Unit 2 of Playing the Learning Power Game looked at three aspects of the Teachers’ Palette framework…relating, talking and celebrating. Unit 3 concentrates on the focal point in that framework, Constructing, where classroom culture meets curriculum culture. What can teachers do with a given curriculum to ensure it is ‘taught’ or perhaps ‘learnt’ in a way that will enhance and strengthen students’ learning behaviours?

This unit is about direct teaching, curriculum design and planning lessons. It’s about how teachers handle the day to day, hour by hour stuff that will enable their students to understand themselves as learners. It’s about looking at the curriculum in general and thinking about how to infuse learning behaviours into it. It’s about thinking and planning schemes of work or day to day lessons to ensure students consciously use and improve their learning behaviours. It’s about making learning power come alive across the curriculum.

As with Unit 2, Unit 3 considers Constructing through the lens of the 4 key learning behaviours – perseverance, questioning, collaboration and revising.

Absorbing learning habits into the whole curriculum

Section 3A  of the programme considers the transition from content-only planning through to curriculum planning that integrates progression in content with progression in learning behaviours.

The level of detail in curriculum plans varies in part due to the time-frame of the plan. A yearly plan for a subject or year group will necessarily be more broad-brush than a medium term plan for a unit of work, which in turn will be less detailed than an individual lesson plan. All such plans identify what is to be taught, and most will indicate how it will be taught and assessed, but fewer identify and plan for the learning behaviours that students will require to access this content, nor for the development of those learning behaviours.

This aspect of the programme is of particular interest to senior managers.

Absorbing learning habits into units of work and lessons

Section 3B considers how teachers might plan a unit of work and then just one lesson to ensure learning behaviours are firmly embedded. In fact without the use of learning behaviours the plan would be unsuccessful. It looks at what the stages of filling in blank unit plans might be? It looks at possible must haves and top tips for planning a worthwhile lesson. Teachers will find all sorts of tips, formats and examples to get them going.

Absorbing learning-rich activities into lessons

Section 3C explores different types of learning activities and the learning behaviours that they stimulate.

Activities come in all shapes and sizes – some are highly structured by the teacher, while others encourage learners to engage in independent enquiry; some are brief events in a part of a lesson, while others may extend over a period of days or weeks. No activity type is particularly ‘better’ than any other as each serves a different purpose and requires/activates different levels of learner independence. As with most things, variety is key and planning should range across all activity types over a period of time/unit of work.

‘Murder Hunt’ (see below) is an ‘Assembling’ activity because students need to identify and eliminate all of the irrelevant information and red herrings. Remove the irrelevant information in advance and it becomes a ‘Manipulating’ activity, organising the relevant clues without the need to think critically about their relevance.

Likewise, a ‘Manipulating’ activity can be turned into an ‘Assembling’ activity with a few tweaks. In its ‘Manipulating’ format, rebuilding a cut up Tin Tin cartoon is little more than a jigsaw puzzle. But – adding a couple of pieces from a similar but different Tin Tin cartoon, or even removing a couple of key pieces and inviting students to create their own replacements, introduces the need for a more critical, ‘Assembling’ type approach.

For more ideas, there are a number of ‘Assembling’ type activities in The Teachers’ Toolkit (by Paul Ginnis), including ‘Murder Hunt’.

VIEW MURDER HUNT

Absorbing the foundational four learning behaviours into lessons

Here teachers will find a unique catalogue to explore. It has over 100 ideas that they might blend into theirr lesson designs.

These ideas are organised into 4 categories for each of the 4 foundational learning behaviours. The 4 categories are:

• Visible Thinking Routines – Some visible thinking routines to activate each of these learning behaviours;
• Classroom Activities – Some activities to strengthen each of these learning behaviours;
• Monitoring Strategies – Some strategies for checking how each of these learning behaviours are developing;
• Exemplar Lessons – A lesson plan that integrates each of the four learning behaviours into a complete lesson.

It’s a must-have pick and mix. Expect staff to come back to it frequently.

This routine helps students to reflect on how and why their thinking/understanding is changing.

Remind students of the topic you have been working on. Ask them to respond to each of the sentence stems: I used to think…, Now, I think…

Alternatively ask students to write down their views at the beginning of a topic. Invite them to revisit & update their answer during and at the end in light of what has been learned.

Or, at the beginning of a lesson ask students to write down what they understand by a particular term that will be explored in the coming lesson (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson, ask them to write down what they now understand by the term.

Here teachers will find, for each of the 8 behaviours:

A staged way of introducing the behaviour by:

1. Firstly… making students aware of the use and importance of a habit…when, where, why, how they could be using it;
2. Then... exploring the learning habit a little more through its language;
3. Try... using the behaviour as a lesson starter to tune students into using it;
4. Then start... blending the behaviour into the way teachers teach content, using specific strategies to deepen content understanding;
5. Ensure… students reflect on the success or otherwise of their new frame of mind as a result of consciously using the behaviour.

The content of this section encourages teachers to play with introducing more learning behaviours.

All 8 sections follow the same pattern:

• a short description / reminder of the learning behaviour;
• an indication of the classroom culture that will support and encourage the learning behaviour (see examples to the right);
• some ideas for introducing and talking about the behaviour, with age-appropriate suggestions for younger and older students;
• some lesson starter activities using the behaviour;
• a visible thinking routine and a classroom activity to develop the behaviour;
• and resources for helping students to reflect on how they have been using the behaviour.

The warp and weft of learning power is a tapestry of activities on the part of both teachers and learners. The warp of Learning Power is made up of the learning behaviours you want students to develop. These are developed and woven together by the weft of all the different methods that a teacher has at their disposal: the language they use and the explicit attention they pay to the ‘how’ of learning; the activities they make available, and how these are framed for students; and the aspects of learning power that teachers model in a dozen different ways, throughout the school day.

Having learned about the two models of the approach the unit shows teachers that the whole point of building learning powers is to do just that, to build the learning behaviours, not simply to name and use them. The diagram alongside – Learning: Poles Apart – offers an outline view of this journey but the steps of this journey have taken shape over the past seven years with ideas influenced by Bloom’s taxonomy of the affective domain of learning. It is this detailed scaling of the learning dispositions, shown in the second diagram, that will guide teachers to make sense of, guide, enable and track their learners’ journey over time.

Unit 1 gives teachers opportunities to;

• discover and understand what ‘good learners’ tend to be like
• look at themselves through a learning behaviour lens
• tentatively consider the learning behaviours of a couple of students
• remind themselves of how learning behaviours progress

In getting to grips with the growth of learning power teachers take a personal look at themselves as a learner and the learning behaviours they tend to use. This self- analysis results in a learning profile showing their learning strengths and the behaviours they find tricky and would like to improve. This sets the stage for teachers to begin profiling their pupils.

Having made their own profile and one for a couple of their students; a low and a high attaining student, teachers then begin on the main task of profiling each of their students. The unit offers plenty of help on how this might be done and these profiles will give teachers a new insight into what makes the difference in how students approach and achieve in learning. It’s a fascinating exercise, the results of which will henceforth influence their practice.

The profiles overall will provide leaders with interesting food for thought about, for example;

• Which phase of behaviours appear to be more / less secure across the board
• Which learning behaviour is the least well developed across the whole school
• What teachers have learned about groups of students. E.g. boys/girls, pupil premium, and others.
• Whether there are differences in types and phases of learning behaviours used by high and low achieving students

To help ensure this data is collected and analysed the Unit offers plenty of useful formats, nudges and suggestions together with a scheduled Professional Learning Team meeting to support this new way of thinking about learning.

This section of the programme will be the biggest call on staff time; not in reading the material but in collecting the data. This heavy lifting needs to be finished in about 6 or 7 weeks. But this should be no hardship since armed with this fascinating data teachers can look forward to shifting their practice in order to make a difference as tackled in Unit 2.

The content builds on what teachers have discovered about their students’ learning characteristics in Unit 1 and suggests interventions tailored to particular levels of learner development. The changes in practice might be about;

• Shifting the emphasis towards learners taking increasing responsibility for their own development. i.e. students asking more of the questions, monitoring their own learning or making more choices
• Moving away from ‘telling’ whenever possible and adopting the role of coach
• Showing ways in which you, too, are a learner, to model being a learner and displaying uncertainty
• Turning each of the learning behaviours into a set of casual prompts or nudges to move students along in learning
• Encouraging students to pay attention to how they are learning, to slow down and notice steps they are using
• Angling feedback prompts at three levels…about the task, about the process, about self-regulation
• Finding ways to notice and celebrate learning behaviour growth
• Turning the lens around so that mistakes become learning opportunities; difficulty is when learning happens; struggle is to be expected; asking questions shows curiosity not a lack of intelligence; effort not just talent is what leads to success
• Putting the process of learning on display through annotating work in progress, showing first attempts, revisions, failed lines of enquiry. What we choose to display tells students a lot about what we truly believe: displaying/praising only the finished article suggests that whatever we might say, we are more interested in the outcome than the process.

In such ways are the underlying values of the classroom revealed to learners.

The intention here is to..

• offer a catalogue of teaching ideas, clustered into the 4 foundational learning behaviours . . .
• differentiated by the phases of learner development.

It builds on what teachers discovered about their students’ learning characteristics in Unit 1 and suggests interventions tailored to particular levels of learner development.

Teachers will look at their class profile and consider which of the four learning behaviours need to be brought out into the open or given a boost. Which might a teacher need to just edge into the culture of their classroom. In each section of the chart teachers will find ideas about how they might; devolve more responsibility to their students; change classroom talk to emphasise a particular behaviour; celebrate, praise or recognise how a learning behaviour is being used advantageously.

As a leader it would be wise to look through the 100 plus ideas in the chart to ensure they are all in sympathy with the school’s values and whether there are some that would benefit from being introduced into classrooms throughout the school.

Make students aware of how they will be learning

Share learning behaviours with students

Some primary schools have found it useful and effective to share an overview of the learning behaviours being called on during a week. The information is captured on a poster which remains on the classroom wall throughout the week.

Firstly the teacher shares an overview of learning for the week … decimals … poems … ball skills.

The teacher then explores which learning capacities will really help with this content. If the class is not at this level of discussion the teacher provides 2-4 behaviours together with brief explanations.

The weekly chart records and makes transparent the learning habits the class will focus on during the week.

The bottom box on the poster captures the result of a class/group discussion of how the habits had been used and what students had found out to take forward in using them next time.

Unit 2 of Playing the Learning Power Game looked at three aspects of the Teachers’ Palette framework…relating, talking and celebrating. Unit 3 concentrates on the focal point in that framework, Constructing, where classroom culture meets curriculum culture. What can teachers do with a given curriculum to ensure it is ‘taught’ or perhaps ‘learnt’ in a way that will enhance and strengthen students’ learning behaviours?

This unit is about direct teaching, curriculum design and planning lessons. It’s about how teachers handle the day to day, hour by hour stuff that will enable their students to understand themselves as learners. It’s about looking at the curriculum in general and thinking about how to infuse learning behaviours into it. It’s about thinking and planning schemes of work or day to day lessons to ensure students consciously use and improve their learning behaviours. It’s about making learning power come alive across the curriculum.

As with Unit 2, Unit 3 considers Constructing through the lens of the 4 key learning behaviours – perseverance, questioning, collaboration and revising.

Absorbing learning habits into the whole curriculum

Section 3A  of the programme considers the transition from content-only planning through to curriculum planning that integrates progression in content with progression in learning behaviours.

The level of detail in curriculum plans varies in part due to the time-frame of the plan. A yearly plan for a subject or year group will necessarily be more broad-brush than a medium term plan for a unit of work, which in turn will be less detailed than an individual lesson plan. All such plans identify what is to be taught, and most will indicate how it will be taught and assessed, but fewer identify and plan for the learning behaviours that students will require to access this content, nor for the development of those learning behaviours.

This aspect of the programme is of particular interest to senior managers.

Absorbing learning habits into units of work and lessons

Section 3B considers how teachers might plan a unit of work and then just one lesson to ensure learning behaviours are firmly embedded. In fact without the use of learning behaviours the plan would be unsuccessful. It looks at what the stages of filling in blank unit plans might be? It looks at possible must haves and top tips for planning a worthwhile lesson. Teachers will find all sorts of tips, formats and examples to get them going.

Absorbing learning-rich activities into lessons

Section 3C explores different types of learning activities and the learning behaviours that they stimulate.

Activities come in all shapes and sizes – some are highly structured by the teacher, while others encourage learners to engage in independent enquiry; some are brief events in a part of a lesson, while others may extend over a period of days or weeks. No activity type is particularly ‘better’ than any other as each serves a different purpose and requires/activates different levels of learner independence. As with most things, variety is key and planning should range across all activity types over a period of time/unit of work.

‘Murder Hunt’ (see below) is an ‘Assembling’ activity because students need to identify and eliminate all of the irrelevant information and red herrings. Remove the irrelevant information in advance and it becomes a ‘Manipulating’ activity, organising the relevant clues without the need to think critically about their relevance.

Likewise, a ‘Manipulating’ activity can be turned into an ‘Assembling’ activity with a few tweaks. In its ‘Manipulating’ format, rebuilding a cut up Tin Tin cartoon is little more than a jigsaw puzzle. But – adding a couple of pieces from a similar but different Tin Tin cartoon, or even removing a couple of key pieces and inviting students to create their own replacements, introduces the need for a more critical, ‘Assembling’ type approach.

For more ideas, there are a number of ‘Assembling’ type activities in The Teachers’ Toolkit (by Paul Ginnis), including ‘Murder Hunt’.

VIEW MURDER HUNT

Absorbing the foundational four learning behaviours into lessons

Here teachers will find a unique catalogue to explore. It has over 100 ideas that they might blend into theirr lesson designs.

These ideas are organised into 4 categories for each of the 4 foundational learning behaviours. The 4 categories are:

• Visible Thinking Routines – Some visible thinking routines to activate each of these learning behaviours;
• Classroom Activities – Some activities to strengthen each of these learning behaviours;
• Monitoring Strategies – Some strategies for checking how each of these learning behaviours are developing;
• Exemplar Lessons – A lesson plan that integrates each of the four learning behaviours into a complete lesson.

It’s a must-have pick and mix. Expect staff to come back to it frequently.

This routine helps students to reflect on how and why their thinking/understanding is changing.

Remind students of the topic you have been working on. Ask them to respond to each of the sentence stems: I used to think…, Now, I think…

Alternatively ask students to write down their views at the beginning of a topic. Invite them to revisit & update their answer during and at the end in light of what has been learned.

Or, at the beginning of a lesson ask students to write down what they understand by a particular term that will be explored in the coming lesson (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson, ask them to write down what they now understand by the term.

Here teachers will find, for each of the 8 behaviours:

A staged way of introducing the behaviour by:

1. Firstly… making students aware of the use and importance of a habit…when, where, why, how they could be using it;
2. Then... exploring the learning habit a little more through its language;
3. Try... using the behaviour as a lesson starter to tune students into using it;
4. Then start... blending the behaviour into the way teachers teach content, using specific strategies to deepen content understanding;
5. Ensure… students reflect on the success or otherwise of their new frame of mind as a result of consciously using the behaviour.

The content of this section encourages teachers to play with introducing more learning behaviours.

All 8 sections follow the same pattern:

• a short description / reminder of the learning behaviour;
• an indication of the classroom culture that will support and encourage the learning behaviour (see examples to the right);
• some ideas for introducing and talking about the behaviour, with age-appropriate suggestions for younger and older students;
• some lesson starter activities using the behaviour;
• a visible thinking routine and a classroom activity to develop the behaviour;
• and resources for helping students to reflect on how they have been using the behaviour.

The growth charts you used in the last section have the power to reveal interesting and vital information about students’ learning. They are suitable for use with any class or a sub-group of students.

Work through the sections 3.4.1 to 3.4.5 and then collect the data. Then work through 3.4.6 to 3.4.8 to help you to synthesise your views in readiness for sharing these views with colleagues including senior leaders.

In the last section you considered a couple of students in your class using the Learning Chart. It’s now time to give the same consideration to all the students in your class. As you start colouring in, keep an eye out for any emerging patterns;

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

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

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

Things to consider in gathering the data:

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

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

Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:

What is this profile telling me about this student?

Explore each student profile and ask yourself:

• Which behaviours appear relatively weaker/stronger? Well developed, hardly started?
• Which behaviours appear to explain why this student is successful / unsuccessful, effective/ineffective?
• Which is the weakest domain for this student (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic)?
• How might I help this student to help themselves to become a more effective learner?

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

Play with what you have recorded and wonder:

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

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

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

Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:

Can I discern any patterns across groups of learning profiles?

Ask yourself:

• What questions would I want to ask myself about each of these groups?
• What do I suspect might be happening?
• What are the learning behaviours of successful learners that appear lacking in less successful learners?
• Is there a phase of learning behaviour that seems to help students make confident moves forward?

You might be thinking:

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

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

The second way you will find interesting to interrogate your data is through the lens of different learning domains, i.e. emotional, cognitive, social and strategic, and their learning behaviours. Ultimately you want to be able to answer the question:

Can I discern any patterns across groups of learning behaviours?

Some big questions:

• Which of the learning domains (emotional, cognitive, social and strategic) seems consistently low across most groups of students?
• Which of the learning domains (emotional, cognitive, social and strategic) seems consistently high?
• Which learning behaviour overall, across all groups, comes out weakest?
• What do I suspect might be happening?
• What are the learning behaviours of successful learners that appear lacking in less successful learners?

Further interesting questions might include:

• Which learning domain is strong in higher attaining learners
• How does this differ in lower attaining learners?
• Which learning domain do my boys seem to be strong in?
• Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my girls?
• Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my pupil premium learners?
• Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my EAL/SEND/G&T learners?
• Are there any ethnicity related differences?
• How do my summer-born learners differ from older learners in term of stronger or weaker domains of learning?
• Or explore any other pattern that you suspect might be relevant to your class.

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

See the toggle boxes below which take a closer look at the four domains of learning. Each contains just one practical idea you might use to helping student move on.

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

Summarise your findings about:

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

Share with colleagues, find out more and become totally intrigued. Ask yourself:

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

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

This meeting is positioned and designed to enable you to:

• Agree ground rules for this and following Learning Team meetings;
• Discuss your responses to your reading in Unit 1, section 1A, the Warp and Weft of Learning (the guiding frameworks of the approach)
• Discuss your findings and reactions arising from Unit 1 sections, 1B to 1E.( developing your students’ learning profiles)

NB. As this is the first such meeting the agenda below is unique in the Learning Team meeting series.

• discover and understand what ‘good learners’ tend to be like
• look at yourself through a learning behaviour lens
• tentatively consider the learning behaviours of a couple of students
• remind yourself of how learning behaviours progress

Perhaps the best way of really getting to grips with the growth of learning power is to take a personal look at yourself as a learner and the learning behaviours you tend to use. What might your learning profile look like; where are your strengths, what are the behaviours you find tricky; which would you like to improve?

Having got the idea we then invite you to look at just a couple of your students; a low and a high attaining student. This should give you a glimpse of what it is that makes the difference in how students approach and achieve in learning.

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

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

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

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

To get a better sense of these learning behaviours and their growth use the chart to think about yourself as a learner. Start slowly. Refer to the learning behaviour descriptions and progression notes in section 2 for help. Now just think:

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

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

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

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

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

Ask yourself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From there to here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Employment requires being able to enhance and transfer knowledge and to operate collaboratively.
• The capacity to learn and adapt needs to be lifelong because change is a permanent state, and the pace of change is moving more rapidly.
• And more recently we now have the rise and rise of AI to cope with, making it all the more important for students to be aware of its downsides and relentlessly seek for truth.

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

The next section will help you make a start on addressing these questions.

.. is a tapestry of activities on the part of both you and learners. The warp of Learning Power is made up of the learning behaviours you want students to develop. And these are being developed and woven together by the weft of all the different methods that you, as a teacher, have at your disposal: the language you use and the explicit attention you pay to the ‘how’ of learning; the activities you make available, and the way these are framed for students; and the aspects of learning power that you model in a dozen different ways, throughout the school day.

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

It may come as a surprise but, as a teacher, you’re an influential habit former. The way you orchestrate and guide learning influences the ways young people perform and behave. This means you’ll need to be mindful of how you help students to form, replace, re-form and strengthen their learning habits.

You might like to ask yourself whether your teaching habits are helping students’ learning habits and what you might need to adapt and change?

Habits form through use and practice (deliberate or otherwise!). But desirable habits will survive and flourish better if students are aware of them, realise their value and strive to improve them.

You can build young people’s learning power by helping them to expand their own learning capacities. This involves the ways in which you relate to students, talk to students, organise your classroom, and design activities, as well as what you notice and celebrate about learning.

Look in the toggle box for an overview of the features of the teachers’ palette.

Unit 2 of the programme unpicks three areas of the palette; relating, talking and celebrating, and offers classroom approaches for you to try.

Unit 3 of the programme unpicks the design of activities and offers approaches for you to try.

Having spent a while exploring the 2 models that underpin learning power – the supple learning mind and the teachers’ palette – take time to capture your thoughts before moving on to section 1B.

Summarise your thoughts about the Supple Learning Mind and about the Teachers’ Palette. Ask yourself:

How are these two models connected to what I already know?

How has this extended my thinking about learning behaviours and about classroom culture?

What questions am I now asking myself?

See opposite for an example Learning Development summary document just to start you off.

Take your completed Summary to the team meeting at the end of Unit 1 so that you can recall and share your first impressions with colleagues.

It is designed to offer you, as senior leaders, a view of the strategic concerns that will arise when the school takes on ‘Playing the Learning Power Game‘; a year long, online, whole school programme to develop powerful learners. It offers questions, think pieces, frameworks, slide decks and diagrams to help leaders:

• feel reassured about the purpose, benefits and frameworks of learning power;
• explore important leadership roles when taking on the development of Learning Power through the school;
• introduce units of the programme to staff;
• maintain momentum into the future;
• understand ways forward beyond this initial stage
• monitor the progress and value of the whole enterprise.

Every school undertaking the programme will receive the Leading Playing the Learning Power Game resource. The resource will be customised to the specific variety of support package the school selects to meet their needs. These support packages are described below.

Introducing the approach

These resources don’t just amount to simple show and tell sessions – they are designed to provoke deep thinking about each aspect of the programme: its aims; the blended learning cycle; learning and how it grows; the culture of the classroom; the design of lessons.

There are 5 powerpoints:

• Introducing ‘Playing the Learning Power Game’
• Introducing each of Units 1, 2, 3 and 4

Each has a pack of resources containing;

• a slide deck with notes
• further explanatory / commentary notes
• activities to deepen thinking

These could be used just as they are to introduce teachers to the key ideas. Or they could be added to your own strategic presentation to ensure staff gain a holistic picture of how the programme will contribute to the schools development plan. This DIY approach has been particularly successful in schools where an earlier enthusiasm for BLP has withered through Covid or staff changes.

Ensuring momentum

A critical aspect of this support package includes 3 one hour Zoom sessions for leaders spread across the year. These are scheduled to coincide with key milestones across the year…

• after the first two months when staff have completed their students’ learning profiles
• three months later when teachers have had time to make shifts in their classroom culture and are about to start applying the ideas to curriculum/lesson plans
• three or four months later when staff are exploring more learning behaviours and preparing for phase two of the programme.

COULD WE PUT SOME EASY MONITORING TOOLS IN THESE ZOOM SESSIONS to raise interest??

Introducing the approach

The ‘Zoom introductory training” pack consists of:

• two 1 hour Zoom sessions two weeks apart;
• 2 online pre-session preparation packs sent to each participant a week before the event, containing;
  • a short pre-session introductory film, quizzes and activities to try;
  • a resource booklet to download and print;
  • the session timetable and its activities;
  • two post session tasks to be completed before session 2;
  • an overview of the programme staff are about to embark on.

During these two sessions staff will come to understand their own students as learners.

Ensuring momentum

Again a critical aspect of this support package can include 3 one hour Zoom sessions  either just for leaders or for a group of teachers and spread across the year. These can be scheduled to coincide with key milestones…

• when staff have completed their students’ learning profiles
• when teachers have had time to make shifts in their classroom culture
• when staff are exploring more learning behaviours in preparation for phase two of the programme.

WE COULD PRODUCE THESE  ZOOM SESSIONS AROUD SELF MONITORING TOOLS but we would also want to see what had been achieved in classroom. We could easily do some advance organisaers to shape these sessions(IF WE SELL ANY!)

Our in-school training days are designed to introduce staff to how students’ learning behaviours develop, how knowing that will influence the idea of learning friendly classrooms and their role as the teacher.

Introducing the approach

The four hour morning session knits together research based inputs with interactive analytical activities. These serve to encourage staff to consider their own teaching style, its impact in the classroom and what they might do to change this for the benefit of learning behaviours. From the start staff are encouraged to contribute their own learning habits to ensure the session is a rich learning opportunity for everyone.

The two hour afternoon session is reserved for the leadership team. Discussion concentrates on their role of supporting and managing the development of students’ learning characters, how this might affect classroom culture and curriculum design.

TLO provides each member of staff with a richly illustrated resource book that will act as a reference text for months to come.

Ensuring momentum

As above this support package can include interactive Zoom sessions  either just for leaders or for a group of teachers which are spread across the year. This support package has a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 6 sessions which can be scheduled to coincide with key milestones across the year.

Getting something new going evenly and consistently across a large school can be tricky. To help this many larger primary schools often prefer to spread the load of managing the programme. This can done by identifying a group of  staff, who we’ll call ‘Learning Champions’ who learn together by working their way through part of Playing the Learning Power Game programme before using their experience to involve all staff. Thereafter they manage the Professional Learning Team sessions. This package includes a separate resource especially for ‘Learning Champions’.

This approach:

• needs time for Learning Champions to become familiar with ‘Playing the Learning Power Game‘ and gives the opportunity to iron out any practical problems;
• creates practical experience of the approach within the school which can act as a ‘go to’ resource for other staff;
• offers senior leaders a significant group of teachers ready, willing and able to promote / support / encourage others.

To support and enhance this approach TLO offers a specialised online resource for Learning Champions together with five 1 hour Zoom conversations with the school’s Learning Champions group across the year.

NOT SURE ABOUT THIS. STEVE ANY IDEAS?

This chart shows what we call the big ambition of the programme. It distils what it’s all about, who the players are and what they need to do when.

There are three sets of players in the game; leaders, teachers, students (see columns). The players work through four stages of action (see rows).

• the cells in yellow capture what leaders, teachers and learners will need to do at each stage:
  • tracking the growth of learning behaviours;
  • adapting classroom cultures to strengthen 4 key learning behaviours;
  • adapting how the curriculum is delivered in order to build 4 key learning behaviours;
  • experimenting with and expanding the number of learning behaviours consciously being used by students;
• the blue boxes capture the outcomes such changes could make to classrooms; cultures and curriculum delivery.
• the green boxes capture the anticipated outcomes for people; leaders, teachers and learners.

As a leader this big ambition chart not only advises you about the programme contents but could be a useful tool for monitoring progress as you go along, and evaluating outcomes as you move into the next phase.

Units and sections…

Each unit deals with a key aspect of understanding and growing learning power:

• Unit 1. Discovering learning and culture. This unit has sections covering:

1. 1. The warp and the weft, foundational ideas of learning power; the basic ‘must knows’
   2. Finding Learning Power, the ‘must dos’ of collecting evidence about students’ learning behaviours

This unit should take a couple of months to complete.

Unit 2. Classroom cultures. This unit has sections covering:

1. 1. Aspects of a learning friendly classroom culture
   2. An easy to access catalogue of practical ideas designed to help teachers shift their classroom culture to support the growth of the foundational four learning behaviours.

This unit should take about 3 months.

• Unit 3. Constructing learning. This unit has four sections covering:

1. 1. The big picture of curriculum planning
   2. Designing units and lessons
   3. Activity design to stimulate learning habits
   4. A catalogue of learning activities are displayed in a second, easy to access, grid framework of ideas. The point is to blend some of these ideas into the curriculum and their lessons.

This unit should take about 3 months.

• Unit 4. Broadening the range. Here teachers are encouraged to spread their wings and begin to add some of another eight learning behaviours to the mix. This unit has eight short sections covering:
• Noticing, Making links, Imagining, Reasoning, Capitalising, Listening, Planning, Meta-learning.

It is anticipated that you will spend about 2 months on this unit.

This development will help prepare teachers to move on to a deeper Phase 2 of the programme.

‘Playing the Learning Power Game’ online programme provides teachers with the research and the ideas to work with, but those alone can’t bring about change in classrooms. To enable these ideas to work in classrooms across the school staff will need time to discuss what they have read with colleagues and encouragement to try the ideas out with students. The programme is structured to include a Continuing Professional Development programme.

We can’t insist on schools using particular ways of supporting the ideas into classroom practice but the idea of learning power will have a far greater chance of working across the school if staff are enabled to learn with the support of colleagues.

Useful types of CPD include:

• Teacher learning communities, or as we refer to them, Professional Learning Teams (see below)
• Coaching partnerships
• Small-scale learning enquiries
• Classroom observations and personal reviews
• Learning walks.

Some schools have found it useful to suggest a rhythm of;

• read and digest (online content),
• meet and discuss
• try out and smooth out in the classroom.

Because we know that changing working practices is hard and delicate work and that research shows it works best when teachers can meet in a safe professional environment to explore and plan for change, we have built seven Teacher Learning Community sessions into the rhythm of the programme. Research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame, describes such teams as:

• a small group of teachers who meet together regularly
• to deepen their understanding of an approach,
• to commit to trying out new things,
• to reflect on and share their experiments with each other.

If the school decides to adopt this professional learning approach the 7 customised team meeting agendas, at key points across the programme, provide you with all you need to make them a success.