We wish you well with your various reviews. Do let us know how they went.

Maybe you would like to write a blog about it to feature on our website for the benefit of the Building Learning Power community.

Learning with and from colleagues

This section aims to answer the question…what are the variations on the learning culture theme and what can I learn from these variations?

3.1 Learning Walks….well, more of an amble really.

Learning Walks are sometimes given a bad press and have been abandoned in some schools. We view such experiences as important professional development opportunities. However, we prefer to use the word ‘Amble’ rather than ‘Walk’ and stress that they are best undertaken in a spirit of curiosity, enquiry, ruminative discussion, evolving understanding. NOT monitoring or checking up.

We have put together a Learning Amble tool that you may like to use to focus your Ambles. How you organise such Ambles we leave to your team and the school. But we would like to suggest that you each have an opportunity to visit other classrooms, preferably with other colleagues, when learning is in progress

Giving pupils a voice

This section of drawing evidence from pupils aims to answer the questions “How well have my pupils taken to this way of learning? What impact has it had on them?”

What you have been trying to do over the last few months is to make learning visible for both you and your pupils. However, at this early stage it’s important to find out whether the changes you are making are having the effect you hoped for in pupils. Their feelings and thinking patterns can be rather different to what we might expect. So in this section we check out how pupils are feeling and reacting to understanding a little more about learning and themselves as a learner.

2.1 Pupils then and now: getting a feel for the big picture

This year you have focused on developing the key learning behaviours: Perseverance, because so many pupils seem to lack this behaviour and without it very little learning will take place; Collaboration, because learning together offers pupils the opportunity to enter a dialogue with others about their learning and make meaning together; Questioning, because it’s pupils’ curiosity that propels learning forward, ensures genuine interest and engagement, and leads to deep learning. So in this section we look at the impact of your learning experiments.

2.2 Activating pupil voice: at a distance

Using questionnaires

Pupils, of course, may see it a little differently. You can check out how their views of themselves as learners relate to your view of changes in practice. Invite your class to complete the quiz online. Older pupils will be able to do it for themselves, while younger ones will need to be talked through it by an adult.

The quizzes look at grey to purple (lacks to receive) and purple to blue phases of Perseverance, Collaboration and Questioning.

2.3 Activating pupil voice: Getting up-close and personal

A learning conversation with pupils

The importance of enabling pupils to use a shared language is to ensure they can talk about themselves as learners. Without a sufficiently subtle language they are reduced to talking about learning in simple outcomes/performance terms. So in this section you can try holding a conversation about learning with your pupils and assess the extent to which pupils are picking up on it, understanding it and using it for themselves.

Think about recording and analysing conversations    

Before beginning to talk with pupils about learning, it is worth organising a recording of what they say. You could use IRIS if the school has this technology, but a simple video camera will do the job. If everyone made such recordings  they could be used further down the line to sense longitudinal change in your pupils’ ability to discuss the process of learning – whether they are becoming increasingly fluent in ‘talking learnish’.

An essential aspect of a community of enquiry, of which you are a part, is keeping practice under review and researching the effects of changing practice.This accurate and continual self-reflection gives the school a real picture of itself as a learning organisation and the information is used to plan further improvement action.

Reflecting on your changing practice. This section of self reflection aims to answer the question “How far have I come?”

1.1 Looking back: where have you come from?

In the first session of this programme you looked at the idea of a learning friendly classroom culture. You explored the differences between teacher centred, learner centred and learning centred classrooms. Here are some quick reminders of these cultures.

Teacher centred classrooms

Many classrooms could be thought of as teacher centred. Here the overriding emphasis is on what the teacher is doing or saying. Learners have little to do but listen and be told what to do. Pupils have a ‘thin’ view of themselves as learners.

Learner centred classrooms

The learner centred classroom is where pupils take a more active part in deciding what to do. Here there is more collaborative learning where pupils have dialogues about what they are learning and create meaning together.

Learning centred classrooms

Here a language about learning itself is added for pupils and teachers alike, and learners practise reflecting on the learning process. Pupils come to see themselves as learners, develop stories about their experiences, understand the learning behaviours they are using and develop and propose improvements. They consciously grow their learning habits.

 1.2 Looking back: in a bit more detail

Again at the start of this programme you looked at the four dimensions of a learning centred classroom culture. Here are the essential ideas, just to remind you.

• Relating for learning: the changing roles and responsibilities of teachers and learners, where learning becomes a shared responsibility. Pupils are given more responsibility for their own learning, the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’; the role of the pupil moves from ‘passenger’ to ‘crew’ and ultimately ‘pilots of their own learning’.
• Talking for learning: the sort of language content and style to enhance learning, making learning the object of conversation. The way we express ourselves in the classroom creates a powerful linguistic environment that teaches young people the best of what we know about learning. The language of learning helps pupils to discuss, understand, and become conscious of using their learning behaviours.
• Organising for learning: activities and classroom routines feed learning habits and learning becomes the object of learning. Learning activities are designed to stretch and challenge by having a dual focus – to explore content and stretch pupils’ use of their learning behaviours. There is a strong underpinning of not just ‘doing’ learning but reviewing and reflecting on the process in order to make meaning and apply it elsewhere.
• Celebrating learning: the outward signs of the values that underpin the approach, making learning the object of attention. In this dimension failure has been redefined; being stuck is seen as interesting and mistakes valuable. Effort, questions and taking risks are recognised, attended to, acknowledged and praised. These and other things serve to make visible the underlying values of the learning environment.

The teacher’s role becomes one of surfacing learning; to make learning public; to train some of the tricky bits; to talk about it; to recognise and celebrate it as it happens; to nudge it along assisting pupils to grow their learning capacities; and to design activity to stretch a wide range of learning habits. This uncovering of learning ensures pupils discover, use, understand and grow their learning habits. There is a shift in emphasis from performance to learning, from content to process, from teaching to coaching.

1.3 Looking back: on enabling three learning behaviours

Now it’s time to look more closely at what you have changed about your way of working in order to enable the use and growth of three learning behaviours: perseverance, collaboration and questioning.

Look back at your learning enquiry plans.

Let’s start informally with a couple of warm-ups that take a helicopter view of what you have been doing.

Download the pentagon and think about:

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

Now using the three baskets, offer an overall assessment of the changes you have made. Identify:

• Things that worked really well. The ones you feel most satisfied with.
• Things that worked okay but need a bit of finessing.
• Things that didn’t seem to work and you quietly stopped doing them.

1.4 Looking back: getting closer to the action.

It’s time now to ask yourself some harder edged questions that link directly with the three key learning behaviours you have been working on in the last few months. In Task 3 below you will find a questionnaire that identifies the type of actions you may have taken in pursuit of a more learning friendly classroom. This teacher action questionnaire is linked to a pupil re-action questionnaire in Section 2.2. Take a look and try it out and reflect on the results.

We wish you well with your rich activity/learning enquiry. Do let us know how it went…
Maybe you would like to write a blog about it to feature on our website for the benefit of the Building Learning Power community.

So far, you have:

• Looked at your students through the lens of the Revising learning grid
• Gained a sense of what becoming better at revising looks like
• Considered how you might shift the culture of the classroom to nurture revising

Now we look more closely at classroom activities and language to provoke and guide students to get better at revising; to build the phases of revising mindedness.

Go to the phase that you have already identified as the one that most of your students need to develop next.
In each Tab box below you will find; an overview of the teacher’s role; a couple of  ‘quick wins’ or introductory activities; a couple of  activities to surface Revising; some ideas for positive routines you might use ( things that should be common across all classrooms); some suggestions for teacher talk and If- Then statements; a reflection/review mat.

Moving from Grey → Purple

• Overview
• Intro & Quick wins
• Activities
• Routines
• Talk
• Review/Reflect

Receives: Minded to check what they do.

The essence of this phase is about moving from the freedom of just doing things to establishing the more formal ‘doing things in particular ways’, checking against criteria. It’s the start of a journey whereby checking becomes part of the students internal dialogue that students must make part of their learning habits.This phase is a big steep leap needing delicate support.
In Visible Learning, John Hattie says: “The more students are thinking about how they can make their own learning more and more effective, the better they do.”
In pursuing this phase, the role of the teacher becomes one of:

• Introducing the idea of revising/refining
• Introducing the idea of checking what you are doing
• Introducing the process of talking about what they have done

What’s wrong here?

once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were—

flopsy
mopsy
cotton-tail
and peter

they lived with there mother in a sand-bank underneath the route of a very Big fir-tree

Try these suggestions for getting ‘minded to check what they do’ going.

Read a story about revising:

A fine day out [PDF]

Try this short activity – Story Bag

Story Bag [PDF]

Do some cooking

Cooking is a very real way for young children to understand the need to check progress and make changes if necessary. First decide on the recipe you are going to use and then decide what you could change that would make the children realise the need to check and change things. Maybe you can make the oven temperature too hot or measure the wrong amount of flour or water etc. It may seem a bit wasteful to deliberately burn/spoil the first batch but that only needs to happen with the first lot and then each succeeding group can be doing the checking.

Find well-known stories that encapsulate the idea of revising/refining.

Talk about success criteria

Make it clear to students what you are looking for in a piece of learning and give them opportunities to check their ‘work ‘against the criteria, either individually or in pairs. Ensure the criteria are linked to the original learning intention. Knowing what is expected encourages students to stay on focus and to revise their work to meet the criteria. Invite students to create success criteria themselves in order to encourage ownership.
Include

• what students should know
• how much, and how, they should include opinions, judgements and their own thinking
• what skills they should be able to demonstrate
• how to link the outcome to the original learning intention.

Think pair share

• Offer students a problem or question which is more substantial than simple recall.
• Allow individual think time to engage with the question.
• Students turn to their ‘Learning Partner’ and share ideas, discuss, clarify, challenge etc.
• The pair share with another pair, and subsequently with the whole class to arrive at a range of possible answers.
• At each point students are exposed to the views of others which encourages them to revise and refine their initial thinking.

Combat fear of failure

Celebrate making mistakes. Here is a classroom display which does just that.

Rethink displays to illustrate work in progress

Collect and display work at different stages of development, with arrows and notes highlighting changes and their impact. Refer to these to encourage students to review and amend their work. Provide guidelines with questions they can ask themselves or each other at different stages in the process. Show that you do not expect perfection at a first attempt!

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Grey to Purple, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:

To encourage having a second go

• You might need to have a go at that again
• Why not have another go?
• It’s okay to make mistakes and start over

To accept a recognition of externally set standards

• Have you noticed the success criteria?
• Why do we have success criteria? What are they for?
• Is it going to be good enough?
• Is it going to be good enough for you?

To encourage pupils to check work over

• We could say to ourselves ..we often don’t get it right/perfect first time.
• You could just say…I’ll give it the once over.
• You could say to yourself..I need to go back and check this is okay

To begin to monitor how things are going 

• How are you getting on?
• What do we mean by ‘being on track?’
• What is working well for you here?
• Remember to ask yourself ‘Is this going OK?’

To begin to evaluate how it went

• How did that go?
• What worked well?
• What didn’t go as expected?

To begin to understand external validation

• That’s very close to the right/model answer. What would make it even closer?
• Can I tell you what I think?
• Who decides what is correct/good/good enough?

To set an If/Then target from Grey to Purple, try:
If my teacher offers me advice, then I will think about what they say because they are trying to help me.
If I’m not sure if it’s right, then I’ll check the goal/objective/criteria/example.

Learning Mats

Learning mats are tools to encourage pupils to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. Basically, they are A3 or A4 laminated sheets that are kept on tables or used as part of wall display. They show various aspects of a learning habit and students refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the finer aspects of a learning habit that is being stretched. They help students to be able to join in meta-cognitive talk

As pupils become more proficient at revising the statements could be upgraded to reflect later phases of the progression grid. Pupils often enjoy making their own learning mats describing the particular skills they are working on.

Revising – Learning Mats – purple (PDF)

Using Learning Mats

You could also use Learning Mats (in ‘teacher speak’ or ‘student speak):

• To raise awareness of  the habit
• To spread the school’s common language for learning
• As an aide-memoire for students and teachers
• As a self-assessment support for students
• As an audit tool to support teacher planning. i.e. which of the skills are implied in the lesson plan and therefore how will they be surfaced in what you draw attention to/orchestrate in the lesson.

Download a blank version to make your own

As teachers we are in the habit-forming business. Those habits that we model in front of young people influence the ways in which they perform and behave. Therefore, we need to be sure to foster productive learning habits. If, for example, we offer constructive feedback but fail to require students to act on it, we are not building their  inclination to further improve on previous attempts. In such ways do good teachers, albeit inadvertently, stifle the very behaviours they are seeking to promote.

Activity 2: How well does my classroom climate encourage Revising?

A classroom climate that supports and nourishes the inclination to revise / refine and adapt is characterised by an understanding that real learning and understanding is about a constant retrying and redoing that requires effort, responsibility and flexibility from the learner.

To enable a revising friendly culture teachers themselves need to believe that;

• Learning is all about redoing, rethinking and retrying until something delights and satisfies
• First attempts are the first step towards the finished article
• Formative feedback should assist students to discover their own mistakes or areas for improvement
• Students should take increasing responsibility for reviewing their own progress.

And in building a revising/refining friendly culture students will hopefully develop the following beliefs:

•  Having another go is nothing to be ashamed of and will help me to improve
• It is my job to check if it meets the success criteria
• It’s ok to change my mind and do things differently if circumstances change
• It is important to ask myself ‘is this as good as I can make it ?’

Get a feel for your classroom culture and how it may be working for or against being revising friendly.
Look through the ideas carefully and consider whether you already use some, and whether any appeal to you to try.

SS2-Activity 2 Classroom Climate for Revising

1. What do we mean by Revising?

However well prepared learners are, they have to expect the unexpected. They have to have the readiness to revise as they go along. Good learners are able to change their plans and think on their feet. They are able to be flexible. To be effective at revising, learners need to monitor how things are going and periodically review where they have got to.
Monitoring is the art of looking over your own shoulder as you’re working away at a problem, asking yourself how it’s going.
Getting better at monitoring ( ‘reflection in action’ ) involves cultivating the little voice of self-awareness that keeps the strategic goals in mind, and is ready to change tack if it seems appropriate. A teacher who decides to throw away the lesson plan on the spur of the moment and go with the interesting discussion which is developing, is monitoring. Students can pick up the habit from people who can  model it; who have learnt how to learn aloud, i.e. to externalise the thought processes of the vigilant monitor.
Reviewing (‘reflection on action’) means stopping every so often to take stock of progress, and to ensure that any emerging product—an artwork, an essay, a draft business plan—is on track. Reviewing requires the ability to look at your own work with the critical eye of an editor, and not be afraid of the possibility that some corrections may be needed. A writer may put a piece of work aside for a while and then come back to look at it afresh. An athlete may sit down and look at the video of her starting technique to see if any adjustments need to be made. But reviewing is what the low-achieving maths student, for example, is very often unable to do.
Extract from Building Learning Power. Guy Claxton 2002

2. What does being a good Reviser involve?

A well formed Revising 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 at a less abstract level, 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. When looked at from these diverse angles, growing revising moves well beyond encouraging a student to ‘have another go’.

The Revising grid below takes account of the constituent parts of building the habit of Revising

Our progression grid for Revising has 6 components:

3. Unpicking the columns; what contributes to a readiness to revise?

4. Unpicking the rows; getting better at Revising.

Of course the development of revising does not grow neatly up each column or evenly across the phases in the grid. The five broad phases of dispositional growth (purple – orange) are affective ways in which people may be inclined to behave: we call this inclination ‘mindedness’.

We wish you well with your rich activity/learning enquiry. Do let us know how it went…

Maybe you would like to write a blog about it to feature on our website for the benefit of the Building Learning Power community.

So far, you have:

• Looked at your students through the lens of the Questioning learning grid
• Gained a sense of what becoming better at Questioning looks like
• Considered how you might shift the culture of the classroom to nurture Questioning

Now we look more closely at things you can actually do in the classroom to provoke, guide and support pupils to get better at Questioning; to build the phases of Questioning mindedness.

Go to the phase that you have already identified as the one that most of your students need to develop next.

In each Tab box below you will find an overview of the teacher’s role followed by a range of suggestions linked to making the classroom culture more Questioning-friendly. After each suggestion you will see a brief statement in green that reinforces the cultural aspect of the idea. While some suggestions are one-off ideas, many can be used several times during a year or indeed be made into a classroom routine and thereby shift the culture. 

Moving from Grey → Purple (Receives)

• Overview
• Unpacking questioning and noticing answers
• Exploring closed and open questions
• Early ‘finding out’ search skills
• Routines
• Talk
• Review/Reflect

Receives: Minded to try out aspects of finding things out when required

In the Receives (purple) phase, pupils are shifting from perhaps a general disinterest in things or a lack of awareness of the role and power of questioning to trying out questioning because they are being required to do so. Here they need help to ask a ‘good’ question, to become aware of what the questions uncover and to begin to use some simple search techniques.

Behaviours to secure, Moving from Grey to Purple

Questioning can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

Your role as a teacher in this phase is to:

• Explain the role of questioning, encouraging pupils to become intrigued and to notice what the answers to the questions reveal
• Explore the different effects of closed and open questions
• Introduce ‘finding out’ search skills

In other words you are beginning to make Questioning visible: uncovering and exploring how it feels, what makes it work, and what the pupil’s role in the process is to be.

Adopt a character (ages 4-8)

‘Adopt’ a character – real, imaginary, human or animal – who exhibits the best features of perseverance. Talk about the character until your children become familiar with its attributes. When you have set a group to work on a particular task – numeracy, reading, writing etc., leave this character (actual or picture) on their table as a reminder of ‘what to do when you don’t know what to do’.

Show an animation (ages 4-10)

1 minute animation to illustrate an aspect of Questioning.

Use it to talk about trying other ways to achieve what you want to do.

Make your own class animations for different aspects of Questioning.

Read a story (ages 4-10)

In this story Gemma, Callum and their mum talk about knowing things. They realise that no-one can know everything and that the important part of learning new things is to come up with good questions.

SG_Questioning

Question Generator (ages 4-10)

Describe the topic and then ask the students to generate as many questions as they can [individually, in pairs or in groups]. Then sort the questions into a hierarchy of interest. The teaching input is then built around these questions. Minority questions can be answered via the subject blog / website.

See page 141 in The Teacher’s Toolkit: Raise classroom achievement with strategies for every Learner by Paul Ginnis.

Linking ideas – Questioning (ages 4-10)

Try this starter activity to introduce pupils to Questioning. Useful at the start of any lesson.

Contains

3b-C-Questioning-LI

Questions on display (ages 4-10)

Create question walls in the classroom to illustrate and prompt questioning. Display, for example:

• Student-posted questions about current topics that need resolution.
• ‘The Question of The Day’
• Different types and purposes of questions.
• Questioning routines that the class have defined.
• A lexicon of questions for use when exploring and enquiring.
• A list of questions for use to get started, or unstuck.
• Annotated student work and pictures to provoke questioning.

 

A class wonder book (ages 4-10)

Help children to value the phrase ‘I wonder…’ as showing genuine curiosity. Start a class Wonder Book. Encourage the children to use ‘I wonder’ questions and record them in the book. Regularly share the book with the class and suggest that children try to find answers to some of the ‘I wonder’ questions. Remember to focus on praising the good ‘I wonders’ before the answers. Opportunities will arise to emphasise the fact that there is not always one simple answer to a question and that children will come up with a variety of responses.

Starting a new topic. Curiosity corner (ages 4-10)

Create a Curiosity Corner with magnifying glasses and interesting objects …. shells, coins, dead insects, flowers …… and lots more! Spend a few minutes each day for children to report what new things they have noticed about the objects.

Old and new (ages 4-10)

Pull together a range of objects which are examples of old and new, especially objects which may be unfamiliar e.g. a teabag and tea strainer. Invite the children to think of ‘I wonder…?’ or ‘What might …?’ questions to discover how the two things differ or are the same..

I spy with my little eye (ages 4-10)

Try this starter activity to introduce pupils to Questioning. Useful at the start of any lesson.

Contains

TA_Noticing

Kim’s game (ages 4-10)

Play Kim’s Game with small groups asking them how they found out what was missing. Always remember to talk about the noticing.

Are your pupils making progress (ages 4-10)

What you are trying to develop in young learners is…

Contains:

RP_Questioning

RP_Noticing

All about noticing (ages 4-10)

EX_Noticing

 

 

Famous People (ages 4-10)

Developing students’ ability to narrow down their thinking from an infinite number of possibilities. Get students into the habit of asking the best strategic questions to help manage their enquiries.

Contains:

3b-C-Questioning-CN

Question time (ages 4-10)

Choose one group to be the Question Time panel as a plenary to a lesson. Sit them at the front, around a table like the real thing, and invite the rest of the class to ask questions about what they have been doing.

How could you encourage good questioning…

• When preparing for a visit
• At the start of a new topic
• During Show and Tell sessions

Guess Who (ages 4-10)

Guess Who: A pack of cards is developed with key events, items, facts, processes, arguments for the topic. The first player in the group takes a card and the others have to ask questions about this. The holder of the card can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ once the item has been identified then the turn passes to the next player.

See page 109 in The Teacher’s Toolkit: Raise classroom achievement with strategies for every Learner by Paul Ginnis.

Set a task through question not instruction (ages 4-10)

Key Questions as Learning Objectives: what better way to foster a culture of inquiry than to spark the whole shooting match off with a big question that gets students thinking critically about what they are going to learn? By asking a big question you can initiate thinking and group discussion that immediate engages students in their prospective learning. By framing it as a question, it can raise motivation, as students feel like they have invested choice in their learning – and by getting students to subsequently formulate the learning objective they really begin to think about the nuances of what they are to learn and why.”

https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

 

Mystery object in a bag (ages 4-10)

The purpose of this task is to encourage children to ask questions to find out what the mystery object is.

Contains:

TA_Questioning

Question spotters (ages 4-10)

Appoint ‘question spotters’ when you having a class discussion time and get the children listening for great questions.

Question monitors (ages 4-10)

A monitor, or a pair of monitors, would be given the responsibility to track and monitor the frequency of questions: teacher and student – open or closed: factual or conceptual. You can have them monitor for a given task, or relate more cumulative research by undertaking the monitoring over a week or two of lessons. By exploring the evidence you are signalling to the students that you value evidence, and you are diagnosing the quality of your questioning, and that of the students. You will then have the evidence to know whether you really do have a culture of enquiry – and if not, it illuminates some of the steps you need to take to develop one. The activity sends very powerful messages to students about how highly your value quality questioning.”

Extract from: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Visual aids for a story (ages 4-10)

Find a couple of visual aids for a story before you share it with the children and get them to think about what the story is about first. Model this with ‘I wonder if you can guess what this story might be about?’

Question focused research (ages 4-10)

Ask pupils to

• research possible types of questions using the Internet
• record and analyse the types of questions used in their peer group
• compare their research findings and their observations.

Use this to expand the range of questions used in class and to create guidelines for asking good questions.

Information Hunt (ages 4-10)

Information Hunt: Each student [or pair or group] is given a ‘fact finder’ sheet – this could be a ‘hunter’s map, showing where in the classroom, or wider, information can be found. The materials where the information can be found [books, posters, maps, images, video etc..] are scattered around the classroom. You could build in riddles or puzzles for the students to ‘crack’. This could also be in the form of a game e.g. complete a line of four pieces of information in a 4×4 grid.

See page 118 in The Teacher’s Toolkit: Raise classroom achievement with strategies for every Learner by Paul Ginnis .

Question Starts

Question Starts is a Visible Thinking Routine that provides students with the opportunity to practise developing good questions that provoke thinking and inquiry into a topic by offering a range of interesting question stems, including: How would it be different if…?, Suppose that…? What if…?, What would change if… For more detail on Question Starts, visit the Visible Thinking website:

https://www.pz.harvard.edu/resources/creative-question-starts

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Grey to Purple, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:

Understand questioning and encourage them to become intrigued

• What do we mean when we say,,,Let’s ask a question?
• What are questions for?
• Asking questions helps us to find out things.
• You can ask questions in your head. It doesn’t need to be out loud.
• If you never ask, you never find out!
• What would you like to find out about….?
• That’s a great/useful question …
• Can you think of any more questions?

Introduce ‘finding out’ search skills

• How could we go about finding this out?
• How will we know where to find that?
• Where, other than the internet, could we look?
• How is the information organised in this book?
• What does the contents page show us?
• What does an index do? How do we use it?
• Have you used the contents / index pages?

Notice what the answers to questions reveal.

• What is this telling you?
• Does this change your thinking?
• In light of that . . .
• What do you think the answers might reveal?
• Is this what you expected?
• So, what would you want to ask next?
• Does this confirm your first idea?

Explore the different effects of closed and open questions

• Can you think of a closed question to ask?
• What kind of answers do closed questions give us?
• Can you think of an open question to ask?
• What kind of answers do open questions give us?
• Is that a closed or an open question?
• When might we use a closed question?
• What are closed questions useful for?
• When might we use open questions?
• What are open questions useful for?
• Can you change this closed question into an open question?

Asking questions of people carefully

• Have a think about what you really want to know about
• Why was that a useful question to ask xxx?
• Did you notice how XXX looked at you when you asked that question?
• Do you think it was appropriate/useful?
• Who might know that?
• Will the answer to that question tell you what you need to find out?
• How will knowing that help you?

An If – Then suggestion,

If I’m are feeling confused →then I’ll try to explain to a friend what I’m thinking

If I want to find something out →then I’ll look in the index / content pages first

If I want to find out a fact →then I’ll make sure I ask a closed question

If I want to explore something → then I’ll make sure I use open questions

If my question is not getting the information I want → then I’ll try a different question.

Learning Mats

A Learning Mat is a simple tool to encourage students to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. Basically, it’s an A3 or A4 laminated sheet that is kept on tables or used as part of wall display. It shows various aspects of a learning habit. Students refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the finer aspects of a learning habit that are being stretched. They help students to be able to join in meta-cognitive talk.

This mat is blank. You will find one that has suggested behaviours on in the Value/Green section. In this one you and your students could fill in some ideas for specific Receive/Purple behaviours that you want your students to start using. They can of course be individualised for specific students.

Using Learning Mats

You could also use Learning Mats (in ‘teacher speak’ or ‘student speak):

• To raise awareness of the habit
• To spread the school’s common language for learning
• As an aide memoire for students and teachers
• As a self-assessment support for students
• As an audit tool to support teacher planning. i.e. which of the skills are implied in the lesson plan and therefore how will they be surfaced in what you draw attention to/orchestrate the lesson.

View as a Pdf View as a Word document

Moving from Purple → Blue (Responds)

• Overview
• Different question types and what they reveal
• Develop search skills
• Explore the manner of asking questions
• Routines
• Talk
• Review/Reflect

Responds: Minded to be interested in things and better focused in finding out

In the Responds (blue) phase, pupils show more willingness to find things out and learn to focus their questioning efforts more effectively.

Behaviours to secure, moving from Purple to Blue

Questioning can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

Your role as a teacher in this phase is to:

• Build awareness of greater subtlety in question types and what they reveal
• Develop internet search skills
• Explore the effects of the manner of asking questions on others.

De-Bono’s Six Thinking hats (ages 4-10)

Exploring an issue in a variety of ways

• Distribute, for example, a piece of direct marketing material for students to critique.
• Invite the students to wear the six thinking hats:
  • White Hat — Facts and information: What do I know…what’s happening?
  • Yellow Hat — Positive judgment: What are the positive features and why?
  • Black Hat — Critical judgment: What are the negative features and why?
  • Green Hat — Alternatives and learning: What is possible?
  • Red Hat — Feelings and emotions: How do I feel about this?
  • Blue Hat — The big picture: What hat should we use now?
• Make sure that students take enough time wearing one hat before moving on to another. Coach your students in thinking in this way when faced with unfamiliar material. ‘Six Hats’ in Wikipedia gives an excellent introduction to using the hats; or buy the book!

The why game (ages 4-10)

Start a story with an opening line. Encourage the pupils to keep on asking each other Why? and giving answers until they have created a story. Opening lines can be simple “The red van roared down the street” but lead to all sorts of questions —“Why was the van red?” “Why was it roaring?” which lead on to other ‘Why?’ questions. Vary the game by starting with a riddle or conundrum, or requiring different types of questions.

See Think Wonder

See Think Wonder is a Visible Thinking Routine that encourages students to make careful  observations and thoughtful interpretations. It is the ‘Wonder’ part that helps to  stimulate curiosity and sets the stage for inquiry. When looking at an object, image, artefact etc, pupils are asked three questions: What do you See ? What do you Think about that ? What does it make you Wonder ? Moreover, it is a useful reminder, for teachers, that curiosity is often an outcome of attentive  noticing. For more detail on See/Think/Wonder, visit the Visible Thinking website:

https://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03c_Core_routines/SeeThinkWonder/SeeThinkWonder_Routine.html

 

Hot seating (ages 4-10)

In the Hot Seat-Student in Hot Seat takes on role of character from fiction/history or person from another part of world facing a particular challenge. Student must answer questions from characters’ perspective

See page 116 in The Teacher’s Toolkit: Raise classroom achievement with strategies for every Learner by Paul Ginnis.

If this is the answer, what is the question

“Taken from [the BBC television show] ‘Mock the Week’, this simple little technique sparks the inquisitiveness within students – just by quickly reversing the standard question and answer dichotomy it can deepen their thinking. It could be a relatively closed answer, like ‘3.14159265359’ (the numerical value of pi); or something more open and abstract, like ‘religion’ (a potential powder-keg that one!). They can be given the idea by showing a short clip of ‘Mock the Week from’ on YouTube – but I would advise you to vet the video carefully first!

Extract from Alex Quigley’s Hunting English Blog: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Questioning routines (ages 4-10)

Develop questioning routines with students:

• ‘What do I know about this already?’ ‘What do I need to know?’ ‘What questions could I ask, to find out?’
• Make regular opportunities for students to generate their own questions.
• Build in moments when students are required to say ‘What am I asking myself about this?’
• Promote peer assessment so that students pose questions of each other.

Is your question important (ages 4-10)

Identify a project which the class might investigate. Write a series of questions on separate pieces of cards and give each group a set of the cards. The group shuffle the cards and deal each student one card. They have to decide:

• the best order for the questions, to do the project well
• if they have to ask all the questions or whether
  some are irrelevant in the context
• whether there are any missing questions and if so, what they might be
• what they have learnt about questions from this.

Question walls (ages 4-10)

Make a space on a wall and display questions which pupils think might be answered during a topic. Discuss what sort of questions these are — open, closed, speculative, divergent, clarifying, essential, subsidiary … — and how they might lead to different types of information/reactions/strategies to gather information. Draw up and display lists of generic questions to use whenever pupils undertake certain types of task, e.g. scientific investigation. Refer to and extend these question groups regularly.

The Question wall (ages 4-10)

The ‘Question Wall’ in this instance is a working space for students to communicate questions about their learning. By giving students post it notes and asking them to commit questions to writing typically eliminates those questions that reflect a sense of ‘learnt helplessness’ – the ‘how does you spell such and such’, when they have a dictionary on their table; or, ‘what do we have to do’, in response to your lengthy and erudite explanation you have only just imparted! The question wall helps foster independence and, once more, makes the students think a little more about their questions. To add a level of nuance to the wall, consider creating simple quadrants with simple labels: students can be advised that closed questions are placed on the left of the wall, whereas more open questions are placed progressively to the right hand side. A vertical axis could indicate the timer he student would expect was needed for explanation: placing questions that need a high degree of support, and therefore time, higher up the wall than those shorter, typically more closed questions. This simple visual representation of their questions allows the teacher to make a quick visual judgement about what questions they have time to address, or may want to prioritise. It helpfully indicates the level of ‘stuckness’ of the student, which is important feedback.”

Extract from Alex Quigley’s Hunting English Blog: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Good Questions (ages 4-10)

Time to think … and share ideas

3b-T-Questioning-TRN

Twenty Questions (ages 4-10)

Students will appreciate the value of questioning in learning. Deepen understanding of what it is to ask questions. Students take a strategic approach to questioning.

• Coaching Notes
• Learning Challenge
• DIY

Search skills (ages 4-10)

Establish a topic which the pupils could research on the Internet. Ask them to use search engines to find out what they need to know, without being precise about what the outcome should be. Find out which key words have been most successful in helping them to access useful information. In pairs, use these key words to construct good questions. Try typing those questions into a search engine to see if they produce different or more focused information. Discuss the different ways that questions might need to be structured in different contexts and for different audiences.

Hierarchies (ages 4-10)

Draw a pyramid, take some non-fiction text, then big idea goes at the apex, main points at the next layer, key vocabulary in the next layer and then details at the base.

See page 113 in The Teacher’s Toolkit: Raise classroom achievement with strategies for every Learner by Paul Ginnis.

My learning log  – Questioning (ages 4-10)

A log to capture positive and could-be ways of Questioning. Part of a learning log for students. Creates greater awareness of their Questioning tendencies.

Contains:

3b-T-Questioning-LL

Think, Puzzle, Explore

Think, Puzzle, Explore is a Visible Thinking Routine that encourages students to connect to prior knowledge, to stimulate curiosity and to lay the groundwork for independent inquiry. The 3 questions are: What do you think you know about this topic? What questions or puzzles do you have? How can you explore this topic? For more detail on Think/Puzzle/Explore visit the Visible Thinking website:

https://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03d_UnderstandingRoutines/ThinkPuzzleExplore/ThinkPuzzleExplore_Routine.html

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Purple to Blue, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid

Build awareness of greater subtlety in what questions reveal

• What else is this telling you?
• What are the implications . .
• What can you infer from . .
• What do you induce

Develop internet search skills

• Can the internet help?
• What question would you need to type to find that out?
• What would be a better question for this search?
• Can we narrow it down?
• Is this relevant?
• Is it reliable?

Focus on sorting, sifting, filtering, clarifying, probing questions

• Sorting/sifting
  • Which parts of this data are worth keeping? Will this information shed light on any of my questions? Is this information reliable? How much of this information do I need to retain? How can I summarize the best information and ideas?
• Filtering
  • Having sorted that out, what shall we ask next to go further? If he believes/does not believe that, what will I ask next? How can I pursue this line of enquiry? Do I have any supplementary questions I can use and how will they be affected by the first I response I get?
• Clarifying
  • What does this actually mean? / How did they get to this point? / do the ideas follow logically? / What is the sequence of ideas, and how do they work? Might there be more to it? What is it we’re not seeing? What do we need more clarity about?
• Probing
  • What should we ask to get to the bottom of it? What is at the heart of this? Can we clear away everything that is not necessary? How can we separate the critical from the unimportant?

Developing questions that open up possibilities

• Can you give me a bit more on that?
• What do you think about . . .
• Can you expand on that?
• What is your opinion?
• What do you think might happen next?
• What is your hypothesis?
• So what do you expect will happen then?
• What are the possibilities? Are there any others?

Explore the effects of the manner of asking questions

• Does it matter how you ask your question?
• What happens if you ask that question with a softer voice?
• What difference does a cross voice make?
• What would happen if you asked in a different way?
• Is your question likely to get the answer you need?
• It’s not what you ask, it’s how you ask it!

An If – Then suggestion,

If I’m not sure I’ve found out what I need → then I’ll look again at the last answer for more clues

If I can’t find what I’m looking for → then I’ll try a different search word

If my question does not tell me everything I need to know → then I’ll seek more detail.

If I want someone to tell me more → then I’ll use an open question to nudge them

If my question is not getting the reaction I expected → then I’ll try re-wording it

Learning Mats

Learning mats are tools to encourage students to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. Basically, they are A3 or A4 laminated sheets that are kept on tables or used as part of wall display. They show various aspects of a learning habit and students refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the finer aspects of a learning habit that is being stretched. They help students to be able to join in meta-cognitive talk

This mat is blank. You will find one that has suggested behaviours on in the Value/Green section. In this one you and your students could fill in some ideas for specific Receive/Purple behaviours that you want your students to start using. They can of course be individualised for specific students.

View as a Pdf View as a Word document

Using Learning Mats

You could also use Learning Mats (in ‘teacher speak’ or ‘student speak):

• To raise awareness of the habit
• To spread the school’s common language for learning
• As an aide memoire for students and teachers
• As a self-assessment support for students
• As an audit tool to support teacher planning. i.e. which of the skills are implied in the lesson plan and therefore how will they be surfaced in what you draw attention to/orchestrate the lesson.

Moving from Blue → Green (Values)

• Overview
• Explore question funnels
• Explore the asking of hypothetical/what if questions
• Assess the validity of evidence/information
• Explore deeper internet search skills
• Routines
• Talk
• Review/Reflect

Values: Minded to be eager to go deeper into things and developing the search and questioning skills to match

In the Values (green) phase, pupils value the skill of asking questions. They like to dig more deeply or expansively and hone their detective skills.

Behaviours to secure…moving from Blue to Green

Questioning can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

 Your role as a teacher in this phase is to:

• Explore question funnels to narrow or open an enquiry
• Explore the asking of hypothetical/what if questions
• Assess the validity of evidence/information

Build a three-level questioning habit (ages 4-10)

‘ReQuest’ is a structured process for deepening questions. For example, start with the painting The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck:

• On-the-line questions: ask questions about the picture for which the answers can be seen just by looking closely at the picture: ‘How many candles are there?’ ‘What kind of room is it?’ ‘What is on the wall behind the people?’
• Between-the-lines questions: questions whose answers can be inferred by looking at the picture: E.g. ‘What is the relationship between the two people?’ ‘How long ago was the picture painted?’ ‘What time of day is it?’
• Beyond-the-line questions: questions whose answers need to be elicited by making interpretive links from the picture: E.g. ‘What did the artist think of his subjects?’ Is the number of candles significant?’ How does perspective work in the painting?’

Just one more Question… (ages 4-10)

‘Just One More Question…’ (said in the style of Columbo!): Given any topic or subject, they have to work collaboratively in groups to create an array of quality questions. They can then be given a series of challenging question stems to broaden their range of questions, using the following: What if…?; Suppose we knew…?; What would change if…? Suppose we knew…? If they write the questions on post it notes then they can be collated and saved – with the teacher returning to them further thrown the learning line. As the topic develops students can add ‘just one more question’, as well as answering the initial questions as their understanding grows. By following this method you can continue to foster the crucial culture of inquiry in the classroom – encouraging questions as a matter of course. Generating a range of such questions is a great way to initiate a topic, as it helps highlight miscomprehension immediately; it can foster collaboration and it can give the teacher precise and immediate formative feedback to shape their subsequent planning for the topic.”

Extract from Alex Quigley’s Hunting English Blog: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Question continuum (ages )

Question continuum – The continuum involves the students first devising questions, in pairs or groups, on any given topic or idea. Then the continuum is created very visibly, either on the whiteboard, or more semi-permanently on a display board (great to resume the strategy in future lessons) – with student questions being on post it notes for added flexibility. The horizontal axis would represent the ‘Interest Level’ generated by each question – that is how likely the question is to inspire new thinking and new possibilities, and simply the interest level it generates from the group. Then the vertical axis could be flexible in a variety of ways, should you wish to include a vertical axis. The vertical axis could represent ‘Complexity‘ (from ‘closed factual questions’ to ‘open, conceptual questions’) – that is how far the question would deepen their understanding and generate complex thinking. Students could feedback their opinions, shaped by the teacher, to identify the best questions – which then could be the subject of further exploration. Having the questions very visible means you can also flexibly rearrange, such as selecting the ‘best’ nine questions and creating a new ‘diamond nine’ formation. As you can see, the possibilities are endless.”

Extract from Alex Quigley’s Hunting English Blog: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Question types (ages 4-10)

In order to strengthen learning habits, it is important for students and their teachers to reflect on the specific attributes that contribute to a well-formed habit.

Ipsative and formative approaches to reviewing learning habits place students at the centre of the process of developing their learning habits and recognising progress.

Types of questions

Question funnels

A comprehensive article with useful graphics and mnemonics to unpack question funnels:
https://www.faculty.londondeanery.ac.uk/e-learning/appraisal/skilful-questioning-and-active-listening

Creative Questions (ages 4-10)

Creative Questions is a visible thinking routine that encourages students to students create interesting questions and then imaginatively mess around with them for a while in order to explore  their creative possibilities. It begins with a standard question generation strategy, but then helps  students to ‘improve’ their original questions to further challenge the imagination. For more detail on Creative Questions, visit the Visible Thinking website:

https://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03g_CreativityRoutines/CreativeQuestions/CreativeQuestions_Routine.html

Validity (ages -10)

A useful list of tips and tricks from the University of Illinois about assessing the validity of a site, its authors, and its information, which you could incorporate into your own task on data validity.
https://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/evaluate_sources.html

Search skills (ages -10)

This blog article from the Learning Network has some nice exercises which could be adapted to encourage pupils to think about how they can develop their internet search skills:https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/just-google-it-developing-internet-search-skills/?_r=0

A framework for solving problems

From the book How to Solve it, mathematician George Polya lays out a framework of progressively penetrating questions for solving problems.

• What are you asked to find out or show?
• Can you restate the problem in your own words?
• Can you think of a picture or diagram that might help you to understand the problem?
• Is there enough information to enable you to find the solution?
• Do you understand all the words used in stating the problem.?
• Do you need to ask a question to get to the answer?

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Blue to Green, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:

Assess the validity of evidence/information

• Do we believe this?
• Does that seem reasonable?
• Does this have to be true in all circumstances?
• Can we prove this?
• Why are we having some doubts about this?
• What assumptions do we need to test or challenge here in thinking about it?

Teach deep internet search skills.

• Can you think of a unique term that is specific to xxxx
• Will you use quotation marks?
• Might you need to use the Advance Search button?
• How can you customise your search?

Explore question funnels

• What else might you want to know?
• What does that question lead you to ask next?
• When we find that out, what might we ask next?
• Can you think of five questions that would give us the answer to this puzzle?
• Let’s not drift off the point

Develop hypothetical questions and explore hunches

• What if . . . .
• What if that is not the case?
• What do you think might be going on?
• Hypothetically, . . . .
• What if you could . . . .
• Why not see where it takes you
• What are your instincts telling you?
• Gut feeling

Explore asking tough questions

• What is the question we are not asking?
• What can’t we ask?
• How might we ask that without causing offence?
• Why are some questions more challenging/difficult to ask than others?

An If – Then suggestion,

If I’m struggling to uncover …. → then I’ll ask myself what question I really need to answer.

If I seem to have too many options on the internet → then I’ll focus on the words I’m using to search with

If I can’t see everything I need → then I’ll ask if I need to take another route

If I have a vague idea → then I’ll be brave and explore it

If I’m worried about a question I need to ask → then I’ll take time to get the words right before asking.

Learning Mats

Learning mats are tools to encourage students to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. Basically, they are A3 or A4 laminated sheets that show various aspects of a learning habit. They are kept on tables or used as part of wall display. Students refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the finer aspects of a learning habit that is being stretched. They help students to be able to join in meta-cognitive talk

As students become more proficient at understanding themselves as learners the statements could be upgraded to reflect later phases of the progression grid. Students often enjoy making their own learning mats describing the particular skills they are working on.

View as a Pdf View as a Word document

 

Moving from Green → Yellow (Organises)

• Overview
• Plan and evaluate questions strategies
• Asking 'Challenging' questions
• Routines
• Talk

Organises: Minded to be prepared to ensure their curiosity and questioning skills pay off

In the Organises (yellow) phase, pupils organise themselves to keep on track, becoming ever more skilled in preparing and pursuing lines of enquiry.

Behaviours to secure … moving from Green to Yellow

Questioning can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

 Your role as a teacher in this phase is to:

• Encourage students to plan and evaluate questions strategies
• Explore asking ‘challenging’ or ‘tough’ questions of others

Questions for Answers (ages 4-10)

Students appreciate that there are a range of strategies that can be used to improve questioning. Sometimes we ask open and exploratory questions and at other times we try and limit the focus in order to tie things down. Good questioners are strategic about their questioning — they stop, distil what they know and refocus themselves.

Contains:

• Coaching Notes
• DIY

 

Question Dice 1 (ages 4-10)

Teachers are already well aware that there are different question stems that produce differing outcomes:

• What based questions tend to lead to answers about an event
• Where and When based questions lead to answers about a situation
• Which based questions require a choice to be made
• Who based questions lead to answers about the person
• Why based questions require reasons to be explained
• How based questions require the means to be identified/explained.

All standard stuff, and people use these question stems to start the majority of their questions.

But have you ever considered the importance of the verb that is attached to the question word?

“Is” will generate an answer about the present

“Was/Did” will generate an answer about the past

“Can/Could” requires pupils to explore possibilities

“Would” requires pupils to consider what is probable

“Will/Should” requires pupils to predict/hypothesise

“Might” requires pupils to imagine/speculate

The first 2 verbs tend to activate lower-order thinking skills, the last 4 the higher-order ones.

6 question stems, 6 verbs. Combine them to create 36 different types of question thus:

What Questions can I ask?

Event	Situation	Choice	Person	Reason	Means
Present	What is?	Where is? When did?	Which is?	Who is?	Why is?	How is?
Past	What did?	Where did? When did?	Which did?	Who did?	Why did?	How did?
Possibility	What can? What could?	Where can? When can? Where could? When could?	Which can? Which could?	Who can? Who could?	Why can? Why could?	How can? How could?
Probability	What would?	Where would? When would?	Which would?	Who would?	Why would?	How would?
Prediction	What will? What should?	Where will? When will? Where should? When should?	Which will? Which should?	Who will? Who should?	Why will? Why should?	How will? How should?
Imagination	What might?	Where might? When might?	Which might?	Who might?	Why might?	How might?

How/why might you use this in your classroom ?

To stimulate students to ask a wider range of questions:

Towards the end of a lesson/module of work, generate question stems comprising a question word and a verb (both chosen at random). Require pupils to create a question about the topic in hand using the question stem as a starting point.

Example – you are studying World War 1. The random question stem generated is “Who could”. Pupils have to create a “Who could” question relating WW1. Then repeat for “How should” etc etc.

Given the six-ness of both dimensions, why not create a pair of question dice, one with the question words on, the other with the verbs. Roll the 2 dice to generate the question stem. Or google ‘Question Dice’ and buy yourself a pair of foam dice.

To evaluate the effectiveness and range of your own questioning strategies

Get a friend to monitor the questions you regularly ask in your classroom. Do your questions cover the full range, or do you tend to ask questions from a restricted set (ie you use ‘is’ a lot, but rarely use ‘might’, and/or you use what frequently, but use which rarely.

Question Dice 2 (ages 4-10)

Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies six ‘levels’ of activity – Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating and Creating.

Questions relating to the remembering phase include: Who is; What is; Why does; Where was etc.

(Worryingly, research indicates that between 80 and 90% of all teacher questions fall into this category !)

But what could teachers ask to activate the other (higher) levels ?

Google ‘Thinking Dice’ and buy a set of dice that will support higher-order questioning.

Use the dice to expand your own questioning repertoire, but also use the dice with students to help them to frame their own, increasingly sophisticated questions.

Socratic Questioning (ages 4-10)

Socrates himself believed that questioning was at the root of all learning – and it is hard to disagree. The six steps of Socratic questioning creates a critical atmosphere that probes thinking and once more gets the students questioning in a structured way. There are six main categories:

Q1. Get your students to clarify their thinking, for instance: “Why do you say that?” ….“Could you explain that further?”
Q2. Challenging students about assumptions, for instance: “Is this always the case? Why do you think that this assumption holds here?”
Q3. Evidence as a basis for argument, questions such as: “Why do you say that?” or “Is there reason to doubt this evidence?”
Q4. Viewpoints and perspectives, this challenges the students to investigate other ways of looking at the same issue, for example: “What is the counter argument for…?” or Can/did anyone see this another way?”
Q5. Implications and consequences, given that actions have consequences, this is an area ripe for questioning, for instance: “But if that happened, what else would result?” or “How does… affect ….?” By investigating this, students may analyse more carefully before jumping to an opinion
Q6. Question the question, just when students think they have a valid answer this is where you can tip them back into the pit: “Why do you think I asked that question?” or “Why was that question important?””

Extract from Alex Quigley’s Hunting English Blog: https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2012/11/questioning-top-ten-strategies/

Question sorts

Question sorts is a Visible Thinking Routine that helps students to identify powerful questions that are both generative (that take us somewhere) and genuine (that we care about). It begins with a standard question generator activity, but then requires students to agree where to place the questions on a grid in terms of how likely or unlikely they are to generate interesting lines of enquiry and how much or little they care about the answer to the question. For more detail on Question Sorts, visit the Visible Thinking website:

https://www.visiblethinkingpz.org/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03d_UnderstandingRoutines/Question%20Sorts/QuestionSorts_Routine.html

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Green to Yellow, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:

Discern big pictures and relevant detail

• What’s really important here?
• Have we got enough detail?
• You need to see both the wood and the trees
• Have you got sufficient detail to understand the bigger picture?
• Does the big picture help you to organise and understand the detail?
• Are you paying attention to both the big picture and the underlying detail in equal measure?

Enhance search skills

• What do you want to find out about?
• How will you go about finding that out?
• What strategies do you have available?
• Who are the experts on this and how might you find out what they think?

Plan and evaluate question strategies

• What types of question will you need in order to find out?
• Would that strategy make it harder?
• Think ahead of the questions you need to find answers to.
• How will you go about finding out?
• Which question framework might be useful here?
• Which framework would be easier/more straightforward?
• Which questions proved to be the most powerful? Why is that?
• Which questions failed to uncover what you needed?

Develop new lines of enquiry

• What are we not asking ?
• What are we avoiding ?
• What would someone who had a very different set of beliefs than we do say about it?
• What question, if answered, would move this on ?
• What’s missing from this picture so far? What is it we’re not seeing?
• If there was one thing that hasn’t yet been said in order to reach a deeper level of understanding/clarity, what would that be?
• If our success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps might we choose?
• What question could ripple out in a way that created new possibilities for the future?

Explore ‘challenging’ questions

• How can we possibly ask that?
• What makes that a challenging question?
• Is it the question, or the way we ask it, that is challenging?
• What can we not ask?
• Why can’t we ask it?
• How might we ask it?
• What if we don’t ask it?

An If – Then suggestion,

If I feel I’m losing sight of where I’m going → then I’ll stop and look back over what I know / have done.

If I am stuck for an idea → then I’ll try some off the wall questions to get the ideas flowing again.

If I get stuck for a line of enquiry → then I’ll refer to the bank of questions in …

If a question really gets my interest → then I’ll be prepared to follow to see where it leads

If things are tough → then I’ll take a step back and plan what to do / ask next

Moving from Yellow → Orange (Embodies)

• Overview
• Construct incisive questions
• Understand the power of playing Devil's Advocate
• Explore 'sensitivity to occasion'
• Talk

Embodies: Minded to take a questioning approach to learning and life

In the Embodies (orange) phase, being a skilled and seasoned ‘finder-outer’ characterises students. They are fully and skilfully absorbed in seeking new ideas or experiences and their questioning style and demeanour is sensitive to any occasion.

Behaviours to secure … moving from Yellow to Orange

Questioning can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

Your role as a teacher in this phase

Let students get on with it. By and large, students migrate into this phase for themselves. The classroom culture established at the previous phases supports this, and there is little need for direct teacher intervention. Rather, the role of the teacher becomes one of:

• Helping students to construct incisive questions.
• Exploring the value of playing Devil’s Advocate.
• Exploring ‘sensitivity to occasion’.

Construct incisive questions

• Keep nudging pupils to identify key features
• Encourage pupils to keep a log of questions that really uncover important information or lines of enquiry
• Nudge pupils with questions that encourage them to suspend their current view of things in order to move their thinking on – for example: “If that were not the case, then how might you . . . ?”
• Ask “Which one question, if answered, would really get you to the heart of this issue ?”
• Open up conversations with pupils about the difference between surveying the scenery, much as one would with flood lights, and looking closely at detail, much as one would with a torch.

Understand the power of playing Devil’s Advocate

• Model playing Devil’s Advocate to challenge their thinking
• Encourage pupils to argue against their own point of view
• Nudge pupils to explore a situation from the perspective of someone who has sharply differing beliefs from their own
• On occasion, ask unanswerable questions
• Use ‘Thunks’ to stimulate unexpected lines of enquiry, and explore them alongside your pupils

Explore ‘sensitivity to occasion’.

• Remind pupils to consider the likely impact of their questions before they ask them
• Ask “how else could you have broached this ?”
• Encourage discussion about questions that cannot / should not be asked
• Discuss / research strategies for exploring delicate lines of enquiry – try googling ‘Asking difficult questions’ for more.
• Model sensitivity to occasion yourself and explore with them the extent to which you are successful

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Yellow to Orange, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:

Encourage undertaking new experiences

• What might you try next ?
• Have you ever tackled something like this before ?
• This is uncharted territory – it’s exciting !
• I can see that you are completely absorbed in what you are doing
• If you can just crack this . . . . . .
• Just imagine how you will feel if/when you can get to the bottom of this
• That’s a novel way of going about it
• You clearly enjoy breaking new ground !
• This is intriguing

Enhancing search skills

• Where else could you look?
• What else might you ask?
• What else might you do?
• Who else might be able to help ?
• Who is the leading expert on this ? Have you asked them ?
• Maybe this requires a completely new approach
• Curiosity is the mother of all inventions

Construct incisive questions.

• Which one question, if answered, would tell us what we need to find out?
• If there was one thing that hasn’t yet been asked, what would that be?
• Does this get to the heart of it?
• What, precisely, do we need more clarity about?
• What’s in the centre of the table?
• What question, if answered, could make the most difference to this
• Cut to the chase . .

Play Devil’s advocate & explore its value.

• Who will argue the opposite?
• What would someone who had a very different set of beliefs than us say about it?
• Why is it useful to consider it from another perspective?
• On the other hand . .
• Have you considered . . .
• But what about . .

Exploring ‘sensitivity to occasion’.

• What question might move things on right now?
• Are there any questions we would find it difficult to ask? Why?
• What’s the best thing to ask in this situation?
• Who might be offended by this question? How might that be avoided?

An If – Then suggestion,

If it’s new → then I’ll go for it

If I feel that I have been here before → then I’ll try a completely different tack.

If I seem to be missing ‘something’ → then I’ll try to find the one question that will unlock the problem

If I’m uncertain what to do → then I’ll ask a question that nobody else has

If I get an adverse reaction to my question → then I’ll try and phrase it differently.

2.1 Teachers as habit formers

As teachers we are in the habit-forming business. Those habits that we model in front of young people influence the ways in which they perform and behave. Therefore, we need to be sure to foster productive learning habits. If we tend to ask most of the questions in class, then we may be building a belief in students that their role is predominantly one of responding to our questions rather than of framing their own. In such ways do good teachers, albeit inadvertently, stifle the very behaviours they are seeking to promote.

Activity 2: Does my classroom climate encourage students to ask questions?

Classroom culture is all-important in building pupils’ learning power. It’s about roles and relationships in the classroom, how learning is organised, the vocabulary of learning, and what gets celebrated. A classroom climate that supports and nourishes the inclination for students to frame their own questions is characterised by enquiry mindedness and confident uncertainty. This includes a healthy sceptical curiosity about all things and the enjoyment of ‘not knowing’  that lead students to pursue their own lines of enquiry.

To build a friendly learner-questioning culture teachers will need to believe that:

• Questioning with curiosity is what drives learning
• Pupils need to become skilled questioners as part of becoming independent learners
• Innate curiosity is fragile, needing to be nurtured, supported and stretched
• Pupils’ questions are windows into their understanding

And from a question friendly environment learners come to believe:

• Asking questions doesn’t make me look stupid
• Asking questions shows that I’m learning
• I need to find things out for myself
• It’s okay to ask when I don’t  know / am not sure
• I like to ask questions to make sure that I can believe what I am being told.

Get a feel for the questioning culture of your classroom. How might it be working for or against developing pupils questioning habits.
Look through the ideas carefully and consider whether you already use some, and whether any appeal to you to try.

1.1 What is Questioning?

‘Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.’ So stated Socrates, considered by some to be ‘the father of questioning’. Even through nearly 2,500 years of human development and societal ‘progression’, those words still hold true. In growing the habit of questioning, it is important to acknowledge that questioning itself is rooted in curiosity, that great driver of engagement, of seeking, of asking, and asking again.

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

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

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

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

There are classrooms that have a ‘Wonder Wall’ where both students and teachers store up all their questions. There are classrooms where marks are awarded for good questions as well as good answers.

Extract from Building Learning Power. Guy Claxton 2002

A well-formed habit

Let’s dig a little deeper into questioning.
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
• Dig beneath the surface
•  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.

1.2 How Questioning might build when we nurture it.

Being good at questioning isn’t something that switches on on good days and off on bad days. Questioning grows and builds when it’s nurtured and supported. Furthermore, being an effective questioner involves gaining control of a range of linked skills and emotions.

Cast your eye over the ‘big picture’ of growing Questioning below. Then move on to finding out what the columns (1.3) and the rows (1.4) are all about.

1.3 Unpick the columns; what contributes to a readiness to Question?

1.4 Unpick the rows; getting better at Questioning

Of course the development of Questioning does not grow neatly up each column or evenly across the phases in the grid. The five broad phases of dispositional growth (purple – orange) are affective ways in which people may be inclined to behave: we call this inclination ‘mindedness’.

1.1 What is Collaboration?

Pair work, group work or teamwork are frequent features of classroom practice across all age ranges. But what are the essential features of this way of learning? How can students improve their collaborative behaviours in order to achieve better results?

In this session, we explore the subtleties of collaboration and the skills that make up teamwork. We consider a broad order in which such skills might be explained, orchestrated, commented on and modelled by teachers in classrooms to ensure the progressive development of students as collaborative learners.

There are many ways to define collaboration. In a learning context we have come to understand collaboration as being able to manage yourself effectively in the give and take of a collaborative venture, having a range of interpersonal skills that enable you to work and learn with and from others, being willing and able to contribute constructively and with sensitivity, and adding to and drawing strength from the team itself.

At its least sophisticated, it is little more than being cooperative. At its most sophisticated and complex levels it goes beyond learning ‘in a team’ and becomes learning ‘as a team’. It is an invaluable life skill.

In short…

Collaboration: Having both the skills and the inclination to contribute positively to group work in order to learn productively with and from others.

What does a well-formed habit look like?

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.

At-a-glance Collaboration card [extract] – Click image to view full screen

Find out more about Collaboration:

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.

1.2 How Collaboration might build when we nurture it.

Being collaborative isn’t something that switches on on good days and off on bad days. Being a good collaborator grows and builds when it’s nurtured and supported. Furthermore, being collaborative involves gaining control of a range of linked skills and emotions. Take a look at  how progression in Collaboration might grow across six contributory aspects.

Cast your eye over the ‘big picture’ of growing Collaboration below. Then move on to finding out what the columns (1.3) and the rows (1.4) are all about.

1.3 Unpick the columns; what contributes to a readiness to Persevere?

The grid columns are things that might combine to make up the skills and attitudes of a Perseverer.

• Overview
• 1) Social interaction
• 2) Building ideas
• 3) Working as a team
• 4) Self talk
• 5) Getting the job done
• 6) Reviewing action

Overview of the grid

Collaboration involves knowing how to learn with others, as part of a team, in situations where no one person knows all parts of the puzzle. This complicated yet essential learning habit develops in several different ways. First of all it hinges on social interaction; how well we get on together, whether we are patient with others and respect their views. Then how we are able to bounce off others to build ideas; making the most of several brains rather than one. Next, how we learn to be part of a team and to perform different roles when needed. Fourthly, how we talk to ourselves about learning with others, where our real understanding of the process is revealed. Fifthly, how we contribute to the process of actually getting things done. Not just being there but doing something helpful. And lastly how we contribute to improving team performance by evaluating not just outcomes but the process of getting there.

Take a closer look at what each column of the grid is about

1) Social interaction

How we interact socially in learning and working with others.The way in which we learn the social conventions of behaving in a group; taking turns to speak and contribute, listening to understand others; being patient with others and not hogging the limelight; stepping outside our own concerns and building the confidence of others and respecting their views; being able to manage and overcome the inevitable controversy as teams work creatively together; and thus being able to become a valuable sociable member of any team.

 

2) Building ideas

Just being good mates in a team doesn’t lead to success. Teams have to understand how to build ideas together; to draw on the ideas of others, to be able to graciously set aside ideas that wouldn’t work, to spark off others to ensure new and better ideas get an airing.And somehow, in all this ‘togetherness’ people are able to retain their independent judgement and avoid being drawn into group think. Teams share and build ideas together; growing and improving possible solutions in order to reach their goals

 

 

3) Working as a team

Working as a team is rather different to working in a team. It’s all about ‘teamness’ or ‘togetherness’. In order to work as a team people need to understand team roles, to find out what role they are particularly good at, to take on a range of roles when needed and eventually be willing to play any role in a team to ensure the goal is reached.Being able to work as a team  is influenced by how our self perception and confidence grow, how we learn to trust, how we recognise the need for each other.

 

 

 

 

4) Self talk

The voice of self awareness

• Self-talk is what we say to ourselves as we learn. The statements capture what someone in each phase of the grid might be thinking. Students may use some of these phrases when talking with you, or in writing from time to time, but mostly self-talk goes on inside their heads. We have shown a small flavour of self talk thoughts that teachers can encourage students to imitate. Some relate to standards, others to self monitoring, or flexibility. All such self-talk is important in building a persevering habit.

 

 

 

5) Getting the job done

How teams achieve their goals by using the well known learning process of Plan Do Review. Good teams have people who know that the first job is to be clear about what the task is really about. They are skilled in considering/creating/agreeing realistic goals to be achieved and which everyone has bought in to. Then the team have to plan how they will achieve the goal, how they will monitor their progress and methodology and how they will make sure the job is well done.

6) Reviewing action

This aspect is about how teams learn how to improve. It’s the aspect of teamwork that is frequently left out altogether or given short shrift. But it’s the aspect of teamwork that helps teams build themselves into better teams. It includes evaluating how they performed as individuals in contributing to the work of the team and how/whether the team process worked to achieve the team goal. Importantly such reflection leads to serious re-planning of their ways of working. It’s meta learning at a team level. Good teams will be looking for what has become know as marginal gains, those little things can we do better/improve that will impact on the overall performance.

1.4 Unpick the rows; getting better at Collaborating.

Of course the development of collaboration doesn’t grow neatly up each column or even across the columns. However, it is possible to look at the grid another way and group cells together into five broad phases of dispositional growth. We have based this growth on Bloom’s taxonomy of the affective domain. By looking at the development of emotion and skill, the grid yields broad ways in which people may be inclined to behave: we call this inclination ‘mindedness’. Pupils may be:

2.1 Teachers as habit formers.

As teachers we are in the habit-forming business. Those habits that we model in front of young people influence the ways in which they perform and behave. Therefore, we need to be sure to foster productive learning habits. If, for example, we offer constructive feedback but fail to require students to act on it, we are not building their  inclination to further improve on previous attempts. In such ways do good teachers, albeit inadvertently, stifle the very behaviours they are seeking to promote.

Activity 2: Does my classroom climate encourage Collaboration?

Classroom culture is all important in building pupils’ learning power. It’s about roles and relationships in the classroom, how learning is organised, the vocabulary of learning, and what gets celebrated. A classroom climate that supports and nourishes the inclination to collaborate is characterised by: a culture that prizes trust and mutual respect; open ended, challenging activities that require pupils to work as a team not just in a team; a language of ‘we’, not ‘I’, and that the essence of team work is about working to an agreed goal. A classroom climate that supports and develops the ability to collaborate becomes a community of enquiry.

In order to develop a collaborative learning culture teachers need to believe that:

• Learning is building knowledge and understanding through doing things with others
• Learning with and through others is dependent on constructive dialogue and effective collaborative skills
• Teamwork needs to be purposeful and carefully structured

And through such a collaboration friendly culture students come to believe that:

• ‘I can trust my peers to help me to learn.’
• ‘I can contribute to the learning of my peers.’

Get a feel for your classroom culture and how this may be working for, or against building students’ willingness and ability to learn with and from others.
Look through the ideas carefully and consider whether you already use some and whether any appeal to you to try.

So far, you have:

• Looked at your pupils through the lens of the Collaboration learning grid
• Gained a sense of what becoming better at Collaborating looks like
• Considered how you might shift the culture of the classroom to nurture Collaboration

Now we look more closely at things you can actually do in the classroom to provoke, guide and support pupils to get better at Collaborating; to build the phases of Collaboration mindedness.

Go to the phase that you have already identified as the one that most of your pupils need to develop next.

In each Tab box below you will find an overview of the teacher’s role followed by a range of suggestions linked to making the classroom culture more Collaboration friendly. After each suggestion you will see a brief statement in green that reinforces the cultural aspect of the idea. While some suggestions are one off ideas many can be used several times during a year or indeed be made into a classroom routine and thereby shift the culture. 

Moving from Purple → Blue (Responds)

• Overview
• Stress the 'teamness' of teams
• Focus on ways of agreeing relevant goals
• Routines
• Talk
• Review/Reflect

Responds: Minded to be part of a team

In the Responds (blue) phase pupils are willing to develop their understanding of what being part of a team involves, agreeing goals together, trying out different roles, broadening social skills to open up others.

Behaviours to secure, moving from Purple to Blue

Collaboration can be promoted both by how you structure the learning environment and how you help pupils to think of themselves as learners.

Your role as a teacher in this phase is to:

• Stress the ‘teamness’ of teams.
• Focus on ways of agreeing relevant goals.
• Make role trialling a routine.

Explore working together (KS1)

Look out for physical tasks that will only succeed if pupils actively cooperate – a see-saw for example, or catching games, or hide and seek, or ‘What’s the time Mister Wolf’ ?’, etc. Treat it as an opportunity to discuss how success can only come if everyone plays their part.

Jigsaw listening (KS1/2/3)

Assign pupils letters A-E into groups to listen to a short story. In each group A listens for one type of information (eg types of transport used), B listens for something else etc etc.

At the end of the story, ask them to reconstruct the story together by each putting in the information that they know.

Reflect on

• whether this helped to get a fuller understanding of the story ?
• how  this might shape the way pupils approach tasks outside school ?”
• what this way of working tells pupils about using the skills of all team members

Jigsaw research (KS2)

“Assign ‘expert’ groups of pupils different aspects of a topic to research. They then share the information they have gathered with the wider group to create the whole picture. Discuss how to ensure that each ‘expert group’ has an equal voice in putting forward their point of view, even though the whole group outcome may emphasise one aspect over another.” – another way of building interdependence.

Teamness of teams (ages 8-12)

Machines – creating a machine with moving parts using pupils.

Follows up with discussion about the ‘teamness’ of teams and everyone contributing.

Contains

• Coaching notes

Think Pair Share (ages All)

TPS is a well-known strategy for ensuring that pupils build up to learning in a team.

One way of using this might be to;

Pose a question or problem, give pupils 1 minute to think individually about their own personal response; give 2 minutes in pairs to compare their first reactions with a partner; give fours 3 minutes to share their views in a group.

Use as a simple strategy to prepare pupils for working together in teams.

As an alternative, try Think/Link/Together which achieves the same outcomes.

think link together

Everyone contributing (KS2/3)

Teamworking mat

A useful way of knowing who is contributing what, although not a means of ensuring everyone contributes!

Draw the mat onto a large piece of sugar paper (the one shown would be suitable for a group of 4 – adjust for smaller/larger groups). Each individual writes their personal response/views/solution in the section immediately in front of them. Once all individuals have made their contribution the group agree the group response, which is written in the central panel.

teamworking mat

Pizza the Action (KS1/2)

Provide each team member with a piece of ‘pizza’, plus one spare. Ask students to write their own ideas or responses or solutions or questions or answers etc on their own piece. Once complete, the pizza is assembled and the team together distil their thinking and complete the final piece of the pizza. Display either  each team’s pizza, or of the distilled pieces from all teams to form a composite view.

Pizza the Action is a Kagan Cooperative Learning structure:

https://www.kaganonline.com/catalog/cooperative_learning.php

Explore interdependence  (ages 8-12)

Help pupils realise that the contributions of others are essential if you are to overcome a problem successfully

Contains

• Rating Wheel
• Coaching Notes

Agreeing goals (KS2/3)

Offer activities where the goals are not immediately apparent. These may be in the form of fragmented information where each pupil has some key information, but no pupil has sufficient information, but no pupil has sufficient information to solve the problem by themselves, or simply where the group is not given a clear steer on what is to be achieved.  Insist the group have agreed their goal before making a start on the task.

Sorting the goal  (KS2/3)

Offer goal planning tools for groups to complete before deciding what to do

Goal Planning

Reviewing progress (KS1/2/3)

Build in review times for groups to check progress against the agreed goals. This could be written into the planning tool above.

Goal Planning

Assign Group Roles

Below are three ‘levels’ of group roles – choose the one that best fits your students’ current needs.

Group roles (KS1 students)

Assign roles to group members prior to beginning a task, ensuring that over time pupils try out a range of roles.

At KS1/2, try

 

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/role-playing-cards-for-ks1-or-ks2-group-work-3004835

Group roles (KS2 students)

Assign roles to group members prior to beginning a task, ensuring that over time students experience a range of roles.

Consider these group work role cards

https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/group-work-role-cards-6047778

Group roles (older students and in to KS3)

With older students you might want to consider the group roles identified by Belbin. At this stage, students are probably looking only at the ‘To Do’ column, and the language may well need to be made age-appropriate. Also, think about whether it is wise to introduce all of these roles at the same time. If they are to be phased in, what is the most sensible order ? For example the people orientated roles first (coordinator/team-worker/resource-investigator), the action orientated roles next (shaper/implementer/completer-finisher), and finally the thought orientated roles (plant/monitor-evaluator/specialist).

View

Teacher talk

To nudge students from Purple to Blue, use language like this to nudge each column of the grid:
Showing patience and concern for others

• Be patient – one at a time !
• It was great to see you listening carefully as you did that task together
• If you all talk at the same time you won’t hear everyone’s ideas
• Listen – xxx has a really good idea
• We can’t always be the star of the group !
• Let’s all go with xxx’s great idea

Offering their own ideas and encouraging others to do the same

• Let xxx say what (s)he is thinking
• I think xxx might have a good idea here
• Does anyone have an idea that might help us here?
• Let’s take turns to say what we each think
• Are you sure that everyone is making a contribution?
• Do you have something useful / relevant to add?
• How will you make sure that everybody’s voice is heard?

Enable students to try different roles

• What else might you do to help the group ?
• Who is going to do what ?
• Who is going to make sure the team’s plan is on track?
• Who would like to take the role of making sure everything is finished well?
• What other roles might be needed ?
• What other roles are there ?
• Who will be the resource finder?
• Who will make sure everyone has a job to do?
• Why not try a different role this time ?
• Which role do you feel most comfortable with ? Ditto least ?

Agree Relevant Goals

• What do we think we have to do ?
• What’s this task really about?
• What are we trying to end up with?
• What will that look like?
• How will we know we have been successful?
• Which is the best idea so far?
• So, what is our goal?
• Does this goal sound do-able/worthwhile/right for us?
• What do we need to do together ?
• How will you agree what needs to be done ?
• What will the end product be ?
• Does/will that answer the question / solve the problem

Offering and accepting feedback

• Can I tell you what I noticed about your teamwork ?
• Have you asked your team what they feel about your contribution?
• Who made the greatest/least contribution? Why do you think that?
• On a scale of 1-10, how well did you contribute?
• We all need to listen to our team mates
• On a scale of 1-10, how do you think you did as a team?

An If – Then suggestion,

If I’m losing patience with what someone is saying → Then I will take a deep breath and keep quiet.
If a group member is not saying anything → Then I will ask them what they want to say.
If I’m working as a team → Then I will ask to take on a different role from last time.
If we are deciding what to do → Then I will make certain that what we are suggesting is realistic.
If others suggest how I might have contributed more effectively → Then I will listen patiently and think carefully about what they have said.

Learning Mats

Learning mats are tools to encourage students to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. Basically, they are A3 or A4 laminated sheets that are kept on tables or used as part of wall display. They show various aspects of a learning habit and students refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the finer aspects of a learning habit that is being stretched. They help students to be able to join in meta-cognitive talk

This mat is blank. You will find one that has suggested behaviours on in the Value/Green section. In this one you and your students could fill in some ideas for specific Receive/Purple behaviours that you want your students to start using. They can of course be individualised for specific students.

Download as a word document Download as a PDF

Using Learning Mats

You could also use Learning Mats (in ‘teacher speak’ or ‘student speak):

• To raise awareness of the habit
• To spread the school’s common language for learning
• As an aide memoire for students and teachers
• As a self-assessment support for students
• As an audit tool to support teacher planning. i.e. which of the skills are implied in the lesson plan and therefore how will they be surfaced in what you draw attention to/orchestrate the lesson.

Professional Learning Teams; what and how

Please read before the meeting

The purpose of these meetings is for the team to act as a teacher learning community or as we term them, a Professional Learning Team:  a small group of teachers who meet together regularly to deepen their understanding of an approach, commit to trying out new things, reflect on and share their experiments with each other. Such learning communities are the engines of teacher development. They work best with 6-8 teachers with similar subjects or age groups, and who meet regularly for about an hour over a period of a couple of years.

The group question and probe each other’s summaries of their experiments in order to encourage analysis and deeper reflection. They use questions such as ‘What do you think is getting in the way? What would make this even better?
How could this technique be modified to make it work for you? What do you think made that happen? In this way they support each other in changing and developing their practice.

Some guidelines for team reflection sessions

The delicate, hard work of changing practice requires a safe professional environment in which to explore and understand both triumphs and tribulations. These short guidelines may be helpful in setting a climate for the team itself.

•  Everyone is expected to report back on their classroom experiments
• Coaching questions and probes of colleagues’  classroom experiments  encourage  deeper reflection.
• The group is careful to follow their agreed ground rules which might include;
  • No group member can ‘pass’
  • Listen between the lines when it’s not your turn
  • Actively discuss everyone’s input
  • Constructive criticism – developmental not judgemental
  • Everyone fully engaged in the group
    • What is said is confidential to the group
    • Respect others’ views and encourage others’ ideas
  • No-put downs
  • Maintain an open mind

We wish you well with your rich activity/learning enquiry. Do let us know how it went…

Maybe you would like to write a blog about it to feature on our website for the benefit of the Building Learning Power community.

Collaboration lesson

This Advance Organiser is a little different. The materials show you how an ‘infused’ lesson is designed but here we go a little deeper and include specific aspects of collaboration. The resulting lesson is one that you can use or adapt to develop or assess pupils’ collaborative behaviours.

It is an essential preparation for the Professional Learning Team session in the same course

1. A reminder about dual-focused or split-screen lesson design

1b. Putting the ‘turn-around thinking’ into practice.

Jumping to the heart of the lesson

Let’s just by-pass lesson starters and recalling previous learning for now, and jump to the heart of the lesson.

• What has to be achieved or understood by pupils – objectives
• By doing what? – task
• Using which learning capacities? This is the NEW bit

You already do all the rest!

But it’s this ‘using which learning capacities?’ that will cause you to think differently about the lesson planning.

You ask – as always – what are the anticipated objectives?

The verbs in your resulting objectives will give you clues about the types of activities that will achieve the objectives and the sorts of learning behaviours your pupils will need to contribute to this learning endeavour.

You are designing the task in a way that relies on pupils to contribute their learning ‘powers’; muscles, behaviours, call them what you will.

1c. Working the lesson design through

The lesson schema.

Oops! This might look different to your standard lesson planning format. Don’t worry, no need for you to use this format, we are using it to help you see clearly what’s happening.

We’ll build it up bit by bit

1. Lesson title or sub title for this part of the lesson
2. Stimulus on the whiteboard or in reality. This might be a driving questions, a hook, a resource, the objectives, and so on.
3. What you, the teacher, will be doing at this point.
4. What the pupils will be doing at this point.
5. The learning behaviour you are going to ‘call up’ or activate in pupils to help them reach the learning objectives. The new bit.
6. How you will be talking – the language you will be using to nudge learning behaviours along. Another new bit.
7. Time –how long this part of the lesson should take.

So, as you can see there are only two new components to think about. (5 and 6) and they are linked together: the learning behaviour being used and how you will talk about it to encourage and nudge its use.

2. Let’s start the Collaboration lesson proper

In this section we are going to work through planning a lesson that aims to deal with surviving in a desert. To do this we have selected a ranking order type task which will be achieved by  pupils using their collaborative behaviours. You could use, or adapt, this lesson with your class to develop collaboration. Alternatively you could use it to monitor pupils’ progress in collaborative skills. Its function here is to show how a dual focus lesson is made up/planned.

The lesson has been structured to bring out various aspects of collaboration.

Objectives

3. Putting the activity into the whole lesson

Here’s the full lesson story

1. Big Picture – where the lesson fits into a wider SoW – a holistic context
2. What the lesson will achieve (objectives, outcomes, success criteria and the like)
3. How you will connect pupils to previous learning on this topic
4. The hook – how you will initially engage/interest/make them curious about the subject matter
5. The activity at the heart of the lesson – where the blending of what and how happens
6. Reflecting on the process
7. Reinforcing/transferring through a linked home learning

Look carefully at the seven steps

PURPLE

This section clusters all the ideas that will best assist students to progress from lacking ‘a goal orientation’ to making the first positive steps.

In this Lacks phase, students have little sense of ends or goals. They learn but with little sense of direction or purpose. So, while learning can be an enjoyable activity it has no defined purpose. As a consequence their efforts may be unfocused, possibly ill-directed and rarely fruitful in a conventional sense. They could be seen to be messing about, aimless, with no purpose, but still enjoyable. 

In the Receives phase, students have made a big leap from a ‘just messing about’ mindset to a more purposeful one. Here they are inclined to be developing a sense of what they are trying to achieve and that there is a direction of travel. They can sometimes describe what they want to achieve, what the finished article/product will or could look like. They may begin to use lists of ‘things to do’. They will follow a plan that has been given to them when supported.

This unit is about getting students oriented towards goals, and thereby ensuring their engagement in learning, but one of the quickest ways to start this is through the learning behaviour planning, thinking ahead. We return to this theme many times  during this unit.

Aids to help shift responsibility for learning 

#2 Sorting the language of goals.

#3 Learning Power Tools: equipping learners to achieve learning intentions

Constructing learning lessons

#1 Flipping the emphasis in how goals are expressed

BLUE

This section clusters all the ideas that will best assist students to progress from being bounded by needing direction to being willing to do more things for themselves. 

In the Receives phase, students have made a big leap from having an enjoyable but aimless approach to learning to a more purposeful one. Here they are inclined to be developing a sense of what they are trying to achieve and can describe what the finished article / product will look like. They may begin to use lists of ‘things to do’. They will follow a plan that has been given to them when supported.

In the Responds phase, students are prepared to accept external sources of goals from others. They try with goals they consider do-able. They are beginning to set their own short-term goals and create simple plans for achieving them. 

#4 Involve everybody in asking why. 

Displaying success criteria for mastery goals

A focus on listening should lead to students creating success criteria for good listening. Here they are displayed as listening prompts to aid classroom discussion

 What would you add?

How would you rephrase or up-grade these for your students?

• Pay attention. Focus on the person and what is
  being said
• Don’t get distracted by other things around you
• Show you’re listening by saying uh-huh or nodding your head
• Keep quiet while the other person’s talking
• Wait to ask a question or give comments that show others that you care about what they’re saying.

[/dropshadowbox] 

#2 Sharing curriculum plans

Not sure what to do with this yet.NEED TO READ THIS CAREFULLY AND SEE IF ANY CAN BE USED ACROSS THE WHOLE UNIT

 #2 Building learning goals into lessons ! NEEDS CUTTING AND SPLITTING

GREEN
  

This section clusters  ideas that will best assist students to progress from being willing to do things for themselves to recognising that using the learning behaviour benefits them.

In the Responds phase, students are prepared to accept external sources of goals from others. They try with goals they consider do-able. They are beginning to set their own short-term goals and create simple plans for achieving them. 

In the Values phase, the student  develops a strong belief that they can get better at learning and that using learning behaviours is a benefit to them. They are able to take given goals and make them their own, and/or create clear, achievable goals of their own. They understand the need to create plans so that they are better able to achieve their goals.

#4 Link goals to the real world

#4 Build in expectation for students to establish their own success criteria

Explanation of the module intentions

stuff about whether or not teacher or students know this

Surveying the learning intention territory

the key ideas re LO etc above

Introduction to twin focused

see above in green

Split Screen Teaching

Some basic stuff about alerting students to how they will be learning. use  image from alderbrook ?

Moving from Split Screen Teaching to Infusion

Moving from split screen to infusion – the old level 2/3 of split screen

Building progression in to Infusion

previous section, but with fine grain skills drawn from progression grids as the drivers

The fifth At a Glance card shows the learning power behaviours that particularly serve the development of Healthy, Confident individuals

• Scroll through the Healthy, Confident individuals At a Glance card below

• Download as many copies as you need. 

• Explore and learn more about the topics on each page of the card in the topics below.

This card offers a closer look at learning power and its relationship to the curriculum purpose of developing Healthy, Confident individuals. It encourages you to think about how the need for Healthy, Confident individuals translates into learning friendly classroom cultures and the types of classroom activities and talk that might be appropriate. The final page shows the growth path such learning behaviours need to make.

The fourth At a Glance card shows the learning power behaviours that particularly serve the development of Ethical, Informed citizens

• Scroll through the Ethical, Informed citizens At a Glance card below

• Download as many copies as you need.

• Explore and learn more about the topics on each page of the card in the topics below.

This card offers a closer look at learning power and its relationship to the curriculum purpose of developing Ethical, Informed citizens. It encourages you to think about how the need for Ethical, Informed citizens translates into learning friendly classroom cultures and the types of classroom activities and talk that might be appropriate. The final page shows the growth path such learning behaviours need to make.

The third At a Glance card shows the learning power behaviours that particularly serve the development of Enterprising, Creative contributors

• Scroll through the Enterprising, Creative contributors At a Glance card below

• Download as many copies as you need.

• Explore and learn more about the topics on each page of the card in the topics below.

This card offers a closer look at learning power and its relationship to the curriculum purpose of developing Enterprising, Creative contributors. It encourages you to think about how the need for Enterprising, Creative contributors translates into learning friendly classroom cultures and the types of classroom activities and talk that might be appropriate. The final page shows the growth path such learning behaviours need to make.

The second At a Glance card shows the learning power behaviours that particularly serve the development of Ambitious, Capable learners

• Scroll through the Ambitious, Capable learner At a Glance card below

• Download as many copies as you need. 

•  Explore and learn more about the topics on each page of the card in the topics below.

This card offers a closer look at learning power and its relationship to the curriculum purpose of developing Ambitious, Capable learners. It encourages you to think about how the need for Ambitious Capable learners translates into learning friendly classroom cultures and the types of classroom activities and talk that might be appropriate. The final page shows the growth path such learning behaviours need to make.

Building Resilience: 

Being ready, willing and able to lock on to learning. The emotional aspects of learning (Feeling). 

Absorption

Flow; the pleasure of being rapt in learning

Managing Distractions

Recognising and reducing interruptions

Noticing

Really sensing what’s out there

Perseverance

Stickability; tolerating the feelings of learning

Starting

You may already be very familiar with the ideas that underpin Building Learning Power or you may have only a passing knowledge of the capacities that make up the Supple Learning Mind. Wherever you find yourself on the BLP journey, the Explanation section should enhance your understanding of the capacities and give you pause for thought about just how these ‘habits of mind’ already have a place in your own life and that of your young learners.

Building Learning Power is, in a large part, about developing a common language to think and talk about learning. But that language needs to be varied, appropriate, lively and meaningful. If it becomes stilted and too ‘hide bound’ to a rigid vocabulary then it becomes irrelevant and worthless. In the section,Language to encourage… we hope not only to offer you different ways to talk about the capacities but also to show you that, in the ways you already speak with your children, you are helping, even now, to develop their learning power.

We suggest that a good way to start with each capacity is to Introduce it with a story. You will find a story for each of the capacities. You can read these stories to your children but they are likely to be more successful if you are able to ‘tell’ them. This way you will be able to adapt or present them most appropriately for your particular year group. The stories should suit children from Foundation to Year 2 (or maybe sometimes Year 3), but if you familiarise yourself with them beforehand you will be better able to make the slight amendments that give them the best possible match for your children.

These are not ‘picture’ stories because we would like you to use this opportunity to ‘stretch’ one very important and useful ‘learning muscle’ – imagination. Please encourage your children to use their ‘mind’s eye’ to picture the characters and situations in the story and help them to appreciate that whatever they see is ‘right’.

To follow up the stories we have offered you two sets of questions to enable you to start to talk about the capacity. There are connecting questions which relate directly to the story which we hope will guide you to bring out the main points as you introduce each capacity, and there are transferring questions which will enable you to link the ideas of the story to the real-life experiences of your children. A taster activity is offered for most of the capacities.

Stretching

In this section we offer you a ‘bank’ of activities and further ideas. Some are very specific, planned activities to give your children experience of the capacities in action. Others suggest ways in which you can incorporate the essence of the capacities into the everyday routines of your class. Some activities require materials and resources which will be commonly available in your classrooms, others are more specific and are available as resources.

Progressing

This section contains suggestions of what to look for in developing learning power habits. Each capacity for young learners is summed up in a few simple statements which we hope will enable you to find the focus for your teaching about learning.

We have suggested three levels of progression: moving the children from being unaware (using the capacity unconsciously) to beginning to be aware of the capacity, to consciously developing the capacity. The statements are merely a guide and include ideas from SEAL and the Early Years Framework. We also offer a set of reward stickers. The larger ones enable you to add a personalised statement whenever you use them.

Things to think about

• Which of the capacities do your pupils need to use most?
• What order of introducing the capacities seems appropriate?
• Would it be useful to mix capacities from different dispositions?
• Which of the approaches will work best for each capacity?
• Do some capacities lend themselves to all or some of the approaches?
• Which activities are too difficult or too easy for your pupils?
• How could you adapt or replace them?

Using the activities

The construction of the Activity Bank offers you tremendous flexibility.
For example, you could:

• String the topics and approaches together to form a whole programme
• Use taster activities at the beginning of the day
• Infuse stretching activities into the curriculum
• Encourage learning mentors to use the taster activities
• Use any of the activities to structure an assembly
• Use some stretching activities to introduce teaching for learning power to staff
• Use the progression statements as a way of reviewing pupils’ learning.

Take a really close look at where your students are now

Get a fix on your students

Look carefully at the chart. Read every cell. The statements are written in adult speak. Translate the statements into student focused ‘can do’ statements if that helps. Get a feel for how it all fits together. Now move on to estimating students’ progress.

Where are my students now?

• Download the chart to colour in
• Colour in the cells where you think the majority of your students are secure.
• Don’t expect all your students to be in the same phase for each column!
• There will be a few outliers ( i.e. further forward or behind the majority) but forget about them for now.
• Now draw a red line across the chart to denote where you think most of the school’s students could and should reach by the time they leave.
• Use these results to decide where to start in the 4 linked development units…..

Engaging your students in;

• getting unstuck
• rising to the challenge
• managing their learning environment
• achieving their goals

Teachers as habit formers

As teachers we are in the habit-forming business. Those habits that we model or praise or celebrate in front of young people influence the ways in which they perform and behave. Therefore, we need to be sure to foster productive learning habits. If, for example, we offer constructive feedback but fail to require students to act on it, we are not building their inclination to further improve on previous attempts. In such ways do good teachers, albeit inadvertently, stifle the very behaviours they are seeking to promote.

Your classroom climate

Classroom culture is all-important in building pupils’ learning power. It’s about roles and relationships in the classroom, how learning is organised, the vocabulary of learning, and what gets celebrated. A classroom climate that supports and nourishes the inclination to persevere is characterised by: a culture that prizes effort over attainment; high-challenge low-stress activities; a language of ‘learning’, not ‘work’ and that being stuck is an interesting place to be; the feeling that students can fail ‘in safety’.

Developing a perseverance-friendly culture needs teachers to believe that:

• Real learning comes from making mistakes and overcoming being stuck
• Being stuck is an interesting, not shameful, place to be
• Mistakes are learning opportunities
• Real learning requires effort, and good teaching is about putting the learning in the extended grasp of the learner

And through such a persevering culture students come to believe that:

• Effort is part and parcel of the learning process, and ‘I’m discovering how to do this’.
• ‘Having to try doesn’t mean I can’t be good at it’
• ‘I can learn more from making mistakes’
• ‘I should only think about giving up when I’ve tried all sort of strategies and they’ve failed’
• ‘Easy work doesn’t help me really learn’

Think about …

Using the ideas above get a feel for your classroom culture and how this may be working for or against positive approaches to students becoming increasingly willing to persevere.

Look through the ideas carefully and consider whether you already use some, and whether any appeal to you to try.

Where next?

There are four ‘how to’ units which link to this information unit.

• Engaging students in…getting themselves unstuck
• Engaging students in…managing their distractions
• Engaging students in….rising to the challenge
• Engaging students in….achieving their goals

You may have noticed that each unit is linked to just one column of the Perseverance progression chart you have just been exploring. These units take you deeper into practical ways to change your classroom culture for each phase of the chart.

The teachers’ classroom culture palette. 

Moving to more learning-friendly cultures means shifts in thinking and action. To establish learning-friendliness you will need to think about four shifts. A shift in relationships, a shift in the language, a shift in how learning is constructed and a shift in what is celebrated, what is seen to matter:

1. Relating for learning: the changing roles and responsibilities of teachers and learners, where learning becomes a shared responsibility. Pupils are given more responsibility for their own learning, the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’; the role of the pupil moves from ‘passenger’ to ‘crew’ and ultimately ‘pilots of their own learning’.
2. Talking for learning: the sort of language content and style to enhance learning, making learning the object of conversation. The way we express ourselves in the classroom creates a powerful linguistic environment that teaches young people the best of what we know about learning. The language of learning helps pupils to discuss, understand, and become conscious of using their learning behaviours.
3. Constructing learning: activities and classroom routines feed learning habits and learning becomes the object of learning. Learning activities are designed to stretch and challenge by having a dual focus – to explore content and stretch pupils’ use of their learning behaviours. There is a strong underpinning of not just ‘doing’ learning but reviewing and reflecting on the process in order to make meaning and apply it elsewhere.
4. Celebrating learning: the outward signs of the values that underpin the culture, making learning the object of attention. In this dimension failure has been redefined; being stuck is seen as interesting and mistakes valuable. Effort, questions and taking risks are recognised, attended to, acknowledged and praised. These and other things serve to make visible the underlying values of the learning environment.

The teacher’s role becomes one of surfacing learning; to make learning public; to train some of the tricky bits; to talk about it; to recognise and celebrate it as it happens; to nudge it along, assisting pupils to grow their learning capacities; and to design activity to stretch a wide range of learning habits. This uncovering of learning ensures pupils discover, use, understand and grow their learning habits. There is a shift in emphasis from performance to learning, from content to process, from teaching to coaching

What contributes to a readiness to Persevere? What are the component parts?

The chart columns are things that might combine to make up the skills and attitudes of a Perseverer.

About…

Take a look at the descriptions of each chart column to get a deep view of perseverance. 

Overview of the chart

Perseverance is about the way we stick at things even when they are difficult. It’s one of the most useful but neglected learning behaviours. What makes us able to persevere more and more usefully? We think several things come into play here. How you are willing and able to deal with being stuck, how you are able to manage distractions and manage the learning environment wherever that may be, how you relate to a challenge and whether you are influenced by goals be they your own or imposed by others. All these things contribute how well you are able to persevere. And lastly there’s your own little voice of self awareness: what you say to yourself and how this influences your beliefs and values.

Take a closer look at what each column of the chart is about

Dealing with ‘stuckness’

How we deal with being stuck

Column 1 is all about way how we react when we get stuck; the strategies we have for overcoming it; being brave about not knowing something; how we cope with making mistakes; how we find ways out of being stuck; how we benefit from feedback about mistakes or being stuck; how we come to love mistakes, become curious about them and learn from them. There’s a long and winding road buried in the statements in this column and the role of the teacher is to ensure students make a significant start on this journey.

Managing the learning environment

How adept we are at maintaining focus

Column 2 is about how we manage our learning environment; the extent to which we can manage our own learning climate, ignore or manage distractions, regain focus if lost. Since much of students’ learning takes place in a classroom, they need to be able to manage and take advantage of that environment. They learn to understand just what distracts them from learning and why distractions can be both a help and a hindrance. How they need to learn to overcome the hard slog of practice and use their environment to help. How the learning environment can include all sorts of negativity from others and how they might overcome these disruptive emotions. The learning environment itself has many facets that can trip up and stall learning.

Self-talk

The voice of self awareness

Self-talk is what we say to ourselves as we learn. Positive self talk spurs us on. Negative self talk simply self destructs learning. The statements capture what someone in each phase of the chart might be thinking. Students may use some of these phrases when talking with you, or in writing from time to time, but mostly self-talk goes on inside their heads. We have shown a small flavour of self talk thoughts that teachers can encourage students to imitate. Some relate to standards, others to self monitoring, or flexibility. All such positive self-talk is important in building the habit of persevering.

Dealing with challenge

The relationship we have with challenge

Column 4 is about how we relate to challenge: are we more excited by the prospect of triumphing over challenge, or more afraid of failing when faced with difficulty? Challenge needs to be included here as part of Perseverance because there is little need to persevere with easy, familiar activities. Students need to be challenged even just for us to discover how or whether or not they persevere at all. So the growth of ways to cope with challenge helps to cement Perseverance. Here they learn to enjoy a challenge and recognise the satisfaction of triumphing over difficulty. The phases include practical ideas like recognising risks, sorting out what the challenge is fundamentally about, and using tools to plan and avoid obstacles.

Orientation to goals

How our orientation to goals influences our determination to persevere.

Column 5 concerns goals; having goals can have an impact on our perseverance. Let’s face it, if you haven’t got a goal, or at least an interest in something, you are not likely to stick at it and channel your emotion positively to get it done. In the beginning students have little sense of goals or purpose but this can be turned into being able to imagine what something might look like. Later students can be helped to understand what a ‘do-able’ goal is and how to turn goals set by the teacher into a goal that they want to achieve – to make it their goal. A wanted goal is something you put effort into. Later phases in this development include being able to put your goals into a wider context, to realise that being able to do X or Y isn’t just about the here and now but has wider implications for life. This will certainly come into play when choosing options, for example. Do students go for something they like, enjoy and find easy or do they chose some harder options on the basis of their relevance to their future career? It’s a hard and grown up sort of decision to make. This orientation to goals all turns on how we design our own goals, blend these with the goals of others, and then pursue them with tenacity and independence.

Questions

About…

Read about the basics of perseverance; what it is and how we behave when it’s working well.

Why we need it

The learning journey is wonderful – peaks and troughs, rollercoaster tickles in the tummy, and that sinking feeling when things don’t go to plan, the opportunity to bring out the tools in your learning kit –tools such as becoming absorbed, noticing detail, collaborating with others, imagining what could be. But Perseverance is key to this journey. Not only so that you can get to the end of the ride, but so that you can enjoy the views and sensations along the way.

It is vital that students are able to get to grips with the knotty emotions of learning, and can view and use them positively as aids to the journey, not as setbacks. Without perseverance little worthwhile learning would ever be achieved.

What it is

“Attention can be broken when learning gets blocked, but good learners have learnt the knack of maintaining or quickly re-establishing their concentration when they get stuck or frustrated. The quality of stickability or perseverance is essential if you are going to get to the bottom of something that doesn’t turn out as quickly or easily as you had thought, or hoped.

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

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

Building Learning Power, Guy Claxton

Perseverance is often undermined by two common and erroneous beliefs. The first is that learning ought to be easy. If learners think that they will either understand something straight away, or not at all, then there is simply no point in persisting and struggling. The second is that bright people pick things up easily, so if you have to try it means you’re not very bright. Clearly the idea that effort must be symptomatic of a lack of ability makes persevering an unpleasant experience. Good learners develop perseverance when their parents and teachers avoid conveying these messages, even unwittingly.”

Extract from Building Learning Power, by Guy Claxton

What it looks like in action

Effective perseverers have a range of strategies that they use independently when stuck. They exhibit emotional toughness in the face of difficulty and relish learning that is challenging. They form and pursue their own goals with tenacity, and have a range of strategies for maintaining focus if distracted. A well-formed perseverance habit includes being ready willing and able to:

• Enjoy working at the edge of their comfort zone
• Recognise that being stuck is when learning begins, not when it finishes
• Maintain optimism when the going gets tough
• Relish working towards ever more challenging and demanding goals
• Take risks in the pursuit of learning
• Give it ‘one more go’, or come back to it later for another attempt

Find out more about Perseverance: At-a-glance Perseverance card

Bridging the gap in teaching

A learning friendly culture

 a. Relating for learning

b. Talking for learning

c. Constructing learning

d. Celebrating learning

Where is my classroom culture now?

• Download the deeper Learning Culture tool 2 and Learning Culture Review sheet.
• Look carefully at the Culture tool 2 in relation to your classroom.
• Ring the statements which describe aspects of the culture that you think are secure.
• Underline in red those statements that would most benefit your students now.
• Record your analysis and musings on the Learning Culture Review sheet.
• Please take the results of these tasks with you to the Professional Learning Team session shown in Section 4

Culture Tool 1