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 form, replace, re-form and strengthen their learning habits.

But don’t worry, you’re not there yet. It takes most teachers between 2 and 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself. Feel determined because small steps often prove to be big levers for change. Have a think about what you might do…

What to stop and start

Here are a few 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.

Developing your learning language

Here is a range of things you can say to nudge ambitious capability. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging 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.

Eventually you will hear some of the questions 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 ambitious capability gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

My learning talk nudges to encourage ambition and capability

Teacher talk – as a learning coach

To ensure students do the thinking for themselves, use phrases like these to nudge them to:

Be forward thinking and ambitious:

• This is tricky – are you enjoying it?
• What are you hoping to achieve?
• How can you do even better?

Create meaning for themselves: 

• How does this link with what you already know?
• Might you have to re-consider . . . . ?
• Where else might this apply / be useful?

Be curious:

• What are you asking yourself?
• What is puzzling you?
• What do you want to find out? How are you going to do that?

Think critically:  

• Go on – convince me!
• Explain your thinking so that I understand what you are thinking and why.
• What would convince you? What evidence do you need / want?

Think creatively:

• What if you . . . . . ?
• How else might you . . . . ?
• Give me an alternative . . . . . 

Be an effective communicator: 

• Tell me what you are thinking
• How would you explain that to xxxx ?
• How do you know that someone is interested in what you are saying / thinking?

Be able to learn from experience:

• What do you learn from that?
• What are the important ideas here?
• How might you approach it differently next time?

Some ideas to encourage an ambitious, capable frame of mind

1. Firstly… make students aware of ambition and capability…when, where, why. 
2. Then… explore ambition and capability a little more through how we talk about it
3. Try… using visible thinking routines as a lesson starter to tune students into seeing learning as a whole.
4. Then start…building the inclination to make progress through explaining why they are stuck / what they cannot do.
5. Ensure… students reflect on the success or otherwise of their ambitious, capable mindframe.

1. Making students aware of ambition and capability

Making students aware of dealing with difficulty and rising to challenge

How you make students aware of the words that describe the behaviour and why it is important to use it.

Helping students to think critically

Helping students to learn from experience and create meaning for themselves

2. Exploring the language of being forward thinking and ambitious

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour

3. Visible thinking routines that help learners to make links between what they know and what they have yet to find out. 

Use these routines to key students into the learning behaviour you want to concentrate on in the lesson. i.e. here you are starting up the need to understand the inter-connectedness of learning. 

Primary and Secondary

As you get deeper into a lesson you will need activities which, by their very nature, will develop students’ ambition and capability AND their understanding of the content.

Here is an idea where, by explaining why they are stuck, students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop an ambitious, capable habit.

4. Focusing on explaining stuckness as a learning strategy.

Help learners to develop their own internal monologue to overcome stuckness.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to understand the process of curiosity and the different types of questions you can ask.

5. An activity to learn about Curiosity and Questioning

6. Reflecting in order to learn from experience

Primary and Secondary

NB. None of the behaviours above will lead to instant understanding in students nor instant changes of behaviour. You will need to drip them in over time and keep building and refreshing your language of learning.

Building effective learning behaviours is about creating a culture in classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to face difficulty calmly, confidently and creatively. By a ‘culture’ we mean all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’. 

So ‘culture’ concerns the details of the micro-climate that you create in your classrooms. What you do and say, what you notice and commend and what you don’t, what kind of role model of a learner you offer – all these are of the essence. The micro-climate of a classroom can inadvertently stifle, or specifically enhance,  the very behaviours you are seeking to promote.

Does my classroom climate encourage ambition and capability?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which ambitious, capable learners can grow, there are changes in the relationships; what is discussed; how learning is constructed; and in what is celebrated.

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

The changes in relationships include:

• Goal orientation is evident: Students are encouraged to create their own learning goals and success criteria.
• Teachers exhibit enquiry mindedness: Adults share their own enthusiasms and enquiries, and model their own fallibility.
• Critical curiosity is a learner responsibility: Students are expected to use their own critical curiosity to explore problems.
• Review points are student led: Responsibility for summarising / distilling what has been learned rests with students, and they lead review points in lessons.
• Students identify next steps: Students are given time / opportunity to decide what they still need to find out. 

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Growing perseverance: Stuck prompts are displayed and discussed.
• Creative insight is encouraged: Interesting questions are discussed from different angles to generate new lines of enquiry.
• Links to everyday life are discussed: How current learning links to everyday life is a topic of conversation. Adults nudge students to consider how they might transfer skills to other areas of their lives.
• Rigour matters – logical arguments using precise language are evident.
• Student dialogue is frequent: Opportunities to communicate their ideas to other students are frequent.
• Review points attend to transfer: Students discuss how new learning impacts on prior understandings.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Challenge is high, risk is encouraged: Students are encouraged and expected to step into risky, challenging areas, to aim high.
• Reflection is key: Reflection / review time is built into lessons.
• Tasks are engaging: Learning involves open-ended, ‘wild’ tasks and enquiry based challenges.
• Links are explicit: Opportunities to consider how new learning might be applied elsewhere is routinely built into lessons.
• Empathy is encouraged: Tasks are designed to see things through others’ eyes, and to argue in favour of views contrary to their own. 

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Effort is valued over attainment: Students are praised and rewarded for effort.
• Curiosity is rewarded: Good questions are valued as much as good answers. Unlikely and unusual suggestions are welcomed.
• Display focuses on the ‘how’ of learning: Displays of work include ‘work in progress’; it shows the logical processes that sit behind completed work; it captures the key learning that has occurred. 
• Connections are identified in display: Patterns and links are discussed and displayed.

[So the outer ring of the culture wheel then contains only the text in bold:-

Relating has:  Goal orientation is evident. Teachers exhibit enquiry mindedness. Critical curiosity is a learner responsibility. Review points are student led. Students identify next steps. 

Talking has: Growing perseverance. Creative insight is encouraged. Links to everyday life are discussed. Rigour matters. Student dialogue is frequent. Review points attend to transfer.

Constructing has Challenge is high, risk is encouraged. Reflection is key. Tasks are engaging. Links are explicit. Empathy is encouraged. 

Celebrating has: Effort is valued over attainment. Curiosity is rewarded. Display focuses on the ‘how’ of learning. Connections are identified in display.]

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

please adjust the culture wheel thus:

add more spaces between the 3 facets in the 2nd ring from the outer edge

change  Dual Focus Challenging Reflection’ to ‘Dual Focus   Reflection    Challenge’

This is a must do before any others are created

What do we mean by an ambitious, capable learner?

Successful Futures defines ambitious, capable learners who:

• set themselves high standards and seek and enjoy challenge
• are building up a body of knowledge and have the skills to connect and apply that knowledge in different contexts
• are questioning and enjoy solving problems
• can communicate effectively in different forms and settings, using both Welsh and English
• can explain the ideas and concepts they are learning about
• can use number effectively in different contexts
• understand how to interpret data and apply mathematical concepts
• use digital technologies creatively to communicate, find and analyse information
• undertake research and evaluate critically what they find
• and are ready to learn throughout their lives

Some of these traits are learning behaviours, where others are things we can do (like use number effectively / interpret data).

Drawing out the learning behaviours embedded in this description of the ambitious, capable learner, students need to be interested in, enthusiastic about, and persistent in learning; prepared to take responsibility for their own learning; informed and understand how things fit together; able to explain their thinking to others.

A well formed ambitious and capable approach involves being ready, willing, and able to:

Be forward thinking and ambitious: having a realistic and achievable life plan; pursuing self-generated goals with tenacity; reaching high, self-imposed standards through focused effort; relishing and rising to challenge and difficulty.

Create meaning for themselves: Seeing connections between disparate events and experiences – building patterns – weaving a web of understanding across subjects and ways of working.

Be curious: motivated by asking questions of themselves and others, being curious and playful with ideas – delving beneath the surface of things. Exploring possibilities and asking what if… Skilled at finding things out for themselves. 

Think critically: using logical and rational skills to solve problems methodically and rigorously: constructing good arguments and spotting the flaws in others; listening attentively to understand what is being said and listening critically to evaluate the quality of others’ ideas. 

Think creatively: using imagination and intuition to explore possibilities playfully; looking at things in different ways; able to devise new ways of understanding and explaining information; producing original, novel and inventive ways to communicate ideas.

Be an effective communicator: understanding others; putting themselves in other people’s shoes, so that they can communicate effectively with a variety of audiences.

Be able to learn from experience: understanding what is and what is not important or of value; able to summarise and paraphrase to draw out salient features and to separate key points from underlying detail; able to carry key ideas forward to aid further learning.

The key ‘wider skills’ that underpin Ambitious and Capable learning are

• critical thinking and problem solving – marshalling critical and logical processes to analyse and understand situations and develop responses and solutions
• planning and organising – implementing solutions and executing ideas and monitoring and reflecting on results.

Spotting the ambitious, capable learners in your classes

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

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 form, replace, re-form and strengthen their learning habits.

But don’t worry, you’re not there yet. It takes most teachers between 2 and 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself. Feel determined because small steps often prove to be big levers for change. Have a think about what you might do…

What to stop and start

Here are a few 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.

Stop

Talking mostly about content and knowledge

Using review points to check only what has been learned

Spoon feeding

Them seeing things from only one perspective

Confusing urgency with importance

Start

Introducing students to the language of learning

Talking about the learning process

Infusing learning behaviours in to lesson objectives

Placing responsibility with students to make appropriate choices

Encouraging students to speculate about others’ motives

Creating time for students to distil the learning for themselves

Start Slowly

Building reflection on the learning process in to review points

Encouraging students to explain how they are learning

Exploring conflicting viewpoints

Enabling students to discuss how they feel about each other

Praising adaptable, flexible behaviours that lead to a significant re-think and improved outcomes

Experiment with

Enabling students to set their own targets for development as a learner

Encouraging students to reflect on how successful learning behaviours enhance content understanding

Pairing students with differing learning habit strengths as learning buddies to broaden horizons

Creating difficult situations that require empathetic responses

Using students as peer learning coaches

Developing your learning language

Here is a range of things you can say to nudge Personal Effectiveness. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging 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.

Eventually you will hear some of the questions 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 developing Personal Effectiveness gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

My learning talk nudges to encourage Personal Effectiveness

Teacher talk – as a learning coach

To ensure students do the thinking for themselves, use phrases like these to nudge them to:

Be reflective about oneself as a learner:

• How did you do this? Which learning skills did you use?
• How would you describe your strengths/weaknesses as a learner?
• What can you bring to this?

Be self-aware:

• How would you describe yourself?
• How would others describe you?
• Why do you think you got that reaction?

Behave with empathy and understanding towards others:

• What is (s)he not saying? What does (s)he believe?
• What do you think (s)he is feeling? Why do you think that is?
• How are you going to make sure that everyone is involved?

Make good choices: 

• How have you chosen to do this? Why?
• How else could you have tried?
• Who else could you have / should you have involved?

Take responsibility for one’s own development:

• What do you want to become better at as a learner? What are you doing about achieving that?
• What are you doing to ensure that you achieve your own goals?
• If it is going to happen, it is down to you.

Some ideas to encourage Personal Effectiveness

1. Firstly… make students aware of their learning behaviours…when, where, why. 
2. Then… explore learning a little more through the language of learning
3. Try… building learning talk into lessons
4. Then start… blending in routines that will help learners to deepen their understanding of their learning behaviours
5. Ensure… students reflect on the success or otherwise of their effective learning dispositions.

1. Making students aware of their learning powers

How you make students aware of the words that describe the behaviour and why it is important to use it.

Helping learners to act on feedback

Help learners to consider others

Or, alternatively . . . 

2. Exploring the language of Learning

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour

3a. Infusing learning in to lesson objectives

Use a quick starter to key students into the learning behaviour you want to concentrate on in the lesson. i.e. here you are starting up the meta learning behaviour 

Primary and Secondary

3b. Helping learners to think ahead in order to be successful

Use a quick starter to key students into the learning behaviour you want to concentrate on in the lesson. i.e. here you are starting up the need to think strategically.

Primary and Secondary

As you get deeper into a lesson you will need activities which, by their very nature, will develop students’ learning behaviours AND their understanding of the content.

Here are 2 ideas where students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop effective learning behaviours.

4. Focusing on improving as a learner – 2 visible thinking routines

Draw out the meta learning behaviour being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to better understand themselves as learners.

5. An activity to highlight and strengthen Learning

6. Reflecting on Personal Effectiveness

Primary and Secondary

NB. None of the behaviours above will lead to instant understanding in students nor instant changes of behaviour. You will need to drip them in over time and keep building and refreshing your language of learning.

Building effective learning behaviours is about creating a culture in classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to face difficulty calmly, confidently and creatively. By a ‘culture’ we mean all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’.

So ‘culture’ concerns the details of the micro-climate that you create in your classrooms. What you do and say, what you notice and commend and what you don’t, what kind of role model of a learner you offer – all these are of the essence. The micro-climate of a classroom can inadvertently stifle, or specifically enhance,  the very behaviours you are seeking to promote.

Does my classroom climate encourage Personal Effectiveness?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which personal effectiveness can grow, there are changes in the relationships; what is discussed; how learning is constructed; and in what is celebrated.

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

The changes in relationships include: 

• Reflection is a learner responsibility: Students are expected to distil what they have learned and how they have learned it for themselves.
• Students set their own targets for development: Students are enabled to reflect on their own learning strengths and weaknesses and to set targets for their own personal, learning development.
• Students make choices: Students are enabled to make choices about their learning and to reflect on how successful these choices have been in accomplishing the task; students are enabled to decide what they still need to do / find out.
• Students demonstrate independence: Students are encouraged to make the best of difficult situations by making imaginative use of resources and of other people.

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Learning is a focus of conversation: Students are encouraged to engage in meta-cognitive talk as they reflect on the process of learning during review points.
• Feedback is well-balanced; Teachers draw attention to what students have learned and how they learned it through both written and oral feedback.
• Feelings are a topic of conversation: Students are encouraged to express and discuss their own emotions; Opportunities to talk about emotions are built into classroom discussions; Stories/photos are used to promote discussion about emotions.
• Dialogue is key to learning: The classroom supports a culture of learners working collaboratively in pursuit of individual and team goals, talking together and making the best of students’ diverse contributions.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Learning is built into planning: Learning objectives reveal both the content to be learned and the learning behaviours to be employed; students are alerted to how they are learning.
• Learning is built into review points: Students are given time to review both content and process in lessons and to consider where else they might apply new learning.
• The need for empathy is planned into the curriculum: Opportunities are provided for individuals to see things through others’ eyes and encourage them to value different opinions; Tasks are designed to enable students to argue in favour of views other than their own.
• Flexibility is planned: Planning anticipates and encourages students to select their own objectives and success criteria, and to decide on and apply their own chosen strategies to solve problems.

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Display celebrates learning behaviours: Display celebrates learning in progress and emphasises the learning processes used.
• Display foregrounds learning strategies: Students are encouraged to consider and adopt the successful learning strategies that are evident in display.
• Diversity is welcomed: The classroom fosters a culture of mutual respect where all views are respected and given due regard.
• Flexibility is prized: Changing tack in light of feedback and personal reflection is seen as part of the pursuit of excellence.

[So the outer ring of the culture wheel then contains only the text in bold]

Title

A Learning-Friendly Culture for Personal Effectiveness

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Personal Effectiveness?

Successful Futures identifies Personal Effectiveness as one of the four Wider Skills for modern life and work and describes it as:

• reflecting on and understanding oneself and others, behaving in effective and appropriate ways; being an effective learner

with the associated sub-skills of:

• self-awareness; confidence and self-esteem; emotional intelligence; the ability to evaluate own learning strengths and areas for development; independence; leadership; social and cultural awareness, ethics.

It involves making good use of all the resources you have at your disposal (i.e. your talents, strengths, skills, energy and time) to enable you to take control of your life and to achieve both work and life goals – to live well in uncertain times.

A well formed Personal Effectiveness habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be reflective about oneself as a learner: understanding how you learn, knowing your learning strengths and how you can exploit them, knowing your learning weaknesses and how you can circumvent them.
• Be self-aware: understanding yourself – having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions; understanding other people – how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them.
• Behave with empathy and understanding towards others: interacting effectively and appropriately in a range of different situations with sensitivity to others; seeking to understand how others are feeling; looking out for the needs of others while pursuing your own goals.
• Make good choices: understanding how to behave and interact so as to get the best from yourself and others. 
• Take responsibility for one’s own development: becoming the master of your own learning destiny, creating plans for self-improvement, intentionally practising to improve the things that really matter to you. 

Spotting the personally effective learners in your classes

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

Create from:

Title – Good learning habits – Personal Effectiveness

Column heading: Your potentially personally effective learners are likely to:

Show interest in and respect for others’ ideas

Listen in order to understand others

Be alert to others’ feelings

Talk about how they learn

Have an accurate view of themselves as learners

Want to improve as learners

Put effort into managing relationships

Work well with others

Enjoy taking on responsibilities

Have plans for their own development

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 form, replace, re-form and strengthen their learning habits.

But don’t worry, you’re not there yet. It takes most teachers between 2 and 3 years to become really fluent with this way of teaching. So, go easy on yourself. Feel determined because small steps often prove to be big levers for change. Have a think about what you might do…

What to stop and start

Here are a few 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.

Create from:

Stop

• Valuing pace over taking a slower, more strategic approach
• Expecting everything to be ‘right first time’
• Attending to detail at the expense of the bigger picture
• Planning everything yourself

Start

• Encouraging students to discuss and decide what needs to be done
• Creating opportunities for students to plan and define their own outcomes
• Discussing with students that only they can manage their own distractions
• Allowing students time to decide on a course of action

Slowly

• Allowing longer for drafting and planning
• Organising displays that show work in progress, your own included.
• Encouraging students to set their own success criteria
• Encouraging students to leave you post-it notes saying what they need to do/know next

Experiment

• Enabling students to agree their longer-term objectives
• Building in time for students to evaluate the effectiveness of their plans
• Building in review times in lessons to enable students to take stock and monitor progress
• Using longer-term projects that require sustained effort and focus

Developing your learning language

Here is a range of things you can say to nudge Planning and Organising. When you use this kind of language you are talking as a learning coach, encouraging 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.

Eventually you will hear some of the questions 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 Planning and Organising gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

My learning talk nudges to encourage Planning and Organising

Teacher talk – as a learning coach

To ensure students do the thinking for themselves, use phrases like these to nudge them to:

Be forward looking:

• What will your end product look like?
• How will you judge the success of what you have done?
• Do you have a contingency plan if that does not work?

Be flexible: 

• Look at what you have done so far – do you need to make any changes?
• Keep a weather eye on how it is going.
• Is your plan working out?

Keep both the big picture and the detail in focus: 

• What is most important here?
• Have you missed anything?
• Are you on track to meet your deadline / objectives?

Be logical and systematic: 

• What needs doing? 
• In what order will you tackle it?
• How will you organise this?

Be alert to possibilities:  

• What will you do if . . . . ?
• That’s interesting – it might cause a re-think.
• That opens up a new line of enquiry, doesn’t it?

Maintain focus:

• How do you plan to see it through?
• How long do you expect it to take?
• What might stop you getting the job done?

Be evaluative: 

• Did you achieve what you intended?
• How can you make this plan more efficient?
• Are you satisfied with what you achieved?

Some ideas to encourage a Planning and Organising frame of mind

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

1. Making students aware of Planning and Organising

How you make students aware of the words that describe the behaviour and why it is important to use it.

Stimulate the beginnings of planning

Secondary

Jumbled up planning

click to enlarge

Can you put these jumbled aspects of planning into a sensible order? Could you use the outcomes to create a planning flowchart with your class to guide future planning?

 

Primary

Timetables . . 

Click to enlarge

Ask the children to think of other things that need a timetable or plan. Start a display table and board of anything the children suggest or collect. You could find some bus and train timetables, a plan of the school and playground or a dinner menu for the term and so on.

A Treasure Map

Plan a treasure hunt around the school. This could have a seasonal theme or simply be a fun one. Use a small area of the school and make a very simple large scale plan. Attach photographs or drawings to help the children follow the plan. Take them on the treasure hunt in small groups and regularly refer to the Treasure Map as a plan.

2. Exploring the language of Planning and Organising

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour

Secondary

A way with words

Collect words that tell you how people plan.

Explore well known sayings

click to enlarge

What do we mean when we say …

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Hit the ground running.

Cross that bridge when you come to it.

3. Using Planning and Organising as a lesson starter

Use a quick starter to key students into the learning behaviour you want to concentrate on in the lesson. i.e. here you are starting up the planning / organising behaviour 

As you get deeper into a lesson you will need activities which, by their very nature, will develop students’ planning and organising AND their understanding of the content.

Here is an idea where, by using planning, students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop a planning habit.

4. Focusing on Planning and Organising as a learning strategy

Draw out the planning behaviour being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to understand the planning and organising process.

5. An activity to highlight and strengthen Planning and Organising

Design specific activities to highlight and strengthen the behaviour

6. Reflecting on Planning

Primary and Secondary

NB. None of the actions above will lead to instant understanding nor instant changes in student behaviour. You will need to drip them in over time and keep building and refreshing your language of learning.

Building effective learning behaviours is about creating a culture in classrooms – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to face difficulty calmly, confidently and creatively. By a ‘culture’ we mean all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’. 

So ‘culture’ concerns the details of the micro-climate that you create in your classrooms. What you do and say, what you notice and commend and what you don’t, what kind of role model of a learner you offer – all these are of the essence. The micro-climate of a classroom can inadvertently stifle, or specifically enhance,  the very behaviours you are seeking to promote.

Does my classroom climate encourage Planning and Organising?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which planning and organising can grow, there are changes in the relationships; what is discussed; how learning is constructed; and in what is celebrated.

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

The changes in relationships include:

• Teachers model flexibility: Teachers model a can-do, flexible approach in the face of mistakes or unexpected events in order to achieve desired outcomes.
• Reflection in action is a learner responsibility: The responsibility for monitoring work in progress and ensuring that it is on track is devolved to students.
• Reflection on action is a learner responsibility: The responsibility for evaluating outcomes against learner generated success criteria is devolved to students.
• Responsibility for maintaining focus lies with learners: There is an expectation that students are accountable for any failure to maintain focus and that it is their job to ensure that their efforts are directed to achieving their goals. 

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Students talk about the future: Students talk about what they are hoping to achieve and how they are planning to achieve it.
• Students discuss the order in which they will do things: Students are encouraged to break plans into small, detailed steps and sequence the steps in order to achieve desired outcomes.
• Students discuss distractions: Distractions, what they are and how to avoid them, are a topic of conversation. Strategies for resuming focus after a distraction are discussed.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Opportunities to think ahead of action: Time is built in for students to consider what they could do / should do, and what could happen / should happen before starting out on a task.
• Tasks with tight deadlines are evident: Forward planning and good time management are needed to meet tight deadlines that dictate the need for pace.
• Lessons link prior and future learning: Lesson starters require students to revisit prior learning and to identify what still needs to be learned.
• Logic matters: Students are expected to create plans that are logical and well thought through, and for critically evaluating the effectiveness of those plans.

The changes in what is celebrated include:

• Effective plans and work in progress are displayed: Display celebrates both the strategies that have been used and significant staging points in the development of the finished article.
• Alternative strategies are captured and praised: There is a classroom culture that recognises and celebrates that there are a number of different ways of achieving the desired outcomes. Enterprising, imaginative approaches are valued as much as using tried and tested routines.
• Written and oral praise celebrates focus: Students are praised by maintaining focus through the hard slog of seeing a plan through to a conclusion.
• Display captures absorption: Images show learners who are absorbed and working ‘in flow’.

[So the outer ring of the culture wheel then contains only the text in bold]

Title

A Learning-Friendly Culture for Planning and Organising

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Planning and Organising ?

Successful Futures identifies Planning and Organising as one of the four Wider Skills for modern life and work and describes it as:

• implementing solutions and executing ideas and monitoring and reflecting on results

with the associated sub-skills of:

• implementing ideas; setting goals; decision making; time management; monitoring and reflecting on results; adapting; checking for accuracy; responsibility and reliability; managing resources. 

Though distinct in meaning, planning and organising are two concepts that complement each other – you simply cannot have one without the other. Because of the nature of planning, the ability to effectively organise is of the utmost importance. Each step of the planning process is simplified when organised properly. Clear plans of action give direction, while effective organisation enables these plans to be realised.

Without planning, organisation lacks direction. Without organisation, planning lacks precision and impact.

A well formed Planning and Organising habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be forward looking: creating clear plans of action to achieve pre-determined goals; identifying end goals or objectives before considering possible action; foreseeing potential obstacles and strategies to circumvent them; resisting the temptation to act impulsively before thinking it through; understanding that time taken planning reduces the time needed for the overall project.
• Be flexible: being alert to how the plan is unfolding and being prepared to tweak the plan when necessary; monitoring progress against the original objectives.
• Keep both the big picture and the detail in focus: attending to detail; identifying and sequencing the detailed steps to ensure that the overall objectives are realised; ensuring that the original objectives do not get lost in the detail.
• Be logical and systematic: ensuring that the necessary tasks are tackled in a logical order; developing a logical strategy for achieving goals.
• Be alert to possibilities: using imagination and creativity to react to new opportunities or unforeseen difficulties. 
• Maintain focus: balancing competing pressures, both external and internal, in order to keep focus on the plan and so achieve intended outcomes. 
• Be evaluative: looking back on the project, learning from experience, considering the extent to which the original objectives have been met, reflecting on how to plan more effectively in future.

Spotting the good planners in your classes

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

Create from below:

Title – Good learning habits – Planning and Organising

Column heading: Your potentially good planners and organisers are likely to:

Resist impulsivity, think ahead of taking action

Think about the order in which they do things

Arrive prepared for lessons / learning

Can follow a (given) plan of action

Sort out what needs to be done

Use time efficiently, submit work on time

Work with accuracy

Keep the end in mind

Apply effort for an extended period

Take stock of progress

Act on feedback

Think about how/why they have been successful