rejecting it; being alert to something. This might translate to “Show me or Tell me” in student self talk

3. Responding. (blue)…which involves going beyond merely attending to actively attending; complying; taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action.This might translate to “I’ll try” in student self talk

4. Valuing. (green)..which involves accepting the worth of something; preferring something; being committed to the value of something.This might translate to “I see why” in student self talk

5. Organisation.(yellow)..which involves adding to, formulating and organising their values into how they live their life.This might translate to “I make sure” in student self talk

6. Embodies. (Characterisation in the original)(orange)…which involves behaving consistently in accordance with their values, living what they stand for.This might translate to “I can’t not do this” in student self talk

d) Where are your classes in relation to their levels of Collaboration?

Level detail

In the ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, students are not necessarily aware of doing things well or differently. Once they get going on something they may change it but more for the joy of just doing it. Outcomes maybe rushed or lack finesse, but once completed there may be little interest in revisiting it or in any comments they are offered. External standards of what things might or should look/be like are not yet a feature of their world.

In the Receives (purple) phase, students begin to make checks on how they are doing against given criteria when prompted. They can talk about what they did and sometimes how. They rely on their teachers or parents to validate what they do/have done. So there’s a reliance on others to validate what they are doing.

In the Responds (blue) phase students have overcome a fear of mistakes and are more able and willing to monitor what they are doing. They begin to develop the idea of ‘good’ themselves and to understand why given standards are important. They respond positively to supportive feedback and talk reflectively about how they could improve with encouragement. They are now taking far more responsibility for their learning.

In the Values (green) phase, students understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet their goals. They see the point in making changes in the light of the original goal or external standard or internal feedback. They understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is all about changing understandings; not just knowing stuff. In so doing they widen the scope of external validation. Once in the green phase they have taken responsibility for what they are doing because the recognise it as a ‘win’ for them.

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, progress is kept under review but now students are bold enough question the original goal of the activity. They look more widely for validation and may well change to a more productive strategy or a different goal. They use critical feedback positively and are keen to look back on what and how they achieved, what they did in order to learn from the experience. They organise themselves to be like this. Revising has become a habit.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, students make ongoing checks and amends, and major rethinking, in order to meet their own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now they tend not to need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because their own critical sense of standards acts as their barometer. They adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how they have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. Revising has become part of the character, they can’t not do it.

a) A learning classroom culture

Building students’ learning behaviours is about creating a culture in your classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable your students to 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.

b) What sort of culture are you trying to create?

Bringing learning to the fore is to let students do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Becoming more active learners involves offering them more opportunities to decide what to do, being given a chance to talk more and actively learn by reviewing their own experience. As students are given more responsibility for their own learning the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’.

What you are doing is developing students as meta-learners who become able to understand and grow themselves as learners.

c) Looking more closely at classroom culture

There are four specific ways in which teachers can create the classroom culture to build learning habits;

• strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Collaboration
• the sort of language you might use to stimulate Collaboration
• ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Collaboration
• actions you need to enable students to undertake to build their Collaborative habits

d) A graphic summary

Here we’ve sketched a diagram to identify the prominent features of a classroom culture that’s geared towards growing students’ Collaboration habits.

The 4 sections of the diagram are:

• Top – strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Collaboration;
• Right – indications of the sort of language you might use to stimulate Collaboration;
• Bottom – ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Collaboration;
• Left – actions that you need to enable students to undertake.

Apply your own attentive noticing skills and consider whether you already use any of these features and which you fancy trying.

In the panels below you will find brief explanations of some of the more unusual terms in the diagram.

d1) Strategies to build into the way you teach

Strategies at the top of the diagram… build into the way you teach to stimulate Collaboration

1. Build time for evaluation and reflection strategies into group activities
2. Use TASC wheels to structure team responses to tasks
3. Include team working in most lessons to support the sharing of ideas
4. Offer opportunities for peer evaluation of individual efforts
5. Design group work activities for students to experience different methods of decision-making / conflict resolution

Visible Thinking Routines (VTR) are easily remembered routines that can be applied in wide range of circumstances. The routine ‘I used to think . . . But now I think’ is explored further in section 5 of this resource. To see more VTRs, go to the VTR website.

‘Traffic Lights’ is a classic AfL strategy – Green = it is fine, Amber = ok-ish, Red = it is going badly. Use it to encourage students to keep an eye on how things are progressing.

d2) The sort of language to stimulate Collaboration

Strategies on the right of the diagram… to show the sort of language you might use to stimulate Collaboration

1. Use words like compromise, agreement, consensus
2. Use Think Pair Share to help students build up to learning in teams
3. Talk about ‘we’ and ‘us’ to encourage collective responsibility

Learning power is activated by the use of more tentative, could be kinds of language. Specifically, if you say definitively that something is the case, students frequently take it literally and try to remember it. But if you say, of the same thing, that it could be the case, they become more engaged, more thoughtful, more imaginative, and more critical. That ‘could be’ invites students to consider what else it could be, to consider alternatives.

d3) Ways of celebrating Collaboration

Strategies at the bottom of the diagram… ways in which you might celebrate the use of Collaboration.

1. Praise and reward students for effective teamwork behaviours / roles
2. Display agreed prompts / ground rules for teamwork
3. Display images of students working effectively in teams
4. Value the outcomes of teamwork as you do individual efforts

The ‘Editor’s Desk‘ is an area of the classroom that is reserved for re-crafting and making further improvements – not for ‘doing corrections!

The idea of displaying ‘work in progress’, annotated to illustrate the changes as the work is refined and improved, is in stark contrast to displaying the ‘finished article’. The former emphasises the processes involved in creating a good piece of work, whereas the latter focuses solely on the final product.

Both are explored further in section 5 of this resource.

d4) Actions you need to enable in students

Strategies on the left of the diagram…actions that you need to enable in students to boost Collaboration.

1. Experience high levels of inclusion, acceptance, trust and support
2. Adopt varying team roles / responsibilities
3. Experiment with deciding team composition, goals and actions

By ‘change tack’, we mean being prepared to adopt a different approach when things are not going as well as expected. It requires students to monitor what they are doing as they go along, keep an eye on the end goal, and be sufficiently flexible to re-think a strategy that is not working.

e) 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 Collaboration?
• 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 Collaboration.
• 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.

a) About Collaboration

Collaboration involves knowing how to learn with others. It means being able to work as part of a pair or a team, in a situation where no one person is in possession of all parts of the puzzle, and where the sharing of information and ideas is essential. Collaboration means being willing to share, and having the skills of communication to do so effectively. In many primary schools, Circle Time, for example, is used as a way of cultivating the requisite attitudes and abilities. Classes can be constituted as a group of research teams, each of which has responsibility for finding out part of the answer to a whole-class project, and then sharing that research with the other teams.

b) If you have well formed Collaborating habit you will be ready, willing, and able to:

• Work effectively with others towards common goals;
• Seek to understand what others are saying;
• Share, challenge, support and build on ideas;
• Adopt different roles and responsibilities in pursuit of team goals;
• Act responsibly with initiative, and perseveres in the face of difficulties;
• Hold and express opinions coherently, compromises and adapts to circumstances when appropriate.

c) Spot the Collaborative learners in your classes

Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about ‘Collaborators you may know’. Make a note of students you know who display these characteristics.

Becoming a teacher who develops students’ learning power means developing a keen awareness of the subtleties of your students’ learning behaviours. What you are trying to do is to help them to help themselves to get better at using these behaviours.

d) What do you think?

• How many of your students come to mind when looked at through the lens of Collaboration?
• Is there a gender balance or have you noted down more girls than boys or vice versa?
• Are the students you have noted from across all age groups or do some dominate?
• How do these Collaborative characteristics help these students to be better learners?

Make a note of…

• Those groups or classes that seem to have lots of good Collaborative characteristics.
• How you think you might capitalise on this.

Suggested content areas

This lesson invites students to think harder about what, when and where they use their learning behaviours; consider some ideas they might try; make a formal 6 month plan with materials to help.

1. A re-look at where students think they are now
2. Careful consideration of the phases of growth
3. Selection of appropriate activities
4. Construct an action plan
5. Monitor their success

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• the diversity and choice of Perseverance practice across various phases
• the importance of estimating the most appropriate phase for them as an individual
• how to construct a simple do-able action plan

What did you discover about your Perseverance habits?

At the end of the last lesson you asked students to use the ‘Spot yourself Persevering’ resource to help them become more aware of themselves as learners. We leave it to you how best to manage this session but we can guarantee the resulting information will be fascinating and useful to both teachers and students.

It is useful to hone the wider discussion to:

• which aspect of Perseverance seemed to be used most often by students
• which subject seemed to come out well i.e. where students used more of the behaviours
• which behaviours were used less frequently and call for most improvement.

Whatever the results this research will have made students far more aware of how they learn. They’ll be ready to move on to what they need to improve.

Things to remember about the stages

It’s worth thinking and talking about the phases with these overarching ideas in mind.

• Students’ development as learners isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, they have to make them happen.
• Each stage takes quite a while to work on and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next phase.
• These Perseverance behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits.
• Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Perseverance into their learning character could easily take four or five years of supported and focused development.

Take time to help students think about how they behave across a range of school subjects and even activities outside school. They need to be honest with themselves before deciding which coloured row or phase best describes their current Perseverance habits.

Why do this?

• Because you are trying to help students to come to know themselves well enough to judge this, and they will gain from seeking advice from friends or their teachers.
• And secondly, where they decide they are now should determine what they do next.

For example, if they think that the Purple row/phase best describes them at present, then their immediate target should be to consider ideas that will move into the Blue phase.

If you think you have time you might start this further reflection on the phases with a Think Pair Share activity (see slide 5) If not it is worth talking about the issues mentioned below. These are also captured on slides 6 and 7.

Take it steady

If students aren’t sure where they are on the chart, and as this is their first plan, it’s better to pitch their first plan low rather than high.

There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where their goal will be to listen carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But they could also try some of their own self-talk phrases to help them take some responsibility for thinking about their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from purple to blue their aim will be to rely on their own nudges and prompts to make sure they are monitoring and reflecting on their learning.

If they think they are already doing this in some subjects they could focus their plan on covering more or trickier subjects.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from blue to green they must be confident that they are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Their aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to their learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a beneficial thing for their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving beyond green they must be sure they’re ready to look at what they are doing with a critical eye and make their own improvements along the way. Their aim here will be to constantly be on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.

This is a tricky part of your lesson, and may well depend on:

• how realistically your students evaluate their starting points for Perseverance, and
• the range of those evaluations.

Things to consider as you plan the lesson is to ensure students achieve a realistic understanding of what they currently do, what they currently do not do, and what actions might improve their Perseverance skills:

• If the overwhelming majority of your students believe they are at the same phase of development, planning, for say, small group discussion, will be straightforward.
• If there is wide variation on starting points, organising small group discussions will need to consider whether you:
  • partner up students who are at the same phase
  • just run with ‘mixed phase’ groups
  • structure these discussions
  • offer guidance and how much
  • will need to produce the guidance in advance (e.g. download PDF resource below)

Also, ask yourself:

• Is a whole class discussion viable?
• What will you do about students who appear to have an unrealistic impression of their Perseverance behaviours? [It is highly unlikely that students are already functioning at the Green phase – so be alert to over-optimistic student evaluations! Decide in advance how will you challenge such evaluations.]

Resources

The information in the toggle boxes below give a few suggestions for activities and self-talk for each phase of the growth chart. It’s worth acquainting yourself with the ideas.

The same information is also available in a downloadable PDF resource which you can print for students to use in the lesson.

There are slides of the same information should you want to use them in the lesson.

The next stage of the lesson involves students putting an Action Plan together

Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for students to complete. This means that what they are planning will be put into action by them, over about six months. At the end of six months they will need to review their plan, estimate their progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or strengthen the growth in the same phase.

Invite them to:

• Record name and class
  • the date the plan was made
  • the date the plan will be reviewed
• In the little table students should indicate the phase of Perseverance where they feel secure. This shows their starting point. If they mark Purple to Blue it means they think they are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
• What they want to improve should be shown as Goals and notes made of:
  • any actions they intend to try
  • the sort of self-talk they want to say quietly to themselves.

Reviewing the plan:

• After about 6 months the plan should be reviewed to prove to students that they are taking action which is having effect over time.
• It’s useful to note down how the plan worked:
  • what went well and
  • what could have been even better.

Here’s a completed plan to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like. Feel free to design your own Action Plan format.

The best way of keeping their plan going will be by students getting used to looking at the changes they are making and their impact on their learning.

This amounts to Self-monitoring. It’s about students keeping track of the actions or self-talk they are trying in their classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming. For example, they could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times they use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help them become more conscious of the actions they are taking.

Bit by bit, the more they question themselves about what they are doing the more they will consolidate their approaches to developing these learning behaviours into learning habits.

In six months time

A lesson at the end of the six months should enable students to look back at their plan, and any notes they have made, using this useful technique.

Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.

Think about:

• Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
• Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
• Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
• Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.

b) Suggested content areas

1. What does Perseverance mean?
2. What are the different Perseverance habits?
3. How do teachers help students to develop Perseverant habits?
4. How Perseverance habits grow?
5. Where students’ Perseverance strengths lie now.

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• what the learning habit Perseverance is really all about
• how it can develop
• where they are now in the growth of this habit

In the sections below you will find: explanations of how the learning habit works; a quiz to help students spot themselves Persevering in lessons; ideas about how teachers help students become better at Perseverance; a chart showing how Perseverance habits grow, given the right circumstances.

Being ready, willing and able

Revising is about the way we work on something to improve it. Whether it be icing a cake, solving a tricky maths problem or creating a well-crafted essay, all require effort, retries and determination to satisfy ourselves that the result pleases us; that it comes up to scratch. How we tackle such a job isn’t just a case of monitoring as we go along or reviewing the result: it will be influenced by other qualities. Our attitude to change, whether we have a sense of quality and what sort of validation we need.

Use this resource to help to get students tuned in – offer them time to think about their Perseverance habits. Unpack each of statements. Use of the chart could be extended into other lessons too. At the end of this lesson encourage students to take it with them into lessons and make a note of whether and how often they display these characteristics.

Students will take the outcomes of using this little questionnaire into account when they tackle lesson 3.

UPDATE

As teachers you will:

{UNCERTAIN WHERE THIS CAME FROM]

• encourage students to change the way you are doing things if necessary
• help students to view change as a natural part of learning
• want students to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
• focus your feedback on what students need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what they got right
• offer students checklists that help them to keep an eye on how their work is progressing
• create opportunities for them to stop and to consider how things are going

Feel free to add your own ideas to this list.

Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you’re someone who just wants or likes things to stay the same you’re unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.

A good reviser needs to know/understand what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going; be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing students’ revising habits is much more than encouraging them ‘having another go’.

A progression chart for Perseverance

It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Perseverance habits – that either you are inflexible and reluctant to change, or that you are flexible and open to change. This could not be further from the truth!

The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.

The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the development of a good Perseverance habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Perseverance, to the highly aware and Perseverance savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Perseverance to an expert Perseverance.

UPDATE

Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from an attitude of ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.

Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills, behaviours, habits look like as learners become increasing more effective as Perseverance.

Column 3 is a really important one. It shows how attitudes and self-talk change as Perseverance skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s one’s own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of the learning behaviours. If you don’t know or care about it it’s unlikely to improve.

UPDATE

Looking closely at grey from the learners’ viewpoint

In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you are not aware of doing things well or differently, you just do things. You’re not too bothered about outcomes and you’re not interested in revisiting something in order to change or improve it. You very much just do your own thing and you’re not aware of external standards or expectations. You may be reluctant, or even afraid, of changing the ways that you do things. But don’t think of this as a negative start. Most learners start like this before making a start on their journey of learning how to learn.

Looking closely at purple

In the Receives (purple) phase, you are beginning to make checks on how you are doing against given criteria when you are prompted to do so. Your teachers are kick starting your Revising learning journey. You can talk about what you did and sometimes how you did it. You rely on your teachers or parents to tell you that what you have done is valuable or worthwhile. You have learned to accept and act on your teacher’s advice to have a second go at something and/or to pause and check how things are going. You have to go through this phase before moving on to the next.

Looking closely at blue

In the Responds (blue) phase you have overcome any fear of mistakes and you’re more able and willing to monitor what you are doing. You’re beginning to develop what you mean by ‘good’ and to understand why given standards are important. You enjoy supportive feedback and you talk about how you could improve with support. You are increasingly willing and able to check how things are going even if your teacher doesn’t tell you to do so. You are becoming inclined to make your own changes to improve your work.

Looking closely at green

In the Values (green) phase, you understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet your goals. You see the point in making changes to reach a goal or external standard. You understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is actually all about changing your understandings; not just knowing stuff. So now you look at what you are doing with a more critical or demanding eye and have realised that being like this this is really good for you. Your positive attitudes to improving are helping you to achieve more and improve.

Looking beyond green

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, you keep progress under review but now you question the original goal of the activity. You look for higher standards and may well move to a more productive strategy or a different goal. You now use critical feedback positively and you’re keen to look back on what and how you achieved what you did in order to learn from the experience.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, you make ongoing checks, amends and rethinking, in order to meet you own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now you don’t need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because your own critical sense of standards acts as your barometer. You adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how you have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. In this final Orange phase you simply can’t help but do it in all aspects of your learning. This way of behaving has become a defining part of your learning character.

Using an effective thinking routine

Invite learners to reflect on what they have learned about themselves as a learner by using the Visible Thinking Routine ‘I used to think… Now I think’ . . . before estimating which colour row best describes their current Perseverance skills, behaviours, attitudes and habits.

It’s fair to say this first estimate won’t be their last because the next lesson gives time to reassess their decisions. But it gives them a basis to work on before looking more closely at themselves learning during their lessons next week.

Using the checklist from the beginning of the lesson invite learners to take the resource with them into lessons over the next week. We suggest they use the resource after at least three lessons across the week. You could leave the choice of lessons to them or maybe suggest they select a subject they enjoy/find fulfilling and one they find tricky. Probably wise to advise them to complete the resource after rather than during the lessons.

Emphasise the need to bring the results of their observations to the next lesson on Perseverance where they will be used to help them further their understanding of themselves as learners.

b) Many ways to introduce learning habits

There are of course many ways to introduce the habit of Perseverance but here are five culture shifts to think about and get you started.

Ask yourself – how might you:

• Harness display to illustrate that first attempts are rarely the finished article
• Ensure that students act on your feedback and do things differently next time
• Encourage students to monitor how things are going, and change tack if necessary
• Encourage students to evaluate the extent to which they have met the required standards
• Deliberately create situations that require a change of mind.

See section 4t for practical classroom practice suggestions.

a) Cultivating learning habits ultimately involves:

• Providing rich and varied occasions for exercising learning habits;
• Infusing learning habits into lessons to enhance content understanding;
• Recognising and celebrating the use and growth of learning habits;
• Expecting students to take ownership of and responsibility for their own learning habits;
• Exploring the development of learning habits with students over time.

As a teacher you are an influential character builder and so need to be mindful of how you help students strengthen their learning habits. It takes most teachers between 2 or 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself because small steps often prove to be big levers for change.

b) First develop your coaching language

Below you’ll find a range of things you could say to nudge Perseverance. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging your students to think for themselves. Using such statements encourages your students to:

• imitate you;
• start to think in this way;
• become conscious of these phrases and their meaning.

Gradually you will hear some of the ideas pop up in students’ self-talk….in speech or even in writing from time to time, but mostly these will go on inside their heads. As your work on Perseverance gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

c) Teacher talk – as a learning coach

10 ideas to ensure your students do the thinking for themselves

1. What happened when you got stuck before? What did you do to work it out?
2. Great! You have come through the confused / stuck feeling. What helped you?
3. It’s when you get stuck that you really start to learn.
4. How can you avoid that distraction?
5. Is this goal worth going for?
6. What do you know? What do you need to know? How might you bridge the gap?
7. You can’t do it – yet.
8. Can you explain why you are stuck?
9. That’s an interesting mistake.
10. Give it a go and see what happens.

d) Have a think

• Which of these Perseverance nudges might you start using?
• In which particular lessons would such nudging be most useful?
• How will most of your students respond to such nudges?
• Will this way of engaging be more popular with girls or boys?
• What other nudging ideas might you add to the list?

Make a note of…

• Students’ reactions to the nudges.
• Ideas about why this might be.
• Ways in which you could further encourage students to imitate this metacognitive self-talk.
• Any positive or negative impact of these Perseverance behaviours.

e) What to start and stop

Here are a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of teaching can be a big but exciting shift so it’s worth doing it slowly and thoughtfully. Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas

f) What do you think?

• Which of the ideas appealed to you most?
• Can you see ways of incorporating these into your subject/class routines?
• Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
• Which would make your life easier?

Make a note of…

• Ideas that you want to try and the impact you hope they will have on your teaching and on your students.

a) Ideas to encourage a Perseverant frame of mind

In the early stages of building your students’ learning power your role is to:

• make them aware of the behaviour
• talk about it (what, how, why, when, if)
• celebrate its use
• give opportunities to practise it, both in lessons and elsewhere
• reflect on it to improve it.

b) Use a staged start for using Perseverance…

1. Firstly... make students aware of the use and importance of Perseverance…what, when, where, why, how they are or could be doing it
2. Then… explore Perseverance a little more through the language of Perseverance
3. Try... using Perseverance as a lesson starter to tune students into using it
4. Then start... blending Perseverance into the way you teach the content. Use specific Perseverance strategies to deepen content understanding.
5. Ensure... students reflect on the success or otherwise of their Perseverance.

Primary

Primary

Primary

Primary

a) Get a handle on progression

As with all learning behaviours, Perseverance is not a case of ‘either you do, or you don’t’. Few learners are afraid of trying and give up at the first sign of difficulty in all aspects of their lives, and equally few have the inclination to be tenacious in every area of learning. Most lie somewhere between these two extremes. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of the whole 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.

b) Stages of growth in Perseverance

The chart alongside offers a glimpse of how Perseverance may grow, given the opportunity and encouragement. It is this scaling of the learning disposition that will help you make sense of the journey as you, and students, track, and influence, learners’ progress over time.

Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.

Column 2 describes how the behaviours may look if they are enabled to grow over time,

Column 3 captures the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.

c) What are the stages of growth based on?

We’ve borrowed ideas from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Objectives of the Affective Domain to generate a very condensed version of the five main phases of growth, namely:

1 ‘Lacks’ (grey) We have added this level where the behaviour is weak and the response is negative. This might translate into “I can’t or I won’t” in student self talk

2. Receiving. (purple)..which involves giving attention to something; becoming aware, not avoiding or rejecting it; being alert to something. This might translate to “Show me or Tell me” in student self talk

3. Responding. (blue)…which involves going beyond merely attending to actively attending; complying; taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action.This might translate to “I’ll try” in student self talk

4. Valuing. (green)..which involves accepting the worth of something; preferring something; being committed to the value of something.This might translate to “I see why” in student self talk

5. Organisation.(yellow)..which involves adding to, formulating and organising their values into how they live their life.This might translate to “I make sure” in student self talk

6. Embodies. (Characterisation in the original)(orange)…which involves behaving consistently in accordance with their values, living what they stand for.This might translate to “I can’t not do this” in student self talk

d) Where are your classes in relation to their levels of Perseverance?

Level detail

In the ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, students are not necessarily aware of doing things well or differently. Once they get going on something they may change it but more for the joy of just doing it. Outcomes maybe rushed or lack finesse, but once completed there may be little interest in revisiting it or in any comments they are offered. External standards of what things might or should look/be like are not yet a feature of their world.

In the Receives (purple) phase, students begin to make checks on how they are doing against given criteria when prompted. They can talk about what they did and sometimes how. They rely on their teachers or parents to validate what they do/have done. So there’s a reliance on others to validate what they are doing.

In the Responds (blue) phase students have overcome a fear of mistakes and are more able and willing to monitor what they are doing. They begin to develop the idea of ‘good’ themselves and to understand why given standards are important. They respond positively to supportive feedback and talk reflectively about how they could improve with encouragement. They are now taking far more responsibility for their learning.

In the Values (green) phase, students understand the importance of keeping a close eye on progress in order to achieve high-quality outcomes that meet their goals. They see the point in making changes in the light of the original goal or external standard or internal feedback. They understand the need to learn from previous experiences and realise that learning is all about changing understandings; not just knowing stuff. In so doing they widen the scope of external validation. Once in the green phase they have taken responsibility for what they are doing because the recognise it as a ‘win’ for them.

In the Organises (yellow) phase revising has become a skilful habit; where revising itself raises more questions than answers. Yes, progress is kept under review but now students are bold enough question the original goal of the activity. They look more widely for validation and may well change to a more productive strategy or a different goal. They use critical feedback positively and are keen to look back on what and how they achieved, what they did in order to learn from the experience. They organise themselves to be like this. Revising has become a habit.

In the Embodies (orange) phase, students make ongoing checks and amends, and major rethinking, in order to meet their own, often more exacting, standards of achievement. Now they tend not to need the validation of others (marks, grades, exams, quality feedback) because their own critical sense of standards acts as their barometer. They adapt readily to changing circumstances and always reflect on what and how they have done something with the explicit intention of doing it better, more efficiently / differently in the future. Revising has become part of the character, they can’t not do it.

a) A learning classroom culture

Building students’ learning behaviours is about creating a culture in your classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable your students to 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.

b) What sort of culture are you trying to create?

Bringing learning to the fore is to let students do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Becoming more active learners involves offering them more opportunities to decide what to do, being given a chance to talk more and actively learn by reviewing their own experience. As students are given more responsibility for their own learning the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’.

What you are doing is developing students as meta-learners who become able to understand and grow themselves as learners.

c) Looking more closely at classroom culture

There are four specific ways in which teachers can create the classroom culture to build learning habits;

• strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Perseverance
• the sort of language you might use to stimulate Perseverance
• ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Perseverance
• actions you need to enable students to undertake to build their Perseverance habits

d) A graphic summary

Here we’ve sketched a diagram to identify the prominent features of a classroom culture that’s geared towards growing students’ Perseverance habits.

The 4 sections of the diagram are:

• Top – strategies you could build into the way you teach to stimulate Perseverance;
• Right – indications of the sort of language you might use to stimulate Perseverance;
• Bottom – ways in which you might celebrate / praise students’ use of Perseverance;
• Left – actions that you need to enable students to undertake.

Apply your own attentive noticing skills and consider whether you already use any of these features and which you fancy trying.

In the panels below you will find brief explanations of some of the more unusual terms in the diagram.

d1) Strategies to build into the way you teach

Strategies at the top of the diagram… build into the way you teach to stimulate Perseverance

1. Build self-reflection time on effort and challenge into lessons
2. Resist offering ready solutions and answers automatically
3. Introduce open-ended or wild challenges
4. Start with grapple tasks as quests to battle through to encourage sticking with challenges
5. Offer all access to appropriately challenging material to activate the need for perseverance

Visible Thinking Routines (VTR) are easily remembered routines that can be applied in wide range of circumstances. The routine ‘I used to think . . . But now I think’ is explored further in section 5 of this resource. To see more VTRs, go to the VTR website.

‘Traffic Lights’ is a classic AfL strategy – Green = it is fine, Amber = ok-ish, Red = it is going badly. Use it to encourage students to keep an eye on how things are progressing.

d2) The sort of language to stimulate Perseverance

Strategies on the right of the diagram… to show the sort of language you might use to stimulate Perseverance

1. Talk about strategies for getting unstuck
2. Discuss strategies to control negative emotions
3. Use ‘could be’ language to explore alternative strategies for moving forward

Learning power is activated by the use of more tentative, could be kinds of language. Specifically, if you say definitively that something is the case, students frequently take it literally and try to remember it. But if you say, of the same thing, that it could be the case, they become more engaged, more thoughtful, more imaginative, and more critical. That ‘could be’ invites students to consider what else it could be, to consider alternatives.

d3) Ways of celebrating Perseverance

Strategies at the bottom of the diagram… ways in which you might celebrate the use of Perseverance.

1. Reframe challenge as a natural, inevitable aspect of learning
2. Praise and reward students for effort rather than attainment
3. Offer praise for overcoming being stuck
4. Display agreed stuck prompts and tactics such as C3B4Me and Brain/Book/Board/Buddy/Boss

The ‘Editor’s Desk‘ is an area of the classroom that is reserved for re-crafting and making further improvements – not for ‘doing corrections!

The idea of displaying ‘work in progress’, annotated to illustrate the changes as the work is refined and improved, is in stark contrast to displaying the ‘finished article’. The former emphasises the processes involved in creating a good piece of work, whereas the latter focuses solely on the final product.

Both are explored further in section 5 of this resource.

d4) Actions you need to enable in students

Strategies on the left of the diagram…actions that you need to enable in students to boost Perseverance.

1. Apply effort in challenging, risky areas of learning
2. Value effort over performance
3. View mistakes as opportunities for improvement

By ‘change tack’, we mean being prepared to adopt a different approach when things are not going as well as expected. It requires students to monitor what they are doing as they go along, keep an eye on the end goal, and be sufficiently flexible to re-think a strategy that is not working.

e) 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 Perseverance?
• 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 Perseverance.
• 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.

a) About Perseverance

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. The quality of stickability or perseverance is essential if you are going to get to the bottom of something that doesn’t turn out as quickly or easily as you had thought, or hoped.

If you get upset and start to think there is something wrong with you as soon as you get stuck, you are not going to be able to maintain engagement.

Instead all your energy will go into trying to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, and this may mean drifting off into a daydream, creating a distraction, or blaming somebody else. A great deal of classroom misbehaviour starts this way. If students were better equipped to cope emotionally with the inevitable difficulty of learning, they would mess about less. There is a range of things that teachers can do to strengthen students’ stickability.

Perseverance is often undermined by two common and erroneous beliefs. The first is that 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. The second is that 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.

b) A well formed Persevering habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Keep going in the face of difficulties;
• Enjoy working at the edge of our comfort zone;
• Channel the energy of frustration productively, marshalling positive emotions to succeed;
• Understand that learning is often a slow and uncertain process that requires grit, risk-taking and different ways of working;
• Relish working towards ever more challenging goals without fear of ‘failure’.

c) Spot the Perseverant learners in your classes

Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about ‘Perseverers you may know’. Make a note of students you know who display these characteristics.

Becoming a teacher who develops students’ learning power means developing a keen awareness of the subtleties of your students’ learning behaviours. 

d) What do you think?

• How many of your students come to mind when looked at through the lens of Perseverance?
• Is there a gender balance or have you noted down more girls than boys or vice versa?
• Are the students you have noted from across all age groups or do some dominate?
• How do these Perseverant characteristics help these students to be better learners?

Make a note of…

• Those groups or classes that seem to have lots of good Perseverant characteristics.
• How you think you might capitalise on this.

Suggested content areas

This lesson invites students to think harder about what, when and where they use their learning behaviours; consider some ideas they might try; make a formal 6 month plan with materials to help.

1. A re-look at where students think they are now
2. Careful consideration of the phases of growth
3. Selection of appropriate activities
4. Construct an action plan
5. Monitor their success

Your aim for this lesson should be to help students understand:

• the diversity and choice of XXXX practice across various phases
• the importance of estimating the most appropriate phase for them as an individual
• how to construct a simple do-able action plan

What did you discover about your XXXX habits?

At the end of the last lesson you asked students to use the ‘Spot yourself XXXX’ resource to help them become more aware of themselves as learners. We leave it to you how best to manage this session but we can guarantee the resulting information will be fascinating and useful to both teachers and students.

It is useful to hone the wider discussion to:

• which aspect of XXXX seemed to be used most often by students
• which subject seemed to come out well i.e. where students used more of the behaviours
• which behaviours were used less frequently and call for most improvement.

Whatever the results this research will have made students far more aware of how they learn. They’ll be ready to move on to what they need to improve.

Things to remember about the stages

It’s worth thinking and talking about the phases with these overarching ideas in mind.

• Students’ development as learners isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, they have to make them happen.
• Each stage takes quite a while to work on and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next phase.
• These XXXX behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits.
• Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of XXXX into their learning character could easily take four or five years of supported and focused development.

Take time to help students think about how they behave across a range of school subjects and even activities outside school. They need to be honest with themselves before deciding which coloured row or phase best describes their current XXXX habits.

Why do this?

• Because you are trying to help students to come to know themselves well enough to judge this, and they will gain from seeking advice from friends or their teachers.
• And secondly, where they decide they are now should determine what they do next.

For example, if they think that the Purple row/phase best describes them at present, then their immediate target should be to consider ideas that will move into the Blue phase.

If you think you have time you might start this further reflection on the phases with a Think Pair Share activity (see slide 5) If not it is worth talking about the issues mentioned below. These are also captured on slides 6 and 7.

Take it steady

If students aren’t sure where they are on the chart, and as this is their first plan, it’s better to pitch their first plan low rather than high.

There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where their goal will be to listen carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But they could also try some of their own self-talk phrases to help them take some responsibility for thinking about their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from purple to blue their aim will be to rely on their own nudges and prompts to make sure they are monitoring and reflecting on their learning.

If they think they are already doing this in some subjects they could focus their plan on covering more or trickier subjects.

If they think they are ready to work on moving from blue to green they must be confident that they are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Their aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to their learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a beneficial thing for their learning.

If they think they are ready to work on moving beyond green they must be sure they’re ready to look at what they are doing with a critical eye and make their own improvements along the way. Their aim here will be to constantly be on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.

This is a tricky part of your lesson, and may well depend on:

• how realistically your students evaluate their starting points for XXXX, and
• the range of those evaluations.

Things to consider as you plan the lesson is to ensure students achieve a realistic understanding of what they currently do, what they currently do not do, and what actions might improve their XXXX skills:

• If the overwhelming majority of your students believe they are at the same phase of development, planning, for say, small group discussion, will be straightforward.
• If there is wide variation on starting points, organising small group discussions will need to consider whether you:
  • partner up students who are at the same phase
  • just run with ‘mixed phase’ groups
  • structure these discussions
  • offer guidance and how much
  • will need to produce the guidance in advance (e.g. download PDF resource below)

Also, ask yourself:

• Is a whole class discussion viable?
• What will you do about students who appear to have an unrealistic impression of their XXXX behaviours? [It is highly unlikely that students are already functioning at the Green phase – so be alert to over-optimistic student evaluations! Decide in advance how will you challenge such evaluations.]

Resources

The information in the toggle boxes below give a few suggestions for activities and self-talk for each phase of the growth chart. It’s worth acquainting yourself with the ideas.

The same information is also available in a downloadable PDF resource which you can print for students to use in the lesson.

There are slides of the same information should you want to use them in the lesson.