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 Creativity and Innovation?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which creativity and innovation 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: 

• Self-directed learning: Students create their own end goals and success criteria.
• Teachers model creativity and innovation: Teachers share their own curiosity and questions, their experiments and the risks they are taking, the mistakes they have made.
• Students make choices: Students are encouraged to decide on the strategies and tools for the job in hand, and from where / whom they will seek advice.
• Teachers stand back: Teachers allow students to fail (in safety), they coach, they resist the temptation to tell, and intervene only when necessary.

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Talk encourages speculation: ‘Could Be’ type language encourages students to speculate and consider alternatives. ‘Is’ language is kept to a minimum. 
• Risk taking is encouraged: Students are encouraged and supported to step into risky challenging areas, failure is to be expected and learned from, doing it differently next time. 
• Creative insight is provoked: Alternative perspectives are explored. Considering a situation from different angles helps new approaches and solutions to emerge.
• Changes of mind are discussed: Changing tack in light of reflection and incoming feedback is part of the learning conversation. Adaptability is seen as a strategy for achieving excellence. 

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Tasks stimulate creative responses: Lessons include opportunities to pursue open-ended, ‘wild’ tasks that have unpredictable outcomes.
• Student questions shape learning: Students’ questions and areas of interest are built into lessons so that they can explore their own areas of interest and uncertainty.
• Opportunities to speculate are planned: There are regular opportunities for learners to speculate on what they could do / should do.
• Challenge stimulates creativity: Tasks are constructed to challenge and to take learners out of their comfort zone, to create situations where tried and tested strategies do not suffice.

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Questions are as important as answers: Good questions are valued as highly as good answers. Staff and other students draw attention to interesting questions, thoughts and wonderings.
• Other ways of doing things are valued: Unlikely, unusual, unexpected, quirky ideas and strategies are welcomed and explored. 
• Display captures the uncertain nature of learning: Work in progress, changes of direction and failed lines of enquiry feature in display which illustrates the iterative nature of problem solving.
• Novelty on display: Display illustrates alternative, unusual ways of solving the same problem and creative /unexpected solutions.

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

Title

A Learning-Friendly Culture for Creativity and Innovation

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Creativity and Innovation?

Successful Futures identifies Creativity and Innovation as one of the four Integral Skills for modern life and work and describes it as:

• generating ideas, openness and courage to explore ideas and express opinions

with the associated sub-skills of:

• generating ideas; curiosity and inquisitiveness; the courage to explore and develop ideas; the ability to turn ideas into action; planning and managing projects; identifying opportunities; acting on opportunities and ideas and turning them into financial, cultural or social value.

Creativity and Innovation – what’s the difference?

The main difference between creativity and innovation is the focus. Creativity is about unleashing the potential of the mind to conceive new ideas. Those concepts could manifest themselves in any number of ways, but most often they become something we can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. However, creative ideas can also be simply thought experiments within one person’s mind.

Innovation, on the other hand, is concerned with the work required to make a creative idea into a viable solution.

The three phases of creativity and innovation are:

• Inspiration – when the problem that motivates solution-finding is identified;
• Generating ideas – the process of generating and developing ideas to solve the problem (This is the Creative phase, rich with imagination and blue-sky thinking);
• Implementing – the activities that enable a creative idea to move from the drawing board to become a reality (This is the Innovation phase, rich with the hard work of translating the creative idea into reality).

Any project may loop back to an earlier phase more than once as a team explores, develops, and implements its ideas.

A well formed Creativity and Innovation habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be curious about possibilities: asking generative or hypothetical questions that open up new lines of enquiry; displaying a healthy scepticism about received wisdom; willing to question the tried and tested / the status quo and the assumptions that underpin it; willing to pursue own line of enquiry even if they do not know where it may lead.
• Be imaginative: prepared to suspend reality and break the rules to explore other possibilities; turning ‘what is’ into ‘what could be’; making unexpected or unusual links between apparently dissimilar things / ideas; prepared to follow a hunch / intuition ‘just to see what happens’; thinking outside the box.
• Make best use of what and who is available: willing to find and access available expertise where necessary; exploiting previously unnoticed potential; adopting strategies that do not immediately appear relevant; making enterprising use of all types of resources.
• Be emotionally robust: willing to take a risk and explore the unknown, working at / beyond their own comfort zone; having a can-do outlook; excited by challenge; unafraid to ‘fail’ in pursuit of new understandings.
• Create flexible plans to realise their goals: prepared to take time to decide on a course of action, having first identified the ‘problem’ they wish to solve; able to identify and sequence sub-tasks; foreseeing potential obstacles and planning how to avoid them; balancing attention to detail with the big picture; recognising that success rarely comes easily or first time; monitoring how plans are progressing; evaluating outcomes; starting afresh when things do not work out as anticipated.

Spotting the Creative, Innovative learners in your classes

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

Create from below

Title – Good learning habits – Creativity and Innovation

Column heading: Your potentially creative, innovative learners are likely to:

Enjoy playing with ideas

Ask ‘awkward’ / what if . . .  questions

Question the status quo

Daydream

Do things ‘differently’

Follow their intuition

Find ways to make the best of a bad job

Understand that failure is to be expected and learned from

Take time to decide what they want to do/achieve

Keep a close eye on progress, changing tack if necessary

Find ways to access others’ expertise

Come up with novel / unexpected outcomes.

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 empath, interdependence 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 to review both content and process in lessons and to consider where else they might apply new learning.
• The need for empathy

• and interdependence 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 Integral 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,

• interdependence

• 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.

Stop

• Talking mostly about content and knowledge at the expense of the learning process
• Doing the planning and the reflection for them
• Intervening too early
• Spoon-feeding
• Limiting opportunities for choice
• Assuming that their values match yours

Start

• Talking about the process of learning
• Infusing learning behaviours into lesson objectives
• Praising effort, stickability, control of negative emotions
• Placing responsibility with students to make appropriate choices
• Giving more time to plan what to do before actually doing it
• Talking about the beliefs, values and feelings of others

Start slowly

• Building opportunities for students to explain how they are learning into review points
• Injecting greater challenge
• Exploring how techniques and ideas in one subject can be applied elsewhere
• Withdrawing the scaffold so that students do more for themselves
• Allowing them to fail in safety
• Talking about how initial plans / ideas almost always need revising

Experiment with

• Enabling students to set their own targets for learning development
• Peer to peer teaching
• Allowing students to design their own goals, objective, success criteria and milestones
• Building in time to reflect on the process of planning
• Creating opportunities for students to explain their beliefs and feelings

Developing your learning language

Here is a range of things you can say to nudge healthy, confident learning. 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 healthy, confident learning gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

My learning talk nudges to encourage Healthy, Confident Individuality

Teacher talk – as a learning coach

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

Be resilient: 

• Give it a go – see what happens
• Don’t give up – I’m confident you can do this!
• If it’s not difficult, what are you going to learn?

Be self-confident:

• What should you do?
• What do you believe is the best course of action?
• What would a principled response be to . . . . . ?

Be resourceful: 

• Who might be of help here?
• Who is the expert? What do they say?
• What can you find out about this? How will you go about finding it?

Develop the skill of transfer:

• Where / when else might you use this?
• Could you use this outside of school?
• Has this got any applications in other subjects?

Be forward thinking:

• What are you trying to achieve? How will you do that?
• What do you learn from that? How does it change your outlook?
• Have you considered all of the available evidence?

Have self-respect: 

• Don’t lose faith – you can do anything you want!
• If you don’t believe in yourself / your ideas, who else will?
• How can you hold true to your principles? 

Be self-aware: 

• How are you learning this?
• How are you improving as a learner? What will you work on next?
• Which learning strengths can you / did you bring to this?

Some ideas to encourage a Healthy, Confident frame of mind

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

1. Making students aware of Healthy, Confident individuality

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

Helping students to face difficulty with confidence

Helping students to be forward looking

Helping students to understand that excellence takes time, effort, and flexibility

Primary and Secondary

Helping learners to apply effective learning behaviours to real-world situations

Primary and Secondary

2. Exploring the language of monitoring and revising

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour to support self-confidence

3. Building confidence by exploring possible strategies

Use a quick starter to build students’ belief that they have the strategies to be successful.

Primary and Secondary

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

Here is an idea where, by using healthy, confident learning, students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop an healthy, confident habit.

4. Focusing on Healthy, Confident Individuality as a learning strategy

Draw out the healthy, confident behaviours being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to understand the healthy, confident learning processes.

5. Two activities to highlight and strengthen the ability to make the most of what and who is available

Design specific activities to highlight and strengthen the behaviour

6. Reflecting on Healthy, Confident learning

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 healthy, confident individuality?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which healthy, confident individuals 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:

• Coaching, not telling, is the prevailing culture: Students are coached through failure and encouraged to learn from it to foster a growth mindset.
• Students are encouraged to make choices: Students are responsible for making choices about which learning strategies/behaviours to employ.
• Active learning is evident: Learners are required to find things out for themselves.
• Students are accountable for their behaviours: Responsibility for doing ‘the right thing’ lies with students.

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Students talk about the learning process: Students engage in meta-cognitive talk as they discuss their learning.
• Teachers are alert to opportunities to transfer: Teachers draw attention to the ways in which students are learning and how these behaviours might apply elsewhere.
• The relative value of varying ideas is a topic of conversation: Students are encouraged to discuss evidence, to consider the relative strengths of different arguments, and so arrive at sound judgements.
• Explanations, not assertions, are required: Students are encouraged to explain and defend their viewpoints.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Dual focused objectives include learning behaviours and content: Learning objectives reveal both the content to be learned and the learning behaviours to employed. Both are the focus of reflection during student-led review points.
• Challenge is high but do-able: learning is planned to stretch learning rather than simply consolidate understanding.
• Students find things out for themselves: Effective search skills are taught and regularly exercised.
• Empathy is evident: There are planned opportunities to see the world through others’ eyes.
• Reflection time is planned: Time to think ahead, to plan what to do, to monitor progress, is built into lessons.

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Display is more than ‘the finished article’: Display celebrates: learning in progress and emphasises the learning processes used; plans, drafts and revisions.
• Effort is rewarded over attainment: Success as a result of effort is valued over the effortless success of able learners working on materials that they find less than challenging.
• Transfer is a topic of interest: Knowledge, and skills learned in one context and applied elsewhere are noted.
• Generous actions that benefit others are celebrated:  Students are rewarded for contributions to the learning of others and of the groups within which they work.

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

Title

A Learning Friendly Culture for Healthy, Confident Individuals

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Healthy, Confident Individuals?

Successful Futures defines healthy, confident individuals who:

• have secure values and are establishing their spiritual and ethical beliefs;
• are building their mental and emotional well-being by developing confidence, resilience and empathy;
• apply knowledge about the impact of diet and exercise on physical and mental health in their daily lives;
• know how to find the information and support to keep safe and well;
• take part in physical activity;
• take measured decisions about lifestyle and manage risk;
• have the confidence to participate in performance;
• form positive relationships based upon trust and mutual respect;
• face and overcome challenge;
• have the skills and knowledge to manage everyday life as independently as they can;
• and are ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society.

Some of these traits are learning behaviours, where others are things we do (like take part in physical activity) or an outcome (like ready to lead fulfilling lives).

Drawing out the learning behaviours embedded in this description of the healthy, confident individual, students need to have a strong, positive view of self, to understand how, through their efforts, they achieve success in all areas of their lives, to be able to discover what they need to know and apply this knowledge appropriately, and to have the skill and disposition to manage themselves, to be self-regulators.

A well formed Healthy, Confident learning habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be resilient: enjoy and rise to challenges, have a ‘can do’ outlook, take responsible risks in pursuit of their own goals.
• Be self-confident: develop a secure set of values from which to interact with others; able to explain and defend one’s values and beliefs; develop the ability to act in accordance with one’s personal values.
• Be resourceful: Draw on a full range of resources from the wider world in order to expand horizons and discover information of value.
• Develop the skill of transfer: See where and when to use existing knowledge / skills in both similar and dissimilar situations; be alert to opportunities to use school-based learning in the wider world. 
• Be forward thinking: be prepared to think ahead before taking action; able to weigh up the pros and cons of possible ways forward; willing to reconsider decisions as new evidence emerges.
• Have self-respect: build a strong and positive view of self; have a strong belief in one’s personal efficacy; learn within a culture of positive relationships which respect and value the unique contribution each student can make.
• Be self-aware: understanding how they learn so that they can play to their strengths and improve on areas of weakness; having a sense of growing as a learner. 

The key ‘integral skills’ most closely linked to Healthy and Confident individuality are:

• personal effectiveness – reflecting on and understanding oneself and others, behaving in effective and appropriate ways; being an effective learner.
• planning and organising – implementing solutions and executing ideas and monitoring and reflecting on results.

Spotting the Healthy, Confident learners in your classes

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

create from

Title – Good learning habits – Healthy, Confident Individuals

Column heading: Your potentially healthy, confident learners are likely to:

Adopt a ‘can do’ outlook

Pursue their own goals with confidence and tenacity

Act based on a secure set of personal values

Think before they act

Be willing and able to broaden their perspectives based on experience

Exhibit self-confidence born of secure values

Sense where else they can apply new learning

Believe in themselves

Learn with and from others

Understand how they learn

Be able to explain how they are improving as a learner

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

• taking responsibility for dealing with all of their misdemeanours
• repeating yourself – it reduces the need for students to listen attentively
• noticing for them, telling them what to notice
• expecting perfection at the first attempt
• doing all of the explaining for them – it is their job
• leading all of the plenaries / review points

Start

• exploring/discussing the beliefs, feelings, motives and values of others
• considering why others might see things differently
• gradually shifting responsibility towards learners
• modelling active listening techniques
• creating time for students to distil the learning for themselves at review points
• praising flexible behaviours that lead to a significant re-think

Start slowly

• exploring conflicting viewpoints and contentious issues
• listening beyond the facts to the values/beliefs of the speaker, and what is not being said
• pairing up learners / creating groups with differing views
• creating opportunities to weigh conflicting evidence
• encouraging students to do the same thing, but in another way

Experiment with

• creating difficult situations that require an empathetic response
• engineering conflict that students need to resolve for themselves
• playing Devil’s Advocate
• using attentive noticing as a springboard into questioning, making links, imagining and reasoning
• training students as coaches

Developing your learning language

Here is a range of things you can say to nudge ethical, informed learning. 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 ethical, informed citizenship gathers pace see if you can detect students who talk, or think, in these ways.

My learning talk nudges to encourage Ethical, Informed learning

Teacher talk – as a learning coach

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

Be outward-looking, reflective learners:  

• Hold on – just think it through before you start to . . . . .
• Not sure I agree with that, but give me a bit more. I am interested in what you are saying.
• Weighing the evidence, what should you/we do?

Think logically: 

• What might happen if you . . . . . .?
• What are the implications of  . . . . ?
• Are there any reasons to not . . . . .?

Adopt an empathetic outlook:

• Who, yourself aside, will this benefit?
• What do the others think?
• How will you find common ground so that you can work with . . . .

Behave with integrity: 

• What is the right thing to do, in these circumstances?
• On balance, what do you think you should do?
• Where does the buck stop? Are you sure that this is the right course of action?

Be attentive:

• Did you hear that? What do you think of it?
• What is that telling you? What are the implications?
• What do you notice? What does it mean?

Be perceptive: 

• What is important here? What do you think is irrelevant?
• What would you say is the big idea here?
• Why do you think that this is important / unimportant?

Some ideas to encourage an ethical, informed frame of mind

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

1. Making students aware of ethical, informed citizenship

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

Helping students to identify what is and is not important

Helping students to be attentive noticers

Helping students to be attentive listeners

Helping students to think through what ‘should happen’

Primary and Secondary

Helping students to understand ‘fairness’

Primary and Secondary

2. Exploring the language of Empathy

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour

3. Using Questioning as a lesson/project 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 questioning behaviour

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

Here is an idea where, by using empathy, students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop an ethical, informed habit.

4. Focusing on responding with empathy

Draw out the learning behaviours being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to understand that learning is a shared activity

5. An activity to highlight and strengthen interdependence

Design specific activities to highlight and strengthen the behaviour

6. Reflecting on Ethical, Informed citizenship

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 ethical, informed citizenship?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which ethical, informed citizens 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:

• Students take responsibility: Students are enabled to take personal responsibility for their actions, their behaviour, and for the decisions they make.
• Teachers model curiosity: Teachers model their own interest in alternative points of view.
• Coaching is in evidence: Students are coached to explore what they think and why, rather than being told.
• Reflection is a learner activity: Reflection is done by, not for, learners.

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Students discuss difficult issues: Students are encouraged to talk through disagreements and difference of opinion.
• Rights and responsibilities are a focus of conversation: Talk explores the balance between rights and responsibilities, and how students think and feel.
• Different ways of doing things are discussed: Alternative strategies are discussed, and their potential impact explored.
• Silence is valued: ‘Wait time’ deepens understanding and thoughtfulness.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Empathy is evident: Opportunities are provided for students to see things through others’ eyes, to value differing opinions, and to display care and concern for others.
• Differences of opinion are provoked and explored: Tasks are designed to expose learners to differences of opinion and different ways of interpreting the same information.
• Tasks are designed to encourage evaluation: Tasks encourage students to employ sound reasoning to evaluate evidence and counter evidence.
• Opportunities for quiet reflection are evident: Time for learners to reflect, review and consider issues are routinely built into lessons.

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Diversity is valued: Diverse opinions are given due regard. Disagreements are valued as learning opportunities.
• Good citizenship matters: Contributions to the greater good of the community are celebrated.
• Mutual respect is valued: All contributions are heard and valued in a culture of mutual respect.
• Flexibility is important: Flexibility / changes of mind are re-framed as a necessary stage in effective learning.
• Depth is important: Attention to detail and accuracy are prized over swiftness.

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

Title

A Learning-Friendly Culture for Ethical, Informed Citizens

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Ethical, Informed Citizens ?

Successful Futures defines ethical, informed citizens who:

• find, evaluate and use evidence in forming views
• engage with contemporary issues based upon their knowledge and values
• understand and exercise their human and democratic responsibilities and rights
• understand and consider the impact of their actions when making choices and acting
• are knowledgeable about their culture, community, society and the world, now and in the past
• respect the needs and rights of others, as a member of a diverse society
• show their commitment to the sustainability of the planet
• and are ready to be citizens of Wales and the world

Some of these traits are learning behaviours, where others are the outcomes of adopting an ethical, informed stance.

Drawing out the learning behaviours embedded in this description of the ethical, informed citizen, students need to take responsibility for their actions, be attentive, open and empathetic to different ideas and views while maintaining a principled, questioning stance in considering the worth and value of something.

A well formed ethical, informed learning habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Be outward-looking, reflective learners: being interested in others who hold different views and beliefs; willing to review and weigh the available evidence, making decisions in light of careful reflection; being prepared to change outlook as further evidence emerges; being able to accommodate others’ perspectives into an increasingly diverse personal outlook. 
• Think logically: using logical and rational skills to evaluate evidence and counter evidence; using ‘if this . . .then that’ type reasoning to consider the possible impact of decisions; developing a logical strategy for achieving goals.
• Adopt an empathetic outlook: seeing things from other people’s point of view; demonstrating tolerance and empathy for others; forming views with the greater good in mind.
• Behave with integrity: able to balance rights with responsibilities, willing to take personal responsibility for the actions they take and the choices they make.
• Be attentive: being alert to the implications of what they hear and what they see, attentive to detail, able to sense patterns and make accurate inferences.
• Be perceptive: discerns what is, and what is not, important, able to separate key points from the underlying detail and to explain them with clarity to others.

The key ‘integral skill’ most closely linked to Ethical and Informed citizenship is:

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

Spotting the ethical, informed learners in your classes

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

Being a learning powered teacher means developing a keen awareness of the subtleties of your students’ learning behaviours.

Create from

Title – Good learning habits – Ethical and Informed Citizens

Column heading: Your potentially ethical, informed citizens are likely to:

Know right from wrong, and act accordingly

Make decisions having weighed the evidence

Think before acting

Know what is, and what is not, important

Be alert to and interested in what they see and hear

Consider the likely impact of the decisions they make

Act with the greater good in mind

Show interest in other people’s point of view

Be able to work with others they do not agree with

Take responsibility for what they do, and do not, do

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

• Telling/giving students exactly what they need
• Telling them how to do things
• Doing the speculation for them
• Expecting perfection first time round
• Deciding the composition of all groups

Start

• Offering more choices over how to complete a task
• Responding more speculatively to student questions
• Placing responsibility with students to make appropriate choices
• Valuing imagination as part of your subject area (if you do not do so already)
• Providing drafting and re-drafting opportunities
• Praising thinking that leads to a significant re-think

Start slowly

• Devising more open-ended activities
• Acting as coach rather than instructor
• Playing creative thinking games and using guided visualisation techniques
• Offering students the opportunity to explore the wider picture
• Displaying work (and thinking) in progress
• Allowing students to decide whether to work alone or together

Experiment with

• Intriguing students with something that is open to multiple interpretations
• Looking for different ways to solve the same problem
• Playing Devil’s Advocate
• Encouraging peer coaching
• Planning review times to enable students to take stock and monitor progress.
• Refusing to accept individual responses to group tasks

Some ideas to encourage an Enterprising, Creative frame of mind

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

1. Making students aware of Enterprising, Creative learning

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

Helping students to engage their imaginations

Growing Interdependence

Draw out the interdependent behaviours being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

2. Exploring the language of enterprise

How you might extend the language and understanding of this behaviour

Secondary

A way with words

click to enlarge

Collect words that tell you how people learn to Capitalise on what is around them.

Explore well known sayings.

What do we mean when we say …

There is more than one way to skin a cat

Making the best of a bad job

A bit ‘Heath Robinson’

3a. Using Revising 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 revising ( Re-thinking) behaviour

Primary and Secondary

3b. Counter attitudes that limit perseverance, strengthen the positives.

Consider what your students feel about being stuck, facing challenge, and risking failure. Think how you might adjust your language to re-frame their outlook.

Primary and Secondary

3c. Using Imagining 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 imagining behaviour

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

Here is an idea where, by using enterprising, creative learning, students will gain an understanding of the content AND will develop an enterprising, creative habit.

4. Focusing on generating questions as a learning strategy

Draw out the enterprising, creative behaviours being used in a thinking routine.

Primary and Secondary

And here is an idea that will help students to understand the enterprising, creative learning processes.

5. An activity to highlight and strengthen an understanding that learning is a collaborative process.

Design specific activities to highlight and strengthen the behaviour

6. Reflecting on Enterprising, Creative learning

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 enterprising, creative learning?

In the classroom that is a learning-friendly environment within which enterprising, creative contributors 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: 

• Students enabled to make choices: Students are expected to make choices about their learning and decide whether to work alone or with others.
• Teachers model fallibility: Adults take risks and get things wrong.
• Students self-monitor: The responsibility for monitoring and adapting rests with learners.
• Group work responsibility rests with learners: Groups are enabled to decide with whom they will work, and make decisions about how they will work. 

The changes in what is talked about include:

• Students are alerted to sources of support: Students discuss what and who might be of assistance.
• Alternative strategies are explored: Talk is about alternative strategies to solve problems.
• Changes of mind are discussed: The importance of changing one’s mind in light of new learning is explored.  
• Students coach each other: Peer to peer coaching is evident
• Student dialogue deepens learning: Group work promotes dialogue between learners.
• Possibilities are explored: What if, Could be type language stimulates speculation and the exploration of possibilities.

The changes in how learning is constructed include:

• Collaboration is orchestrated: Tasks mostly require, rather than invite, collaboration.
• Challenge is evident: Students are offered challenging materials / activities that take them out of their comfort zone and force them to experiment and take risks.
• Not all tasks have pre-determined outcomes: Open ended tasks are in evidence.
• Feedback promotes reflection: Feedback promotes reflection on what is needed to improve both as a learner and in terms of content understanding.
• Disagreements are created and resolved: Group work intentionally creates the need for conflict resolution and consensus building.

The changes in how learning is celebrated include:

• Mistakes are re-framed: Mistakes are celebrated as part of the journey to excellence.
• Display illustrates work in progress: Display illustrates work in progress and the thinking processes behind it.
• Originality is celebrated: Novel, unexpected solutions are celebrated, originality is valued over the tried and tested. 
• Contributions to the greater good are identified and celebrated: Generous acts of kindness and support between learners are celebrated and sometimes captured in display.
• Flexibility matters: Flexibility is seen as a key learning behaviour.

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

Title

A Learning-Friendly Culture for Enterprising, Creative Contributors

INSERT CULTURE WHEEL HERE

What do we mean by Enterprising, Creative contributors?

Successful Futures defines enterprising, creative contributors who:

• connect and apply their knowledge and skills to create ideas and products
• think creatively to re-frame and solve problems
• identify and grasp opportunities
• take measured risks
• lead and play different roles in teams effectively and responsibly
• express ideas and emotions through different media
• give of their energy and skills so that other people will benefit
• and are ready to play a full part in life and work

Some of these traits are learning behaviours, where others are things we do, or are outcomes.

Drawing out the learning behaviours embedded in this description of the enterprising, creative contribution, students need to have social awareness, be effective team players with the ability to lead and manage others through difficulties, be willing to take risks, and to tackle problems from novel perspectives to create original solutions.

What does being an Enterprising, Creative contributor involve?

A well formed enterprising, creative learning habit involves being ready, willing, and able to:

• Adopt an enterprising frame of mind: drawing on the full range of resources from the wider world; making good use of what and who is around you; creating novel solutions.
• Be Emotionally Brave: ready to try new ideas / things out to see where they might lead, willing to take risks in breaking new ground. Unafraid of ‘having a go’.  
• Be Collaborative: working constructively with others; understanding when to step forward, or to lead, or to take more of a back seat when working with others; knowing when and how to stick to their own point of view when others need convincing; being skilled at seeking compromise and building consensus. 
• Be creative: being prepared to step into the unknown and explore areas of uncertainty; using imagination and intuition to put themselves through new experiences or to explore possibilities; looking at things in different ways; producing original, novel and inventive outcomes. 
• Be Interdependent: knowing when to ‘go it alone’ and when to seek support from others; willing and able to offer support to others when necessary; contributing to the greater good.
• Be Flexible and Adaptable: Being flexible, revising plans in the light of different circumstances, monitoring and reviewing how things are going and seeing new opportunities and fresh ideas all in pursuit of wanting to be the best they can be.

The key ‘integral skills’ most closely linked to Enterprising and Creative contribution are:

• creativity and innovation – generating ideas, openness and courage to explore ideas and express opinions.
• planning and organising – implementing solutions and executing ideas and monitoring and reflecting on results.
• critical thinking and problem solving – marshalling critical and logical processes to analyse and understand situations and develop responses and solutions.

Spotting the Enterprising, Creative learners in your classes

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

Being a learning powered teacher means developing a keen awareness of the subtleties of your students’ learning behaviours.

Create from

Title – Good learning habits – Enterprising and Creative Contributors

Column heading: Your potentially enterprising and creative learners are likely to:

Use a wide range of resources and strategies with discrimination

Unafraid of ‘having a go’

Enjoy doing new things, dislike the tried and tested

Look at things ‘differently’, from an unexpected angle

Create novel, unique solutions

Know when to go it alone and when to involve others

Share their ideas generously

Enjoy the cut and thrust of learning with / from others

Watch and adopt the successful strategies of others

Seek to improve on first attempts

Monitor how it is going and evaluate how it went 

See failure as feedback and a natural part of the learning process

————————————————————————–

Learning behaviours for Enterprising, Creative Contributors

Building enterprising frames of mind (Capitalising): drawing on the full range of resources from the wider world; making good use of what and who is around you; creating novel solutions.

Building Emotionally Brave learners (Perseverance): ready to try new ideas / things out to see where they might lead, willing to take risks in breaking new ground. Unafraid of ‘having a go’.  

Building Collaborative learners (Collaboration): working constructively with others; understanding when to step forward, or to lead, or to take more of a back seat when working with others; knowing when and how to stick to their own point of view when others need convincing; being skilled at seeking compromise and building consensus. 

Building creativity (Imagining): being prepared to step into the unknown and explore areas of uncertainty; using imagination and intuition to put themselves through new experiences or to explore possibilities; looking at things in different ways; producing original, novel and inventive outcomes. 

Building Interdependent learners (Interdependence): knowing when to ‘go it alone’ and when to seek support from others; willing and able to offer support to others when necessary; contributing to the greater good.

Building Strategically Flexible learners (Revising): Being flexible, revising plans in the light of different circumstances, monitoring and reviewing how things are going and seeing new opportunities and fresh ideas all in pursuit of wanting to be the best they can be.

The Donaldson report, Successful Futures, recommends that the ‘wider skills’ of critical thinking and problem solving, planning and organising, creativity and innovation, and personal effectiveness be built into the curriculum at all phases, not only at Key Stage 4 as was previously the case.

The key ‘wider skills’ that underpin Enterprising and Creative contribution are:

• creativity and innovation – generating ideas, openness and courage to explore ideas and express opinions.
• planning and organising – implementing solutions and executing ideas and monitoring and reflecting on results.
• critical thinking and problem solving – marshalling critical and logical processes to analyse and understand situations and develop responses and solutions.

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 ‘integral 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.