1. The intentions of Unit 1 – Understanding Learning and Cultures
The intention of the first unit is to:
introduce the two foundational frameworks of Learning Power . . the Supple Learning Mind, and the Teachers’ Palette. i.e. the warp and the weft of learning;
introduce teachers to the intriguing prospect of growing and developing students’ learning habits;
offer teachers a chance to explore themselves as a learner and complete their own learning profile;
provide teachers with the tools to compile and analyse their students’ learning profiles
As a result of working through Unit 1:
staff will have become familiar with the underlying concepts of Learning Power;
they will have gained interesting insights into themselves as a learner;
their student learning profiles will be giving them some of the most influential data they’ve ever had to shape their classroom practice.
The results from Sections 1D and 1E will shape teachers’ practice thereafter.
We urge you first to look at your own learning through the learning power lens and then to think it through with a couple of students in mind. This is your chance to relate the quite detailed descriptions of learning behaviours to real students. It’s an essential part of the process so best not to skip it.
Here you have opportunities to…
discover and understand what ‘good learners’ tend to be like
look at yourself through a learning behaviour lens
tentatively consider the learning behaviours of a couple of students
remind yourself of how learning behaviours progress
Perhaps the best way of really getting to grips with the growth of learning power is to take a personal look at yourself as a learner and the learning behaviours you tend to use. What might your learning profile look like; where are your strengths, what are the behaviours you find tricky; which would you like to improve?
Having got the idea we then invite you to look at just a couple of your students; a low and a high attaining student. This should give you a glimpse of what it is that makes the difference in how students approach and achieve in learning
1. How learning behaviours progress
Being an effective learner isn’t something that switches on on good days and off on bad days; it grows and builds when it’s nurtured and supported. Furthermore, being a learning powered learner involves gaining control of a range of linked dispositions and skills and emotions.
Over the last ten years we’ve tried to capture the essence of that growth and make it useful for teachers and learners. Take a look at the progressionchart alongside. Here you can see all 12 key learning behaviours together.
Each of the 12 learning behaviours are briefly described at one of 5 levels of proficiency shown in the rows. These levels of proficiency grow and flourish when they are cultivated by teachers in learning friendly classrooms and supported by families.
Download the chart and take a closer look at it. You’ve probably never considered yourself, let alone any students, in this way before. Take your time just absorbing what you see. Don’t think too hard about the progression levels at this stage, but rather try to absorb the nature of the descriptions of learning behaviours and the different areas of learning.
Twelve learning behaviours with five levels of proficiency.
Download as pdf [When printing this pdf, it is best done on A3 paper, landscape (in the print settings)]
2. Discover yourself as a learner
To get a better sense of these learning behaviours and their growth use the chart to think about yourself as a learner. Start slowly. Refer to the learning behaviour descriptions and progression notes in section 1.2 for help. Now just think:
where would I place myself on each of these 12 trajectories?
do I understand the statements well enough to answer? Which ones will I need to check?
can I really say that this/that statement is secure? Does it actually describe what I do most of the time, or does it describe something I can do but tend not to? (what I do do, rather than what I can do).
have I ever thought about myself like this before?
would my partner / colleagues see me in the same way?
colour in your secure statements on The Learning Behaviour Chart. This becomes your Learning Behaviour Profile. Now ask…
which learning domain seems to be the strongest? (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic)
which learning domain appears the weakest?
which particular learning behaviour is strong or weak?
am I substantially lower or higher in some? Which?
are there any surprises or disappointments?
what questions is this raising for me?
where would I like to improve?
what may have shaped my current learning characteristics?
Learning behaviour charts to learning behaviour profiles.
When you think you understand the progression charts well enough try using them to consider a couple of students.
Think of two students you know fairly well, but whose attainment differs.
Download two learning behaviour charts (describing 12 learning behaviours) and indicate which descriptors seem best to describe each student’s current secure behaviours.
Come back to the charts after a day or so and check them again to convince yourself that you’ve identified the most appropriate descriptors.
It might be useful to have a word with a colleague who also knows the student well, especially if you’re uncertain about your answers.
The profiles opposite illustrate:
Pink… a relatively weak learner, still negative aspects of learning (perseverance, imagining, meta learning) and elsewhere in need of adult support (ie they are broadly just into the purple phase);
Blue…illustrates a well-rounded learner, secure at the purple and blue phases, and moving into the green phase for some behaviours. This might be typical of a well-rounded, high attaining learner who is disposed to behave in learning-positive ways. Do not expect to see much beyond the green phase, as the uppermost 2 phases require levels of maturity and independence rarely accessed by younger learners.]
Ask yourself:
what do these profiles tell me about these students as learners?
do the students appear to do things differently?
do any of the columns seem to show use of later phases of growth for the higher achieving student?
which learning behaviours appear to make the higher attaining student more successful?
does any learning domain (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic) dominate for either student?
which learning behaviours appear to need boosting most for either student?
2. What teachers have been asked to do across two months
In tackling this first unit teachers are invited to:
Read through Sections 1A and 1B to explore the big ideas that underpin Learning Power and give them confidence in the approach;
settle down, maybe one evening, and explore their own learning habits (Section 1C);
undertake the fascinating exercise of completing a learning profile for each of their students. This could be done over a couple of weeks (Sections 1D and 1E).
We suggest teachers give themselves a couple of months to understand, collect and analyse this data. Their view of their students learning behaviours will henceforth influence and shape their practice.
If the programme started in Sept you should aim to complete this unit by the end of the first half term. (e.g. Sept to end Oct)
Section 1E is where the practical action for teachers really begins. It’s about them generating the data, filling in the charts and interpreting what they’ve found. It is on this data that teachers will later build their learning power culture and interventions. Be prepared to be fascinated by data gathered by your teachers.
Which learning characteristics do our students display?
The growth charts you used in the last section have the power to reveal interesting and vital information about students’ learning. They are suitable for use with any class or a sub-group of students.
This section helps you to answer the question:
What are the learning strengths and weaknesses of my/our students?
Gaps to discover
Understand your students as learners using a new type of data
In this section we ask teachers to give the same consideration to all the students in their class and keep an eye out for any emerging patterns;
for areas of learning strength
for areas of learning weakness
for fallow areas
for significant variations for some students or groups of students.
for things that just make you feel uneasy
They are to ask themselves – ‘What questions are bubbling up in my mind?’ as they work through their class one by one. They’ll find themselves beginning to form some tentative hypotheses about their students’ learning behaviours.
1 Generate data for each student
Download and print sufficient charts – one for each student in your group. You’ll need to think carefully about each student in relation to each of their 12 learning behaviours. Colour in the behaviours that you think are secure. By secure, we mean that these are behaviours that the student consistently exhibits in a range of different circumstances. BUT if they use a behaviour in, say, maths but not in other subject areas you cannot count it as secure. You might find it easier later if you use different colours for say, boys and girls etc.
Things to consider in gathering the data:
can / will I involve TA’s and other staff in order to gain other perspective(s)?
if so will we do it together or at different times
might I need to discuss these students with their previous or other teachers?
am I confident about what is ‘a secure behaviour’? How frequently, and in how many different circumstances, do I need to see a behaviour to consider it ‘secure’?
Download as pdf [When printing this pdf, it is best done on A3 paper, landscape (in the print settings)]
2. Interpret individual student profiles
When completed the learning behaviour profiles for each of your students will look something like the one to the right – some cells identified as ‘this is a secure skill / behaviour’ with others left blank. (Here the ‘secure’ cells are coloured pink).
[You may even have some of the grey ‘Lacks’ cells coloured in where there are no secure positive behaviours. Where the ‘Lacks’ stage is not coloured in, it indicates that the student no longer behaves in this negative way.]
Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:
What is this profile telling me about this student?
Explore each student profile and ask yourself:
Which behaviours appear relatively weaker/stronger? Well developed, hardly started?
Which behaviours appear to explain why this student is successful / unsuccessful, effective/ineffective?
Which is the weakest domain for this student (emotional, cognitive, social, strategic)?
How might I help this student to help themselves to become a more effective learner?
What does this profile tell me?
3. Begin to notice and wonder about your class as a whole
Now that you have had a close look at each individual student you will have noticed several things, more of an inkling really, that seem to be showing up across the group. So before getting into a rigorous class analysis it will be useful to let you mind go into that receptive kind of imagination that’s a bit like daydreaming. Let the problem slip to the back of your mind and let your mind play with ideas and images about your class of students and their learning behaviours.
Play with what you have recorded and wonder:
are there any patterns that I’m picking up?
what if I just think about girls and boys?
are there really any significant differences?
what if I just imagine summer borns?
do they seem disadvantaged?
which column has scored lowest on most charts?
which colour (phase) is the most prevalent across the class?
which colour (phase) is the least prevalent across the class?
what are my overall thoughts about the learning characteristics of the class?
In the next section we will help you build on this reverie and make a close interrogation of the patterns.
4. Interpret your profiles for groups of students and the class
Having been through the important stage of reverie it’s now time to take a hard look and jot a few things down. First, you’ll need to interrogate your data through the lens of different groups of students. It might be an idea to take your pile of charts and divide them firstly into girls and boys, then into high and low attainers (however you designate that label), then isolate, separately, groups like Pupil Premium. EAL, SEND, G&T, (if you still use this), and other groups that may have significance in your area.
Ultimately you need to be able to answer the question:
Can I discern any patterns across groups of learning profiles?
Ask yourself:
What questions would I want to ask myself about each of these groups?
What do I suspect might be happening?
What are the learning behaviours of successful learners that appear lacking in less successful learners?
Is there a phase of learning behaviour that seems to help students make confident moves forward?
You might be thinking:
How do my higher attaining learners differ from my lower attaining learners?
i.e. do they score higher in the columns? Is the range of higher scoring columns different in the 2 groups?
How do my boys’ learning behaviours seem to differ from my girls’?
use the same ways of looking as above.
Do my pupil premium learners’ behaviours differ from other students?
if so how? Is this more about progress in learning behaviours or using a different range of learning behaviours?
Move on to look at other groups if you are interested or think they may be relevant in your school
Do my EAL learners’ behaviours differ from others?
Do my SEND learners’ behaviours differ from others?
Do my G&T learners’ behaviours differ from others?
Are there any ethnicity related differences?
Do my summer-born learners differ from older learners?
Or you may want to explore another pattern that you suspect might be relevant to your class.
Whatever your area of interest, shuffle the profiles and look for common features in one group of profiles that are different from the other group of profiles.
What do these profiles tell me about a particular group of learners?
Do my pupil premium learners’ behaviours differ from other students?
What sort of learning patterns can I detect between high and low attainers?
5. Interpret your profiles through a learning domain lens
The second way you will find interesting to interrogate your data is through the lens of different learning domains, i.e. emotional, cognitive, social and strategic, and their learning behaviours. Ultimately you want to be able to answer the question:
Can I discern any patterns across groups of learning behaviours?
Some big questions:
Which of the learning domains (emotional, cognitive, social and strategic) seems consistently low across most groups of students?
Which of the learning domains (emotional, cognitive, social and strategic) seems consistently high?
Which learning behaviour overall, across all groups, comes out weakest?
What do I suspect might be happening?
What are the learning behaviours of successful learners that appear lacking in less successful learners?
Further interesting questions might include:
Which learning domain is strong in higher attaining learners
How does this differ in lower attaining learners?
Which learning domain do my boys seem to be strong in?
Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my girls?
Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my pupil premium learners?
Is there a different pattern of learning domain strength in my EAL/SEND/G&T learners?
Are there any ethnicity related differences?
How do my summer-born learners differ from older learners in term of stronger or weaker domains of learning?
Or explore any other pattern that you suspect might be relevant to your class.
Whatever your area of interest, shuffle the profiles and look for common features in one group of profiles that are different from the other group of profiles.
Which learning behaviour overall, across all groups, comes out weakest?
Having spent an interesting hour or so looking at your students’ learning charts it would be well worth your while to try and capture some of your main findings. You will have discovered far more than you can capture in your short term memory so a quick synthesising exercise would be well worthwhile.
Summarise your findings about:
What you noticed about the individual learning profiles of your students? E.g. Which phase of behaviours appear to be more / less secure across the board? Which learning behaviour is the least well developed across the whole class?
What you have learned about groups of students. E.g. boys/girls, pupil premium, and others. Have you noticed any significant differences that merit further investigation? E.g. the differences in types and phases of learning behaviours used by high and low achieving students?
Share with colleagues, find out more and become totally intrigued. Ask yourself:
What are the main similarities between your impressions of student learning behaviours and those of your colleagues?
Ditto the main differences?
Are others sensing the same issues for groups of students as you are?
Are students becoming better learners as they move through the school? E.g.. are the phases of growth used by Yr 6 students higher that Yr 3?
What questions does this raise for you?
These are just a few questions to set you off. As you get going, your data and interest will stimulate an almost never ending stream of them.
See opposite for an example Learning Development summary document just to start you off.
In the next section we look at how the school might make strategic use of this data across the school.
Do we intend to do an in-school launch for Unit 1? [If yes, go to Section 5 below for a presentation that may help.]
Would we want to arrange a day with outside speakers to introduce the programme to all staff?
How will we keep a check on how the learning profiles are coming on?
This is vital because:
The only meeting for Unit 1 is scheduled for the end of Section 1E, after around 6/7 weeks [Go to 4 below for detail];
There is no point in holding the meeting until the learning profiles are completed;
Unit 2 relies on teachers having completed the profiles.
The most important job for programme leaders during Unit 1 is to;
chat to staff individually or in small groups to get a feel for how they are progressing with the Unit;
offer support where needed;
make sure that it is not being left to the last minute;
ensure that their Summary is completed in advance of the meeting
pick up on and support staff who are struggling to engage with the programme.
Having received the Summaries of class profiles:
be on the lookout for possible trends in your students’ learning profiles.
think particularly about any differences between sub-groups (ie are the profiles of boys different from girls?), and how this might link to whole-school attainment patterns.
ask what questions is this data beginning to raise for us as a school?
4. Supporting development
This first learning team meeting is positioned and designed to enable teams to:
Agree ground rules for this and all following Learning Team meetings;
Discuss people’s responses to their reading in Unit 1, section 1A, (i.e. the guiding frameworks of the approach);
Discuss their findings and reactions arising from Unit 1 sections, 1B to 1E (developing your students’ learning profiles).
NB. As this is the first such meeting the agenda below is unique in the Learning Team meeting series. Prior to this meeting, all of the data collection, analysis and Summary should be complete. Teachers who have not reached this point will find it difficult to contribute to the meeting.
Find the agenda for the meeting in the toggle box below.
Agree ground rules, objectives and agenda (15 mins only for 1st meeting)
Discuss your first impressions of Unit 1, section 1A, the Warp and Weft of Learning (10 mins)
Re-cap and reflect on the online materials from Unit 1, sections 1B to 1E (20 mins)
Consider possible strategic consequences across the school (5 mins)
Review the meeting process (5 mins)
Reading in advance of the meeting.
[As this is the team’s first meeting please read these guidelines beforehand]
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.
NB. This first meeting does not follow all the aspects of Learning Team meetings as described in this paper. The full meeting pattern will be in operation at the next meeting. Unit 2 Section 2D.
Item 1. Ground rules and objectives.
What ground rules should we adopt and what do we want to achieve? (15 mins)
This first item invites you to explore how you want to be as a learning team. See download above for some suggested ground rules
Meeting objectives might include:
learn from how our actions have worked;
feel confident to take forward ideas from online materials into our practice;
propose actions that would benefit if everyone applied them in their practice;
plan further personal developments in classroom practice.
Outcome. You have decided how your learning team will operate henceforth.
Item 2. Reports from the Warp and Weft of Learning (15 mins)
Explore together your initial understanding of and reaction to the two foundational frameworks… the Supple Learning Mind and the Teachers’ Palette (Unit 1 section 1A)
what were your first impressions?
what do you still need to get your head around?
what excites you about this?
what worries you?
speculate on how these 2 models might change your teaching.
Outcome. You will have a clearer understanding of the foundational thinking behind the ideas of Learning Power.
Item 3. Reports from class profile data (30 mins)
Share and discuss teachers’ practice; making your own experience a valuable source of learning for everyone.
what you each experienced in completing each student’s learning profile. i.e. trying to implement Unit 1, section 1E, Finding Learning Characteristics
how the process worked
what you could/did change to make it work better
what you have discovered about your learners
what surprised or baffled you
how valuable you think this information to be i.e. the point of collecting and recording it
whether you feel there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other. At this stage it’s valuable to note which of the foundational four learning behaviours your own class need to work on. Which stage from grey to green (From ‘I can’t TO ‘I see why’) do most of your students work at?
Outcome. You will have begun to understand your learners’ deeper behaviours and challenges. This will focus your looking when you start Unit 2, Classroom culture.
Item 4. Consider what may be needed across the school. (5 mins)
Think about;
As a result of recording and analysing the learner profiles consider;
Are there easier ways of doing this?
Are there ways of doing it we could all learn from and adopt?
Do we feel confident about our results
Should this idea be woven into school policies/directed time?
At this stage it’s valuable to note ideas arising from this discussion. Those relating to the final point could be passed to school managers just for discussion at this point.
Outcome. You will have a considered view of how such student data might be collected and stored.
While there are many ideas suggested in the on-line materials that will make a greater impact if they were adopted by everyone across the school the actual collection and storage of student data remains a school organisation issue. But the use of student learning profile data is a key factor in shaping the programme’s central idea of building students’ learning power. Without this data you’d never know how best to select activities. However, even at this early stage, you may be realising that your students’ learning profiles will need to be kept up to date so that they can act as a transfer document when they move on next year. It might be an area to raise tentatively at this point.
Item 5. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Any concerns at this point?
Next meeting date and time.
We suggest that you schedule two team meetings now for your work in Unit 2 about classroom culture. You will find their agendas in Unit 2 Section 3C and Section 3D
5. Resources for bringing staff onboard
Here we offer resources you may need to introduce Unit 1 to staff. This isn’t a simple show and tell session. It’s designed to provoke deep thinking about learning and how it grows and thus makes the case for the importance and use of the data you are asking staff to collect.
It will take around an hour to talk through the Powerpoint, depending on how much detail you add to the suggested commentary.
Introducing Unit 1 content to your teachers
The slide deck could be used to introduce teachers to the key ideas behind Learning Power. It helps teachers to understand the content and purpose of Unit 1, describes what is to be done, and explains the anticipated timings.
You might use this slide deck:
just as it is to introduce the ideas to staff;
to help structure a learning conversation amongst/in teams;
added to strategic presentation of your own to ensure staff gain a holistic picture.
Brief explanatory notes can be found under each slide.
The slides in the presentation cover the following key issues:
unpicking the key area and habits of a supple learning mind
a look at how these habits might grow and develop
an invite to look at their own learning behaviours
In doing so you will be encouraging staff to use their own learning behaviours such as noticing similarities and differences between what they know now and this way of looking at learning. Questioning some of their own learning strengths and weaknesses and distilling the key messages and their appropriateness to the school.
I have put the primary version of 7-S in here. I’m not sure if this is the right place.
The first problem is what to call the programme this relates to. I’m changing ‘resource’ to programme throughout and will leave HELP notes where needed.
In order to make the most of the ‘Playing the learning power game‘ programme you’ll need to think about not only its potential in the classroom but how, at an operational level, it will best marry with the school’s beliefs and operating systems; it’s about managing the why, how, where and when questions across the school.
A helpful model
The ‘Playing the learning power game’ programme is packed full of interesting and often new ideas for many teachers. As such it’s designed to be investigated and consulted collaboratively by the teachers across a school. Taking the programme on board throws up some vital leadership questions:
how will the school benefit from this programme?
what impact will it have on students?
what sort of time and effort will staff need to make?
what changes to the school’s operations will need to be accommodated?
To help structure these leadership and management issues we have borrowed the successful McKinsey 7-S Change Management Model which is often used to plan and implement organisational change.
The McKinsey 7-S Model combines seven components of an organisation that must work together for effective change management, namely its : Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills.
Senior leaders will want to be sure that any organisational changes won’t act in adverse ways across their concerns in the school. A useful way of doing just that is by running the adoption of the ‘Playing the learning power game’ programme through the 7- S model, focusing on making the most of the resource.
It’s worth saying here that while each aspect of the 7-S model should be attended to, each will vary in size of importance depending on the nature of the organisational change being considered.
Below we have attempted to show how applying 7-S to ‘Playing the learning power game’ programme might work.
How will taking on this programme influence and be influenced by Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills?
1. Shared Values
Shared values govern an organisation’s health. While implementing a change, schools often expect their teachers to change their teaching behaviours but this is only possible where there’s a strong change culture and real, lived school values. Shared values links all the aspects of the 7-S model. Whatever is decided as a result of considering the other 6 parts of the model, they should all be seen to fit with the school’s values. Shared values is not so much a place to start but the one that has a guiding influence over the other 6.
Check against school values
It might first be reassuring to consider the ‘Playing the learning power game’ programme itself to make sure it fits with the school’s values. School values can be gleaned from a school’s vision and/or mission statements, from your goals or anticipated outcomes or even current targets.
One reason for taking on ‘Playing the learning power game‘ is to help prepare students for a lifetime of learning and to:
address dwindling levels of engagement
equip students with the strategies to keep going when the going gets tough;
enable students to manage their own learning environment and avoid competing distractions;
ensure that students come to relish tackling work that they find challenging;
encourage students to pursue their learning goals with tenacity
xxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
The key here is to ask:
Do the points above chime with our school values? Is this how we view a teacher’s role?
How will pursuing the ‘Playing the learning power game‘ programme positively influence or strengthen our values and organisational health?
How might we emphasise these points when we introduce the programme to staff?
We wouldn’t presume to ‘tell’ you how to do this – you know your school, its teachers and values, and can guess what will trigger staff interest. But if you enjoyed the Engaged vs Disengaged activity above, you could consider using it to open up a conversation with staff.
Getting the discussions going . .
You might use the PPt, see right, or download and adapt it to your needs, to stimulate a conversation with staff.
The outcomes will be of interest to you as senior leaders. Ask yourselves:
do teachers perceive learning as the leadership team do?
what do staff perceive the issues to be?
are staff up for doing something different?
where are the movers and shakers: teachers who’ll want to press ahead and explore the materials?
how will you harness their energy?
who’re likely to be the resistors – those who’ll want resilient students but are unlikely change their practice!
how will you ensure that these teachers engage?
do teachers’ responses help us to focus the starting place?
And finally – think through how you’ll answer or deal with potential obstacles such as:
we are so close to SATs that we can’t spend time on this:
students have been out of school for months and just need to catch up;
I have no problems with learners’ engagement levels, so what has it got to do with me?
we have so much to do so how can we find the time to fit this in?
why worry – it’s yet another SLT initiative. They will soon get bored and move on to something else!
The strategy element of the 7-S model is a detailed plan that organisations e.g. schools, create to implement change successfully and gain improved outcomes, e.g. for students. A well-crafted strategy draws together the other six elements of the 7-S model and is reinforced by the organisation’s strong vision, mission, and values.
Without a clear organisational strategy describing the purpose of ‘Playing the learning power game’ and how you expect it to work in the school, it can be difficult to convince your staff or governors that changes, in general, are absolutely necessary.
The ‘Playing the learning power game‘ strategy
The ‘Playing the learning power game’ online programme can be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged. But simply relying on individuals to take a look and try a few of the ideas now and then will have little effect on classrooms or students. Leaders will need to organise how this rich source of practical information might best be utilised as a central resource so that it affects classroom cultures, develops teachers’ teaching habits and strengthens students’ learning habits. As such it’s surely worth a plan!
The detail of any such strategy will of course be different for every school but here we offer the key questions that will need ironing out in order to build the strategy:
Style issues…how will we use our cooperative management style to ensure success across the school?
by promoting; dialogue, experimentation and self-monitoring.
Structure issues…who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
by agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Playing the learning power game’ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Systems issues…. what changes are needed in school systems to accommodate the change strategy?
by considering directed time, adjusting meeting patterns and agendas to support the change strategy.
Skills issues…. how can we assess what our students’ learning and teachers’ classroom cultures are like now?
by discovering baselines for students’ learning, baselines for learning cultures, to shape how the programme is used.
Staff issues… what’s the best way to organise the development of staff across the school using a common programme?
by considering small scale enquiries or professional learning teams or coaching partnerships.
NEED THIS CHANGING TO PLAYING – now updated july 23
Interaction between the programme and its management
2a. Key features of the programme and their management consequences
A model of choices
The way in which the programme is designed does not force how you should use it. It offers four foundational learning behaviours but doesn’t force you to use these in any particular order. It shows four stages of growth of each learning behaviour but doesn’t force you to start with a particular stage. In Units 2 and 3 each yellow cell in a chart shows between 6-8 classroom based ideas, but teachers are left to choose what’s right for their classroom?????. The blue cells on the right offer a useful feel for what the outcomes should look like but you are left to decide how to monitor or evaluate such actions or results. The resource allows a diversity of management approaches which means it will fit any school, regardless of size, age of students and strength of the learning, or leadership culture. This leaves leaders to recognise the potential of the programme, decide how to organise its staff development potential and so to make best use of it across school.
Sections 2-5 of this 7S leadership resource offers further support and management tools to ensure success
The only request regarding use of the programme is that people should start any column in dark green cells at the bottom. This enables teachers to explore baselines of current practice in relation to:
the level of their students’ resilience;
the type of classroom culture they themselves generate.
CHANGES NEEDED HERE TO REFLECT THE BIG PROGRAMME NOT A LITTLE RESOURCE
What’s the best way to tackle the programme for greatest effect?
Answering this key question will help leaders to form the bare bones of the strategy.
Where are we now? What do the outcomes of the Engaged vs Disengaged activity suggest across the school? Does this suggest a possible starting point in terms of stuck, distractions, challenge or goals?
Do we, as senior leaders, want to give this steer to staff because we’re confident that we know where to start? Or are we happy to ‘go with the flow’?
If we left every teacher to decide for themselves where to start, how would that affect students or fit with a collaborative staff development culture?
How could we balance the need a whole school focus that everybody works on simultaneously, without stifling individual exploration and innovation?
How long is each section/column of the resource likely to take? (Probably much longer than we think it will)
Senior leaders introduce the ideas to staff (see resources in 1b above) WILL NEED MORE RESOURCES
Give teachers access to unit 1 of the programme inviting them to explore it, but not to start doing anything at this stage;
Set up the appropriate staff development approach for your school (see 7 below);
Invite staff to focus discussions on the first section of the resource – FindingLearning Power– using the following 3 questions:
How do the ideas presented Connect with what you already know?
How did it Extend your thinking?
What Challenges or puzzles do you now have?
Emphasise that the 4 main sections (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) can be tackled in any order but where to start must be a team decision.
A possible action sequence for a staff team:
Decide as a team which of the 4 aspects of resilience (stuck / distractions / challenge / goals) to focus on;
Individual teachers do the 2 quizzes to get a feel for where learners are and where classroom culture is (sections 6a/b);
Teachers start with the section relevant to their individual quiz outcomes. E.g. if most learners are in the Purple / Tell me, Show me Phase, look for teaching ideas to move learners from Purple to Blue (6a);
Select a teaching idea (or two) that appeal;
Plan what’s to be done – using a Small Scale Enquiry structure (7c);
Incorporate the teaching ideas into the classroom culture repeatedly over the next few (maybe 4?) weeks, giving time for learners to respond;
Analyse how the classroom culture and learning behaviours have changed. (see e.g. monitoring tools in section 4a below).
Report back to colleagues via whatever team structure has been utilised.
You’ll immediately sense that just to get this far will take about half a term to complete.
It follows that to make a start on all 4 sections may well take the best part of a school year.
3. Style
Leadership and Management behaviour patterns
This element refers to the leadership / management style that’s prevalent in an organisation. Indeed it is this style that often decides the level of staff productivity and satisfaction in an organisation. Hence its importance.
What sort of leadership / management style will be needed to support the programme?
All school leaders establish their own leadership style in the hope of matching or shaping the school’s values. The beliefs and values lying at the heart of ‘Playing the learning power game’ is a cooperative style of teaching where the teacher’s role is to help students to help themselves become better learners.
Hence leadership styles that are more likely to sustain the school in using the programme are low in directives and high in a supportive style. Our experience across many schools over many years suggests change management of this sort works best when leaders:
Create a dialogue about learning across the school;
Enable staff to experiment with the ideas without fear of failure;
Encourage and support teachers to self-monitor their experiments and their impact on students.
To create the kind of culture change that is necessary, you’ll need to read, and think, and argue, and experiment, and adjust, and try again. In short, you create a dialogue about learning, you actively encourage experimentation, and you involve everyone in monitoring improvements that are not always measurable in the traditional ways of measuring attainment.
3a. Create a dialogue about learning
Critically, what leaders choose to talk about, and not talk about, reveals where their true interests lie. Hence if ‘Playing the learning power game’ is to be successful it will help if you engage teachers in discussing learning; ways of learning, learning habits, learning character, learning styles etc. The emphasis becomes the how of learning, the process rather than the result.
Schools that have been particularly successful with generating an interest in developing learning habits have:
ensured that managers frequently, visibly and genuinely expressed their commitment to learning through their actions and dialogues;
introduced the programme not through big fanfares or guest speakers but by talking with staff about learning; This in itself represented a subtle shift in the school’s approach to staff learning; ‘its a learning journey no-one can do for us’;
created dialogues about learning were through informal staffroom chat, or having colleagues take a learning walk around the school to look at learning (not at teaching, or at students’ ‘work’).
Examples of approaches to creating deeper research-based dialogue include:
creating a staff ‘learning research club’ where all teachers read the same piece of research and meet to share their reactions;
enabling and encouraging staff to enrol for higher degrees;
producing a digest of teacher reports into their enquiries.
And as this innovation goes along, the big lessons for senior leaders are to:
keep close to the developments;
keep it high profile in school, visit classrooms regularly;
talk with teachers about how they are weaving the ideas into their lessons;
focus on the kinds of learning processes teachers are routinely asking students to use;
identify where the new practice is really taking hold or is faltering.
Ensure that phase / curriculum leaders pick up on this and support such discussions. This will stimulate an emerging debate about why and how things might need to be done differently.
3b. Enable exploration
Use of the ‘Playing the learning power game’ programme has been found to be more successful when leaders enable teachers to seek and try out creative and innovative ways of working and overcome barriers to change.
Teachers’ habits as learners have to become part of the picture; how they go about changing as well as those changes they are aiming to bring about. In other words, staff learning has to undergo the same sort of shifts as students’ learning. So the school needs to think of professional development in terms of ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned. Critically – Learning Walks, regularly undertaken, are focused on learning from, rather than judging, what is observed.
Key ideas include:
encouraging staff to actively experiment in their classrooms;
supporting the freedom to take risks and learn from mistakes;
emphasising the school is learning its way forward;
promoting the idea of teachers being leaders of their own learning.
Ask yourselves:
how does our culture encourage teachers to experiment and take risks in their classroom?
do teachers feel able to try things out, get things wrong and learn from them?
is there a feeling that it is through experimentation against agreed and known indicators of good practice that learning develops?
can teachers share what they are wanting to find out either through school wide formal professional groups or within their team?
are the outcomes from the resulting experiments (both positive and negative) shared and learned from?
critically – are we as leaders modelling experimentation and adopting ‘no blame’ attitudes to risk taking?
3c. Self-monitoring
As this new culture consolidates, people get used to watching out for and recording changes in their practice, and changes in students’ learning behaviour, motivation, or achievement. They might note, for example, the extent to which students are:
showing greater interest in learning;
taking more responsibility for learning;
becoming less dependent;
asking deeper, more insightful, or more frequent questions;
showing more confidence in tackling difficulty.
This is teachers self-monitoring the results of their changing practice.???
NEED TO REFERENCE THE OTHER BITS OF THIS RESOURCE WHERE THEY WILL FIND MONITORING
Teachers may also undertake an annual self-review of their practice against indicators such as those shown opposite.
Structure or organisational structure refers to having a clear chain of command to avoid chaos & confusion. Structure is a simple yet crucial element because it creates a sense of accountability within the school.
In a school this includes:
who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Playing the learning power game‘ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Structural tweaks to accommodate ‘Playing the learning power game’
All schools have a leadership and management structure with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Many have someone who holds a responsibility for ‘teaching and learning’, or maybe even ‘learning and teaching’, but few schools have a leadership role that focuses on the planning for and delivery of interventions to improve students’ learning behaviours.
Ask yourself:
Who is best placed to take the lead on ‘Playing the learning power game‘?
Will you add it to someone’s existing responsibilities? Or do it yourself?
Or could this be a role for an untested mover and shaker?
What information will they need to run the change strategy effectively?
And for whoever you decide to lead on this:
How will you make time available for ongoing monitoring and the sharing of best practice?
Working in a culture of trust and openness, teachers will become increasingly confident to experiment and take risks. But this is no free-for-all: the quality of learning in classrooms and around the school will benefit from being kept under regular review.
It’s important that teachers get used to being observed regularly, and come to trust that such observation is in the spirit of learning support for them, and not a process of judgement or appraisal. Staff need to see classroom observation as part of a dynamic, reflective and development process across all levels of the school. As the new culture consolidates, people will get used to watching out for and recording changes both in their practice and in students’ learning behaviours, motivation and achievement.
Key idea:
Regular classroom reviews are conducted in a spirit of learning enquiry and support, NOT judgement or appraisal.
As leaders you’ll be instrumental in setting up and being involved in monitoring learning practice across the school. Such monitoring will give you a valuable handle on how the overall development of students’ resilience and perseverance as a learner is progressing and will feed back into planning to steer individual, team and school developments.
We offer 2 possible observation tools which take differing approaches to monitoring progress – use either or both to look for resilience in classrooms.
The ‘Rating Wheel’ is a lesson observation tool that focuses on resilient behaviours. Take a copy into lessons to record what you are seeing and hearing. By its nature, this tool shifts the observation focus away from observing teaching behaviours to observing students’ learning behaviours.
At the end of the observation, simply shade in each of the 16 segments depending on how evident the resilient behaviour was during the lesson. You might do this on your own, or in consultation with the teacher.
You could end up with something like the one shown alongside.
The Lesson Observation Proforma is a more formal observation tool than the ‘Rating Wheel’.
The 12 aspects of resilience are organised in 3’s – the first 3 relate to how students deal with being Stuck, the next 3 relate to Managing Distractions and so on.
The majority of these ‘observations’ will result from discussions with students and their teacher rather than by you simply ‘looking around’. In the download below we provide a crib sheet for completing this format.
Systems refer to the school processes and operational procedures used to complete a school’s routine activities. In businesses these are known as SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures); instructions for how staff need to go about completing certain tasks and processes in the organisation that are there to ensure all runs smoothly.
When thinking about changing your school’s systems, it might be necessary to assess the different types of project management and workflows which are currently in place.
System tweaks to accommodate ‘Playing the learning power game’.
Schools can do anything they want. But they can’t do everything they want!
If a school wishes to introduce ‘Playing the learning power game’ and for it not to become an additional workload issue for staff, some adjustments may well be necessary.
Schools have standard ways of operating on a day to day, week to week, term to term, even on a year to year basis – a ‘usual’ way of organising the school day, a weekly meeting cycle, a termly curriculum plan, a yearly reporting structure, a directed time budget that changes little year on year etc.
These ‘standard’ ways of operating, the ‘way we do things around here’, may, or may not, be helpful in terms of ‘Playing the learning power game‘.
One of the problems is that while schools are adept at taking on new ideas, they are sometimes poor at moving on from earlier ones. Systems that were designed for one purpose are ‘tweaked’ (or not!) to accommodate changing times.
It’s worth giving time to think about whether your existing systems, your ways of organising the learning year, need adjustment to give ‘Playing the learning power game‘ the best chance of successful implementation.
The problem schools have, and rightly so, is that there are only 1265 hours specified as directed time. This means that if/when you want to add something new it usually means having to adjust regular routines keeping within the specified hours. The question then becomes…
5b. What are the implications of ‘Playing the learning power game‘ for the directed time budget?
Subsequent questions might include;
which members of staff should be involved?
all teachers and TA’s
just teachers
how do we see this project operating beyond teaching timetables?
through our usual meeting structure
or through newly formed teacher learning community meetings (7b)
how much time will this need?
one meeting dedicated to it each month
or squeezed in as an agenda item in usual meetings
where will that time come from?
Also allow for time to set up the project…
For an introductory meeting to get things going.
For maybe having a 4 week ‘try something out’ period with a short ‘how is it going?’ catch up meeting.
After about half term, a meeting to distil:
what has been learned;
which ideas gave the greatest traction;
which strategies would be worth adopting school-wide;
and to decide what to do next.
So – perhaps 2 and a half meetings each half term?
How will you find time for this? Will you need to use some INSET time?
A hard question: Ask yourself – which meetings / agenda items that currently form part of your directed time budget are less important than addressing ‘Playing the learning power game’?
Answer – Ditch them – they are less important! You cannot do everything, and some things may just have to wait.
Or maybe add one week to the usual weekly meeting cycle to add a staff development meeting to accommodate this project?
The problem schools have, and rightly so, is that there are only 1265 hours specified as directed time. This means that if/when you want to add something new it usually means having to adjust regular routines keeping within the specified hours. The question then becomes…
5b. What are the implications of‘Playing the learning power game‘ for the directed time budget?
Subsequent questions might include;
how many members of staff should be involved?
all staff, all year groups
staff who teach designated year groups
some staff for a pilot project
how do we see this project operating beyond teaching timetables?
through usual faculty or tutor or other group meetings
or through newly formed teacher learning community meetings
how much time will this need?
one meeting dedicated to it each month
or squeezed in as an agenda item in usual meetings
where will that time come from?
Also allow for time to set up the project…
For an introductory meeting to get things going.
For maybe having a 4 week ‘try something out’ period with a short ‘how is it going?’ catch up meeting.
After about half term, a meeting to distil:
what has been learned;
which ideas gave the greatest traction;
which strategies would be worth adopting school-wide;
and to decide what to do next.
So – perhaps 2 and a half meetings each half term?
How will you find time for this? Will you use some INSET time?
A hard question: Ask yourself – which meetings that currently form part of your directed time budget are less important than addressing ‘Playing the learning power game’?
Answer – Ditch them – they are less important! You cannot do everything, and some things may just have to wait.
Or maybe move from a ‘usual’ 3 weekly meeting cycle to a 4 weekly cycle and add a staff development meeting to accommodate this project?
6. Skills
Competencies
Skills refer to the abilities of employees to complete tasks. There are many studies that suggest that skill gaps cause a loss of productivity and overburden experienced colleagues who have to pick up the slack of inexperience. It’s thought to be essential to identify skill gaps and shape development programmes to bridge the gaps. Since education is at the forefront of developing the citizens of tomorrow, schools must surely find ways to ensure teachers are learning about and using the new sciences of learning.
Skills issues in relation to ‘Playing the learning power game‘.
There are 2 considerations:
Student learning behaviours / skills: How can we establish a measure of our students’ current learning behaviours to act as a baseline against which to evaluate the impact of ‘Playing the learning power game‘?
Teaching behaviours / classroom cultures: How do we view our existing classroom cultures, and how might they need to adapt in light of ‘Playing the learning power game’?
These important because:
your evaluation of student learning behaviours may well guide your decisions about the order in which you tackle the 4 sections of ‘Playing the learning power game’;
your evaluation of classroom cultures will yield insight into those areas of the school where integrating learning behaviours will most readily take root, and those classrooms that may well struggle to blend learning behaviours into everyday practice.
Use the 8 quizzes in the following toggle box (4 relating to students and 4 for classroom culture) to explore these 2 considerations further.
As teachers embark on the bottom 4 dark green key cells of ‘Playing the learning power game‘ (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) they are invited to undertake 2 quizzes in each one – 8 quizzes in total. The first of these quizzes explore how they perceive their learners, and the second how they view their classroom culture. They will, of course, complete these quizzes in relation to their own students / classroom.
6a. Establish a baseline – student skills
As a senior leadership team, you could also complete these quizzes, but thinking at whole-school level.
To gain an insight into your students’ current learning behaviours, undertake the 4 quizzes (to the right).
No need to go into classes, just trust your instincts. Ignore the outliers, the ‘golden children’ who are already highly resilient learners, and also ignore those students who have yet to develop many positive resilient behaviours – just focus on your ‘average’ students. You may even choose to do these quizzes for each year group rather than for the whole school.
Ask yourselves:
how can we capture the outcomes of these quizzes to establish a baseline measure of where our students’ resilient behaviours are now, with a view to repeating the quizzes after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of teachers’ interventions?
whether these quizzes are raising any questions for us?
whether there’s any suggestion that student skill levels are rising as students move through the school?
[For ease of access, links to the 4 quizzes relating to students’ resilient behaviours are reproduced opposite. You can use these quizzes as many times as you like.]
The second set of 4 quizzes concerns the classroom culture. Each question describes a fairly traditional, teacher-focused classroom culture and invites you to compare it with the features of a more learning-friendly classroom culture.
Ask yourselves – how can we capture the outcomes of the quiz to establish a baseline measure of where our classroom cultures are now, with a view to repeating the quiz after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of interventions? As with the learning behaviour quizzes, focus on your ‘average’ classroom culture – this will inevitably lead you into identifying classrooms where classroom cultures are more (or less) learning-friendly.
[For ease of access, links to the 4 culture related quizzes are reproduced opposite.]
This element of the 7-S model represents the talent pool the organisation needs, the size of the existing workforce, and their motivations. It also considers how they are trained and rewarded within the organisation so it is here that we consider a range of staff development options for use with ‘Playing the learning power game‘
Staff development opportunities to generate ‘Playing the learning power game’.
The ‘Playing the learning power game‘ online resource can of course be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged; teachers’ habits as learners become part of the picture. However, rather than simply relying on staff to look at and act on ‘Playing the learning power game’school leaders have to organise how this rich, practical source of information might best be utilised as a professional development resource; answering the questions ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned?
In any school there will be enthusiasts, early adopters, cautious observers (waiting to be reassured or convinced), and maybe a few who actively resist changing their ways. You may need to work with different groups in different ways for a while. It’s important to see using ‘Playing the learning power game’ as a process of gradual, cumulative culture change across the whole school that might take several terms to really embed.
One or more of following types of professional development could be built into the CPD programmes of your school. The more you activate professional development opportunities to affect change, the more the school will become a culture of enquiry. Useful types of CPD include:
Teacher learning communities, or as we refer to them, Professional Learning Teams;
Coaching partnerships;
Small-scale learning enquiries;
Classroom observations and personal review;
Learning walks.
Your strategic managing change plan will need to explain which of the various alternative staff development routes will be utilised to support ‘Playing the learning power game’.
7a. Why is changing teachers’ practice so difficult?
When teachers want or need to improve it actually involves them in changing their teaching habits. It’s not just about knowingnew stuff, it is about doing what you do differently. That’s much harder. It involves changes to:
what you know – knowledge;
what you believe – feelings or attitudes;
what you can do – your skills;
what you actually do – putting it all into practice.
So changing how you teach is a delicate, complex process……...that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting new ideas into teachers’ heads . . .
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones.
All the evidence shows that teachers change their practice when they work together and support each other in trying out new teaching strategies, within a culture of classroom based action research. It is about teachers being empowered to explore together to find out what works with their students, in this context, at this time. As a consequence, the school learns its way forward, together.
7b. How Professional Learning Communities work
PLCs are groups of 8-10 teachers (and TA’s?) who meet together regularly to deepen their understanding of an approach. They try out ideas offered in ‘Playing the learning power game‘ and reflect on and share their experiments with each other. Such communities work best when they are voluntary, grouping similar subjects or age groups and meet monthly for about 75 minutes over a couple of years. Such communities support and scaffold teachers’ habit change. In short this approach:
deepens staff understanding of learning;
draws on the support of colleagues;
unpacks the ‘how to’ together when it’s unclear;
results in a plan to try out new things, considering what’s doable for their students;
benefits from reflection on and sharing of data from their experiments with each other;
draws on sharing trials and tribulations and what they will do differently.
The ‘Playing the learning power game’ resource could easily take teams 3 or 4 terms to complete.
7c. Small Scale Enquiries
Small scale enquiries are action research, with a small ‘r’, not the kind of ‘R’esearch undertaken at universities. They are about teachers making a small change to their practice, and monitoring the impact of this change on themselves and their learners. Small scale enquiries invite teachers to explore what works, at this time, with our learners.
This approach involves individual teachers, experimenting in their classrooms to see what happens. They may then share the outcomes of these experiments with other colleagues in a team meeting or other safe learning environment.
Formalising Learning Enquiries: an intentional and systematic attempt to explore how changes in teacher behaviours can lead to positive changes in student learning behaviours.
1) Typically, such enquiries begin with an itch of dissatisfaction – ie my students give up too readily.
2) It may be that the teacher wonders whether they are contributing to this by the way they behave – ie by providing too much support.
3) Teachers may explore relevant sections of ‘Playing the learning power game‘ for any ideas as to what might be done differently?
4) From this, the enquiry question emerges, usually in the form ‘if I do ‘x’, will students do ‘y’?
– ie If I enable my students to develop and use Stuck Posters, will their inclination to persevere improve?
5) They monitor these changes in terms of both the changes they made and the resulting changes in student behaviours. Both are decided before the intervention starts.
As John Hattie says:
The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and students become their own teachers.
7d. Classroom observations and personal review
As schools push on into developing teachers’ learning habits, they come to question how and why they undertake classroom observation, especially where it is currently viewed as part of an appraisal leading to a graded assessment of performance and linked to a performance management system that sets targets for teachers. This view limits the learning that can take place – none of us is at our most open-minded when we feel we are being judged – and inhibits teachers from engaging in professional dialogue about how students learn.
A powerful way of developing teachers is by using classroom observation as a developmental entitlement of self-organised improvement. Here the observer is often as much of a learner as the observed colleague is, and the observation ‘schedule’ is designed in a more open-ended way, to encourage reflection and imagination by both parties.
Before an observation takes place teachers themselves:
identify what learning habits they will be focusing on;
generate the most appropriate tools for capturing data to stimulate the ensuing discussion.
Many of the observation tools shown in previous sections could be used in this sort of reflective classroom observation. It is observation as development, as shown in the diagram alongside. Such an approach readily supports peer to peer observation.
Secondary version here, primary tacked on at the end
If you are going to make the most of the ‘Re-energising‘ resource you’ll need to think about not only its potential in the classroom but how, at an operational level, it will best marry with the school’s beliefs and operating systems; it’s about managing the why, how, where and when questions across the school.
A helpful model
The ‘Re-energising’ resource is packed full of interesting and often new ideas for many teachers. As such it’s designed to be investigated and consulted collaboratively by the teachers across a school. Taking the resource on board throws up some vital leadership questions:
how will the school benefit from this resource?
what impact will it have on students?
what sort of time and effort will staff need to make?
what changes to the school’s operations will need to be accommodated?
To help structure these leadership and management issues we have borrowed the successful McKinsey 7-S Change Management Model which is often used to plan and implement organisational change.
The McKinsey 7-S Model combines seven components of an organisation that must work together for effective change management, namely its : Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills.
Each member of the school’s SLT will want to be sure that any organisational changes won’t act in adverse ways across their concerns in the school. A useful way of doing just that is by running the adoption of the ‘Re-energising’ resource through the 7- S model, focusing on making the most of the resource.
It’s worth saying here that while each aspect of the 7-S model should be attended to, each will vary in size of importance depending on the nature of the organisational change being considered.
Below we have attempted to show how applying 7-S to Re-energising your Learners’ Resilience might work.
How will taking on this resource influence and be influenced by Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills?
1. Shared Values
Shared values govern an organisation’s health. While implementing a change, schools often expect their teachers to change their teaching behaviours but this is only possible where there’s a strong change culture and real, lived school values. Shared values links all the aspects of the 7-S model. Whatever is decided as a result of considering the other 6 parts of the model, they should all be seen to fit with the school’s values. Shared values is not so much a place to start but the one that has a guiding influence over the other 6.
THINK THIS SECTION NEEDS TO BE BIGGED UP. CURRENTLY ONLY ABOUT RESILIENCE BUT NEEDS TO CHANGE EMPHASIS TO WHOLE SCHOOL CHANGE. SO PROBABLY NEEDS TO MENTION THE FINDING TOOL AT THIS STAGE COS IT REALLY THEN COMES TO VALUING LEARNING AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THEN PERFORMANCE. NEEDS THINKING ABOUT.
Check against school values
It might first be reassuring to consider the ‘Re-energising’ resource itself to make sure it fits with the school’s values. School values can be gleaned from a school’s vision and/or mission statements, from their goals or anticipated outcomes or even current targets.
One reason for taking on ‘Re-energising‘ is to address dwindling levels of engagement in students and for teachers to:
equip students with the strategies to keep going when the going gets tough;
enable students to manage their own learning environment and avoid competing distractions;
ensure that students come to relish tackling work that they find challenging;
encourage students to pursue their learning goals with tenacity.
The key here is to ask:
Do the points above chime with our school values? Is this how we view a teacher’s role?
How will using the ‘Re-energising‘ resource positively influence or strengthen our values and organisational health?
How might we emphasise these points when we introduce the resource to staff?
1b. Introduce the ‘Re-energising’ resource to staff
We wouldn’t presume to ‘tell’ you how to do this – you know your school, its teachers and values, and can guess what will trigger staff interest. But if you enjoyed the Engaged vs Disengaged activity above, you could consider using it to open up a conversation with staff.
Getting the discussions going . .
You might use the PPt, see right, or download and adapt it to your needs, to stimulate a conversation with staff.
The outcomes will be of interest to you as senior leaders. Ask yourselves:
do teachers perceive learning as the leadership team do?
what do staff perceive the issues to be?
are staff up for doing something different?
where are the movers and shakers: teachers who’ll want to press ahead and explore the materials?
how will you harness their energy?
who’re likely to be the resistors – those who’ll want resilient students but are unlikely change their practice!
how will you ensure that these teachers engage?
do teachers’ responses help us to focus the starting place?
And finally – think through how you’ll answer or deal with potential obstacles such as:
we are so close to GCSEs that we can’t spend time on this:
students have been out of school for months and just need to catch up;
I have no problems with learners’ engagement levels, so what has it got to do with me?
we have so much to do so how can we find the time to fit this in?
why worry – it’s yet another SLT initiative. They will soon get bored and move on to something else!
EASY TO PRODUCE ONCE THE SKILLED VS LESS SKILLED ABOVE IS AGREED
The strategy element of the 7-S model is a detailed plan that organisations e.g. schools, create to implement change successfully and gain improved outcomes, e.g. for students. A well-crafted strategy draws together the other six elements of the 7-S model and is reinforced by the organisation’s strong vision, mission, and values.
Without a clear organisational strategy describing the purpose of ‘Re-energising’and how you expect it to work in the school, it can be difficult to convince your staff or governors that changes, in general, are absolutely necessary.
The ‘Re-energising‘ strategy
The ‘Re-energising’ online resource can be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged. But simply relying on individuals to take a look and try a few of the ideas now and then will have little effect on classrooms or students. Leaders will need to organise how this rich source of practical information might best be utilised as a central resource so that it affects classroom cultures, develops teachers’ teaching habits and strengthens students’ learning habits. As such it’s surely worth a plan!
The detail of any such strategy will of course be different for every school but here we offer the key questions that will need ironing out in order to build the strategy:
Style issues…how will we use our cooperative management style to ensure success across the school?
by promoting; dialogue, experimentation and self-monitoring.
Structure issues…who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
by agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Re-energising‘ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Systems issues…. what changes are needed in school systems to accommodate the change strategy?
by considering directed time, adjusting meeting patterns and agendas to support the change strategy.
Skills issues…. how can we assess what our students’ resilience and teachers’ classroom cultures are like now?
by discovering baselines for students‘ resilience, baselines for learning cultures, to shape the use of the resource.
Staff issues… what’s the best way to organise the development of staff across the school using a common resource?
by considering small scale enquiries, professional learning teams, coaching partnerships.
Interaction between the resource and its management
2a. Key features of the resource and their management consequences
A model of choices
The way in which the resource is designed does not force how you should use it. It offers four aspects of resilience but doesn’t force you to use these in any particular order. It shows four stages of growth of each aspect but doesn’t force you to start with a particular stage. Inside each yellow cell there are between 6-8 classroom based ideas but you are left to choose what’s right for your classroom. The blue cells on the right offer a useful feel for what the outcomes should look like but you are left to decide how to monitor or evaluate such actions or results. The resource allows a diversity of management approaches which means it can be made to fit any school, regardless of size, age of students and strength of their resilience, or leadership culture. This leaves leaders to recognise the potential of the resource, decide how to organise its staff development potential and so to make best use of it across school.
The only request regarding its use is that people should start any column in dark green cells at the bottom. This enables teachers to explore baselines of current practice in relation to:
the level of their students’ resilience;
the type of classroom culture they themselves generate.
What’s the best way to tackle the resource for greatest effect?
Answering this key question will help leaders to form the bare bones of the strategy.
Where are we now? What do the outcomes of the Engaged vs Disengaged activity suggest across the school?Does this suggest a possible starting point in terms of stuck, distractions, challenge or goals?
Do we, as senior leaders, want to give this steer to staff because we’re confident that we know where to start? Or are we happy to ‘go with the flow’?
If we left every teacher to decide for themselves where to start, how would that affect students or fit with a collaborative staff development culture?
How could we balance the need for a whole school focus that everybody works on simultaneously, without stifling individual exploration and innovation?
How long is each section/column of the resource likely to take? (Probably much longer than we think it will)
ALL THIS NEEDS CAREFUL CONSIDERATION COS THE NEW COURSE IS VERY DIFFERENT
Senior leaders introduce the ideas to staff (see resources in 1b above);
Give teachers access to the ‘Re-energising‘ resource inviting them to explore it, but not to start doing anything at this stage;
Set up the appropriate staff development approach for your school (see 7 below);
Invite staff to focus discussions on the first section of the resource – Introduction – using the following 3 questions:
How do the ideas presented Connect with what you already know?
How did it Extend your thinking?
What Challenges or puzzles do you now have?
Emphasise that the 4 main sections (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) can be tackled in any order but where to start must be a team decision.
A possible action sequence for a staff team:
Decide as a team which of the 4 aspects of resilience (stuck / distractions / challenge / goals) to focus on;
Individual teachers do the 2 quizzes to get a feel for where learners are and where classroom culture is (6a/b);
Teachers start with the section relevant to their individual quiz outcomes. E.g. if most learners are in the Purple / Tell me, Show me Phase, look for teaching ideas to move learners from Purple to Blue (6a);
Select a teaching idea (or two) that appeal;
Plan what’s to be done – using a Small Scale Enquiry structure (7c);
Incorporate the teaching ideas into the classroom culture repeatedly over the next few (maybe 4?) weeks, giving time for learners to respond;
Analyse how the classroom culture and learning behaviours have changed. (see e.g. monitoring tools in section 4 below);
Report back to colleagues via whatever team structure has been utilised.
You’ll immediately sense that just to get this far will take about half a term to complete.
It follows that to make a start on all 4 sections may well take the best part of a school year.
3. Style
Leadership and Management behaviour patterns
This element refers to the leadership / management style that’s prevalent in an organisation. Indeed it is this style that often decides the level of staff productivity and satisfaction in an organisation. Hence its importance.
What sort of leadership / management style will be needed to support the ‘Re-energising‘ resource?
All school leaders establish their own leadership style in the hope of matching or shaping the school’s values. The beliefs and values lying at the heart of ‘Re-energising‘ is a cooperative style of teaching where the teacher’s role is to help students to help themselves become better learners.
Hence leadership styles that are more likely to sustain the school in using ‘Re-energising’are low in directives and high in a supportive style. Our experience across many schools over many years suggests change management of this sort works best when leaders:
Create a dialogue about learning across the school;
Enable staff to experiment with the ideas without fear of failure;
Encourage and support teachers to self-monitor their experiments and their impact on students.
To create the kind of culture change that is necessary, you’ll need to read, and think, and argue, and experiment, and adjust, and try again. In short, you create a dialogue about learning, you actively encourage experimentation, and you involve everyone in monitoring improvements that are not always measurable in the traditional ways of measuring attainment.
3a. Create a dialogue about learning
Critically, what leaders choose to talk about, and not talk about, reveals where their true interests lie. Hence if ‘Re-energising‘ is to be successful it will help if you engage teachers in discussing learning; ways of learning, learning habits, learning character, learning styles etc. The emphasis becomes the how of learning, the process rather than the result.
Schools that have been particularly successful with generating an interest in developing learning habits have:
ensured that managers frequently, visibly and genuinely expressed their commitment to learning through their actions and dialogues;
introduced the resource not through big fanfares or guest speakers but by talking with staff about learning; This in itself represented a subtle shift in the school’s approach to staff learning; ‘its a learning journey no-one can do for us’;
created dialogues about learning were through informal staffroom chat, or having colleagues take a learning walk around the school to look at learning (not at teaching, or at students’ ‘work’).
Examples of approaches to creating deeper research-based dialogue include:
creating a staff ‘learning research club’ where all teachers read the same piece of research and meet to share their reactions;
enabling and encouraging staff to enrol for higher degrees;
producing a digest of teacher reports into their enquiries.
And as this innovation goes along, the big lessons for senior leaders are to:
keep close to the developments;
keep it high profile in school, visit classrooms regularly;
talk with teachers about how they are weaving the ideas into their lessons;
focus on the kinds of learning processes teachers are routinely asking students to use;
identify where the new practice is really taking hold or is faltering.
Ensure that Middle/phase/subject leaders pick up on this and support such discussions. This will stimulate an emerging debate about why and how things might need to be done differently.
3b. Enable exploration
Use of the ‘Re-energising‘ resource has been found to be more successful when leaders enable teachers to seek and try out creative and innovative ways of working and overcome barriers to change.
Teachers’ habits as learners have to become part of the picture; how they go about changing as well as those changes they are aiming to bring about. In other words, staff learning has to undergo the same sort of shifts as students’ learning. So the school needs to think of professional development in terms of ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned. Critically – Learning Walks, regularly undertaken, are focused on learning from, rather than judging, what is observed (4a).
Key ideas include:
encouraging staff to actively experiment in their classrooms;
supporting the freedom to take risks and learn from mistakes;
emphasising the school is learning its way forward;
promoting the idea of teachers being leaders of their own learning.
Ask yourselves:
how does our culture encourage teachers to experiment and take risks in their classroom?
do teachers feel able to try things out, get things wrong and learn from them?
is there a feeling that it is through experimentation against agreed and known indicators of good practice that learning develops?
can teachers share what they are wanting to find out either through school wide formal professional groups or within their team?
are the outcomes from the resulting experiments (both positive and negative) shared and learned from?
critically – are we as leaders modelling experimentation and adopting ‘no blame’ attitudes to risk taking?
3c. Self-monitoring
As this culture consolidates, people get used to watching out for and recording changes in their practice, and changes in students’ learning behaviour, motivation, or achievement. They might note, for example, the extent to which students are:
showing greater interest in learning;
taking more responsibility for learning;
becoming less dependent;
asking deeper, more insightful, or more frequent questions;
showing more confidence in tackling difficulty.
This is teachers self-monitoring the results of their changing practice.
Teachers may also undertake an annual self-review of their practice against indicators such as those shown opposite. IS THIS DIAGRAM OK? PROBABLY
Structure or organisational structure refers to having a clear chain of command to avoid chaos & confusion. Structure is a simple yet crucial element because it creates a sense of accountability within the school.
In a school this includes:
who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Re-energising‘ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Structural tweaks to accommodate ‘Re-energising’
All schools have a leadership and management structure with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Many have someone who holds a responsibility for ‘teaching and learning’, or maybe even ‘learning and teaching’, but few schools have a leadership role that focuses on the planning for and delivery of interventions to improve students’ learning behaviours.
Ask yourself:
Who is best placed to take the lead on ‘Re-energising‘?
Will you add it to someone’s existing responsibilities?
Could this be a role for an untested mover and shaker?
What information will they need to run the change strategy effectively?
And for whoever you decide to lead on this:
How will you make time available for ongoing monitoring and the sharing of best practice?
Working in a culture of trust and openness, teachers will become increasingly confident to experiment and take risks. But this is no free-for-all: the quality of learning in classrooms and around the school will benefit from being kept under regular review.
It’s important that teachers get used to being observed regularly, and come to trust that such observation is in the spirit of learning support for them, and not a process of judgement or appraisal. Staff need to see classroom observation as part of a dynamic, reflective and development process across all levels of the school. As the new culture consolidates, people will get used to watching out for and recording changes both in their practice and in students’ learning behaviours, motivation and achievement.
Key idea:
Regular classroom reviews are conducted in a spirit of learning enquiry and support, NOT judgement or appraisal.
As leaders you’ll be instrumental in setting up and being involved in monitoring learning practice across the school. Such monitoring will give you a valuable handle on how the overall development of students’ resilience and perseverance as a learner is progressing and will feed back into planning to steer individual, team and school developments.
We offer 2 possible observation tools which take differing approaches to monitoring progress – use either or both to look for resilience in classrooms.
The ‘Rating Wheel’ is a lesson observation tool that focuses on resilient behaviours. Take a copy into lessons to record what you are seeing and hearing. By its nature, this tool shifts the observation focus away from observing teaching behaviours to observing students’ learning behaviours.
At the end of the observation, simply shade in each of the 16 segments depending on how evident the resilient behaviour was during the lesson. You might do this on your own, or in consultation with the teacher.
You could end up with something like the one shown alongside.
The Lesson Observation Proforma is a more formal observation tool than the ‘Rating Wheel’.
The 12 aspects of resilience are organised in 3’s – the first 3 relate to how students deal with being Stuck, the next 3 relate to Managing Distractions and so on. CHANGE THE PROFORMA
The majority of these ‘observations’ will result from discussions with students and their teacher rather than by you simply ‘looking around’. In the download below we provide a crib sheet for completing this format.
Systems refer to the school processes and operational procedures used to complete a school’s routine activities. In businesses these are known as SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures); instructions for how staff need to go about completing certain tasks and processes in the organisation that are there to ensure all runs smoothly.
When thinking about changing your school’s systems, it might be necessary to assess the different types of project management and workflows which are currently in place.
System tweaks to accommodate ‘Re-energising’.
Schools can do anything they want. But they can’t do everything they want!
If a school wishes to introduce ‘Re-energising’ and for it not to become an additional workload issue for staff, some adjustments may well be necessary.
Schools have standard ways of operating on a day to day, week to week, term to term, even on a year to year basis – a ‘usual’ way of organising the school day, a weekly meeting cycle, a termly curriculum plan, a yearly reporting structure, a directed time budget that changes little year on year etc.
These ‘standard’ ways of operating, the ‘way we do things around here’, may, or may not, be helpful in terms of ‘Re-energising‘.
One of the problems is that while schools are adept at taking on new ideas, they are sometimes poor at moving on from earlier ones. Systems that were designed for one purpose are ‘tweaked’ (or not!) to accommodate changing times.
It’s worth giving time to think about whether your existing systems, your ways of organising the learning year, need adjustment to give ‘Re-energising‘ the best chance of successful implementation.
The problem schools have, and rightly so, is that there are only 1265 hours specified as directed time. This means that if/when you want to add something new it usually means having to adjust regular routines keeping within the specified hours. The question then becomes…
5b. What are the implications of ‘Re-energising‘ for the directed time budget?
Subsequent questions might include; GUESS BELOW IS DIFFERENT FOR PRIMARY
how many members of staff should be involved?
all staff, all year groups
staff who teach designated year groups
some staff for a pilot project
how do we see this project operating beyond teaching timetables?
through usual faculty or tutor or other group meetings
or through newly formed teacher learning community meetings
how much time will this need?
one meeting dedicated to it each month
or squeezed in as an agenda item in usual meetings
where will that time come from?
Also allow for time to set up the project…
For an introductory meeting to get things going.
For maybe having a 4 week ‘try something out’ period with a short ‘how is it going?’ catch up meeting.
After about half term, a meeting to distil:
what has been learned;
which ideas gave the greatest traction;
which strategies would be worth adopting school-wide;
and to decide what to do next.
So – perhaps 2 and a half meetings each half term?
How will you find time for this? Will you use some INSET time?
NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS OR IF IT NEEDS TO CHANGE FOR A MUCH BIGGER ENDEAVOUR THAN RE-ENERGISING
A hard question: Ask yourself – which meetings that currently form part of your directed time budget are less important than addressing ‘Re-energising Learners’ Resilience’?
Answer – Ditch them – they are less important! You cannot do everything, and some things may just have to wait.
Or maybe move from a ‘usual’ 3 weekly meeting cycle to a 4 weekly cycle and add a staff development meeting to accommodate this project?
6. Skills
Competencies
Skills refer to the abilities of employees to complete tasks. There are many studies that suggest that skill gaps cause a loss of productivity and overburden experienced colleagues who have to pick up the slack of inexperience. It’s thought to be essential to identify skill gaps and shape development programmes to bridge the gaps. Since education is at the forefront of developing the citizens of tomorrow, schools must surely find ways to ensure teachers are learning about and using the new sciences of learning.
Skills issues in relation to ‘Re-energising‘.
There are 2 considerations:
Student learning behaviours / skills: How can we establish a measure of our students’ current learning behaviours to act as a baseline against which to evaluate the impact of ‘Re-energising‘? NEEDS AMENDING COS THEY WILL HAVE FINDING
Teaching behaviours / classroom cultures: How do we view our existing classroom cultures, and how might they need to adapt in light of ‘Re-energising’?
These are important because:
your evaluation of student learning behaviours may well guide your decisions about the order in which you tackle the 4 sections of ‘Re-energising’;
your evaluation of classroom cultures will yield insight into those areas of the school where integrating learning behaviours will most readily take root, and those classrooms that may well struggle to blend learning behaviours into everyday practice.
Use the 8 quizzes in the following toggle box (4 relating to students and 4 for classroom culture) to explore these 2 considerations further.
As teachers embark on the bottom 4 dark green key cells of ‘Re-energising‘ (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) they are invited to undertake 2 quizzes in each one – 8 quizzes in total. The first of these quizzes explore how they perceive their learners, and the second how they view their classroom culture. They will, of course, complete these quizzes in relation to their own students / classroom.
6a. Establish a baseline – student skills
As a senior leadership team, you could also complete these quizzes, but thinking at whole-school level.
To gain an insight into your students’ current learning behaviours, undertake the 4 quizzes (to the right).
No need to go into classes, just trust your instincts. Ignore the outliers, the ‘golden children’ who are already highly resilient learners, and also ignore those students who have yet to develop many positive resilient behaviours – just focus on your ‘average’ students.
Ask yourselves:
how can we capture the outcomes of these quizzes to establish a baseline measure of where our students’ resilient behaviours are now, with a view to repeating the quizzes after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of teachers’ interventions?
whether these quizzes are raising any questions for us?
whether there’s any suggestion that student skill levels are rising as students move through the school?
[For ease of access, links to the 4 quizzes relating to students’ resilient behaviours are reproduced opposite.]
WILL NEED TO CHANGE THESE QUIZZES BUT WE MUST HAVE SOMETHING SOMEWHERE
The second set of 4 quizzes concerns the classroom culture. Each question describes a fairly traditional, teacher-focused classroom culture and invites you to compare it with the features of a more learning-friendly classroom culture.
Ask yourselves – how can we capture the outcomes of the quiz to establish a baseline measure of where our classroom cultures are now, with a view to repeating the quiz after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of interventions? As with the learning behaviour quizzes, focus on your ‘average’ classroom culture – this will inevitably lead you into identifying classrooms where classroom cultures are more (or less) learning-friendly.
[For ease of access, links to the 4 culture related quizzes are reproduced opposite.]
This element of the 7-S model represents the talent pool the organisation needs, the size of the existing workforce, and their motivations. It also considers how they are trained and rewarded within the organisation so it is here that we consider a range of staff development options for use with ‘Re-energising‘
Staff development opportunities to generate ‘Re-energising’.
The ‘Re-energising‘ online resource can of course be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged; teachers’ habits as learners become part of the picture. However, rather than simply relying on staff to look at and act on ‘Re-energising’school leaders have to organise how this rich, practical source of information might best be utilised as a professional development resource; answering the questions ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned?
In any school there will be enthusiasts, early adopters, cautious observers (waiting to be reassured or convinced), and maybe a few who actively resist changing their ways. You may need to work with different groups in different ways for a while. It’s important to see using ‘Re-energising’as a process of gradual, cumulative culture change across the whole school that might take several terms to really embed.
One or more of following types of professional development could be built into the CPD programmes of your school. The more you activate professional development opportunities to affect change, the more the school will become a culture of enquiry. Useful types of CPD include:
Teacher learning communities, or as we refer to them, Professional Learning Teams;
Coaching partnerships;
Small-scale learning enquiries;
Classroom observations and personal review;
Learning walks.
Your strategic managing change plan will need to explain which of the various alternative staff development routes will be utilised to support ‘Re-energising’.
7a. Why is changing teachers’ practice so difficult?
When teachers want or need to improve it actually involves them in changing their teaching habits. It’s not just about knowingnew stuff, it is about doing what you do differently. That’s much harder. It involves changes to:
what you know – knowledge;
what you believe – feelings or attitudes;
what you can do – your skills;
what you actually do – putting it all into practice.
So changing how you teach is a delicate, complex process……...that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting new ideas into teachers’ heads . . .
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones.
All the evidence shows that teachers change their practice when they work together and support each other in trying out new teaching strategies, within a culture of classroom based action research. It is about teachers being empowered to explore together to find out what works with their students, in this context, at this time. As a consequence, the school learns its way forward, together.
7b. How Professional Learning Communities work
PLCs are groups of 8-10 teachers who meet together regularly to deepen their understanding of an approach. They try out ideas offered in ‘Re-energising‘ and reflect on and share their experiments with each other. Such communities work best when they are voluntary, grouping similar subjects or age groups and meet monthly for about 75 minutes over a couple of years. Such communities support and scaffold teachers’ habit change. In short this approach:
deepens staff understanding of learning;
draws on the support of colleagues;
unpacks the ‘how to’ together when it’s unclear;
results in a plan to try out new things, considering what’s doable for their students;
benefits from reflection on and sharing of data from their experiments with each other;
draws on sharing trials and tribulations and what they will do differently.
The ‘Re-energising’ resource could easily take teams 2 or 3 terms to complete.
7c. Small Scale Enquiries
Small scale enquiries are action research, with a small ‘r’, not the kind of ‘R’esearch undertaken at universities. They are about teachers making a small change to their practice, and monitoring the impact of this change on themselves and their learners. Small scale enquiries invite teachers to explore what works, at this time, with our learners.
This approach involves individual teachers, experimenting in their classrooms to see what happens. They may then share the outcomes of these experiments with other colleagues in a team meeting or other safe learning environment.
Formalising Learning Enquiries: an intentional and systematic attempt to explore how changes in teacher behaviours can lead to positive changes in student learning behaviours.
1) Typically, such enquiries begin with an itch of dissatisfaction – ie my students give up too readily.
2) It may be that the teacher wonders whether they are contributing to this by the way they behave – ie by providing too much support.
3) Teachers may explore relevant sections of ‘Re-energising‘ for any ideas as to what might be done differently?
4) From this, the enquiry question emerges, usually in the form ‘if I do ‘x’, will students do ‘y’?
– ie If I enable my students to develop and use Stuck Posters, will their inclination to persevere improve?
5) They monitor these changes in terms of both the changes they made and the resulting changes in student behaviours. Both are decided before the intervention starts.
As John Hattie says:
The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and students become their own teachers.
7d. Classroom observations and personal review
As schools push on into developing teachers’ learning habits, they come to question how and why they undertake classroom observation, especially where it is currently viewed as part of an appraisal leading to a graded assessment of performance and linked to a performance management system that sets targets for teachers. This view limits the learning that can take place – none of us is at our most open-minded when we feel we are being judged – and inhibits teachers from engaging in professional dialogue about how students learn.
A powerful way of developing teachers is by using classroom observation as a developmental entitlement of self-organised improvement. Here the observer is often as much of a learner as the observed colleague is, and the observation ‘schedule’ is designed in a more open-ended way, to encourage reflection and imagination by both parties.
Before an observation takes place teachers themselves:
identify what learning habits they will be focusing on;
generate the most appropriate tools for capturing data to stimulate the ensuing discussion.
Many of the observation tools shown in previous sections could be used in this sort of reflective classroom observation. It is observation as development, as shown in the diagram alongside. Such an approach readily supports peer to peer observation.
In order to make the most of the ‘Re-energising‘ resource you’ll need to think about not only its potential in the classroom but how, at an operational level, it will best marry with the school’s beliefs and operating systems; it’s about managing the why, how, where and when questions across the school.
A helpful model
The ‘Re-energising’ resource is packed full of interesting and often new ideas for many teachers. As such it’s designed to be investigated and consulted collaboratively by the teachers across a school. Taking the resource on board throws up some vital leadership questions:
how will the school benefit from this resource?
what impact will it have on students?
what sort of time and effort will staff need to make?
what changes to the school’s operations will need to be accommodated?
To help structure these leadership and management issues we have borrowed the successful McKinsey 7-S Change Management Model which is often used to plan and implement organisational change.
The McKinsey 7-S Model combines seven components of an organisation that must work together for effective change management, namely its : Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills.
Senior leaders will want to be sure that any organisational changes won’t act in adverse ways across their concerns in the school. A useful way of doing just that is by running the adoption of the ‘Re-energising’ resource through the 7- S model, focusing on making the most of the resource.
It’s worth saying here that while each aspect of the 7-S model should be attended to, each will vary in size of importance depending on the nature of the organisational change being considered.
Below we have attempted to show how applying 7-S to Re-energising your Learners’ Resilience might work.
How will taking on this resource influence and be influenced by Structure, Strategy, Staff, Style, Systems, Shared Values, and Skills?
1. Shared Values
Shared values govern an organisation’s health. While implementing a change, schools often expect their teachers to change their teaching behaviours but this is only possible where there’s a strong change culture and real, lived school values. Shared values links all the aspects of the 7-S model. Whatever is decided as a result of considering the other 6 parts of the model, they should all be seen to fit with the school’s values. Shared values is not so much a place to start but the one that has a guiding influence over the other 6.
Check against school values
It might first be reassuring to consider the ‘Re-energising’ resource itself to make sure it fits with the school’s values. School values can be gleaned from a school’s vision and/or mission statements, from their goals or anticipated outcomes or even current targets.
One reason for taking on ‘Re-energising‘ is to address dwindling levels of engagement in students and for teachers to:
equip students with the strategies to keep going when the going gets tough;
enable students to manage their own learning environment and avoid competing distractions;
ensure that students come to relish tackling work that they find challenging;
encourage students to pursue their learning goals with tenacity.
The key here is to ask:
Do the points above chime with our school values? Is this how we view a teacher’s role?
How will using the ‘Re-energising‘ resource positively influence or strengthen our values and organisational health?
How might we emphasise these points when we introduce the resource to staff?
1b. Introduce the ‘Re-energising’ resource to staff
We wouldn’t presume to ‘tell’ you how to do this – you know your school, its teachers and values, and can guess what will trigger staff interest. But if you enjoyed the Engaged vs Disengaged activity above, you could consider using it to open up a conversation with staff.
Getting the discussions going . .
You might use the PPt, see right, or download and adapt it to your needs, to stimulate a conversation with staff.
The outcomes will be of interest to you as senior leaders. Ask yourselves:
do teachers perceive learning as the leadership team do?
what do staff perceive the issues to be?
are staff up for doing something different?
where are the movers and shakers: teachers who’ll want to press ahead and explore the materials?
how will you harness their energy?
who’re likely to be the resistors – those who’ll want resilient students but are unlikely change their practice!
how will you ensure that these teachers engage?
do teachers’ responses help us to focus the starting place?
And finally – think through how you’ll answer or deal with potential obstacles such as:
we are so close to SATs that we can’t spend time on this:
students have been out of school for months and just need to catch up;
I have no problems with learners’ engagement levels, so what has it got to do with me?
we have so much to do so how can we find the time to fit this in?
why worry – it’s yet another SLT initiative. They will soon get bored and move on to something else!
The strategy element of the 7-S model is a detailed plan that organisations e.g. schools, create to implement change successfully and gain improved outcomes, e.g. for students. A well-crafted strategy draws together the other six elements of the 7-S model and is reinforced by the organisation’s strong vision, mission, and values.
Without a clear organisational strategy describing the purpose of ‘Re-energising’ and how you expect it to work in the school, it can be difficult to convince your staff or governors that changes, in general, are absolutely necessary.
The ‘Re-energising‘ strategy
The ‘Re-energising’ online resource can be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged. But simply relying on individuals to take a look and try a few of the ideas now and then will have little effect on classrooms or students. Leaders will need to organise how this rich source of practical information might best be utilised as a central resource so that it affects classroom cultures, develops teachers’ teaching habits and strengthens students’ learning habits. As such it’s surely worth a plan!
The detail of any such strategy will of course be different for every school but here we offer the key questions that will need ironing out in order to build the strategy:
Style issues…how will we use our cooperative management style to ensure success across the school?
by promoting; dialogue, experimentation and self-monitoring.
Structure issues…who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
by agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Re-energising‘ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Systems issues…. what changes are needed in school systems to accommodate the change strategy?
by considering directed time, adjusting meeting patterns and agendas to support the change strategy.
Skills issues…. how can we assess what our students’ resilience and teachers’ classroom cultures are like now?
by discovering baselines for students’ resilience, baselines for learning cultures, to shape the use of the resource.
Staff issues… what’s the best way to organise the development of staff across the school using a common resource?
by considering small scale enquiries, professional learning teams, coaching partnerships.
Interaction between the resource and its management
2a. Key features of the resource and their management consequences
A model of choices
The way in which the resource is designed does not force how you should use it. It offers four aspects of resilience but doesn’t force you to use these in any particular order. It shows four stages of growth of each aspect but doesn’t force you to start with a particular stage. Inside each yellow cell there are between 6-8 classroom based ideas but you are left to choose what’s right for your classroom. The blue cells on the right offer a useful feel for what the outcomes should look like but you are left to decide how to monitor or evaluate such actions or results. The resource allows a diversity of management approaches which means it can be made to fit any school, regardless of size, age of students and strength of their resilience, or leadership culture. This leaves leaders to recognise the potential of the resource, decide how to organise its staff development potential and so to make best use of it across school.
The only request regarding its use is that people should start any column in dark green cells at the bottom. This enables teachers to explore baselines of current practice in relation to:
the level of their students’ resilience;
the type of classroom culture they themselves generate.
What’s the best way to tackle the resource for greatest effect?
Answering this key question will help leaders to form the bare bones of the strategy.
Where are we now? What do the outcomes of the Engaged vs Disengaged activity suggest across the school? Does this suggest a possible starting point in terms of stuck, distractions, challenge or goals?
Do we, as senior leaders, want to give this steer to staff because we’re confident that we know where to start? Or are we happy to ‘go with the flow’?
If we left every teacher to decide for themselves where to start, how would that affect students or fit with a collaborative staff development culture?
How could we balance the need a whole school focus that everybody works on simultaneously, without stifling individual exploration and innovation?
How long is each section/column of the resource likely to take? (Probably much longer than we think it will)
Senior leaders introduce the ideas to staff (see resources in 1b above);
Give teachers access to the ‘Re-energising‘ resource inviting them to explore it, but not to start doing anything at this stage;
Set up the appropriate staff development approach for your school (see 7 below);
Invite staff to focus discussions on the first section of the resource – Introduction – using the following 3 questions:
How do the ideas presented Connect with what you already know?
How did it Extend your thinking?
What Challenges or puzzles do you now have?
Emphasise that the 4 main sections (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) can be tackled in any order but where to start must be a team decision.
A possible action sequence for a staff team:
Decide as a team which of the 4 aspects of resilience (stuck / distractions / challenge / goals) to focus on;
Individual teachers do the 2 quizzes to get a feel for where learners are and where classroom culture is (sections 6a/b);
Teachers start with the section relevant to their individual quiz outcomes. E.g. if most learners are in the Purple / Tell me, Show me Phase, look for teaching ideas to move learners from Purple to Blue (6a);
Select a teaching idea (or two) that appeal;
Plan what’s to be done – using a Small Scale Enquiry structure (7c);
Incorporate the teaching ideas into the classroom culture repeatedly over the next few (maybe 4?) weeks, giving time for learners to respond;
Analyse how the classroom culture and learning behaviours have changed. (see e.g. monitoring tools in section 4a below).
Report back to colleagues via whatever team structure has been utilised.
You’ll immediately sense that just to get this far will take about half a term to complete.
It follows that to make a start on all 4 sections may well take the best part of a school year.
3. Style
Leadership and Management behaviour patterns
This element refers to the leadership / management style that’s prevalent in an organisation. Indeed it is this style that often decides the level of staff productivity and satisfaction in an organisation. Hence its importance.
What sort of leadership / management style will be needed to support the ‘Re-energising‘ resource?
All school leaders establish their own leadership style in the hope of matching or shaping the school’s values. The beliefs and values lying at the heart of ‘Re-energising‘ is a cooperative style of teaching where the teacher’s role is to help students to help themselves become better learners.
Hence leadership styles that are more likely to sustain the school in using ‘Re-energising’ are low in directives and high in a supportive style. Our experience across many schools over many years suggests change management of this sort works best when leaders:
Create a dialogue about learning across the school;
Enable staff to experiment with the ideas without fear of failure;
Encourage and support teachers to self-monitor their experiments and their impact on students.
To create the kind of culture change that is necessary, you’ll need to read, and think, and argue, and experiment, and adjust, and try again. In short, you create a dialogue about learning, you actively encourage experimentation, and you involve everyone in monitoring improvements that are not always measurable in the traditional ways of measuring attainment.
3a. Create a dialogue about learning
Critically, what leaders choose to talk about, and not talk about, reveals where their true interests lie. Hence if ‘Re-energising’ is to be successful it will help if you engage teachers in discussing learning; ways of learning, learning habits, learning character, learning styles etc. The emphasis becomes the how of learning, the process rather than the result.
Schools that have been particularly successful with generating an interest in developing learning habits have:
ensured that managers frequently, visibly and genuinely expressed their commitment to learning through their actions and dialogues;
introduced the resource not through big fanfares or guest speakers but by talking with staff about learning; This in itself represented a subtle shift in the school’s approach to staff learning; ‘its a learning journey no-one can do for us’;
created dialogues about learning were through informal staffroom chat, or having colleagues take a learning walk around the school to look at learning (not at teaching, or at students’ ‘work’).
Examples of approaches to creating deeper research-based dialogue include:
creating a staff ‘learning research club’ where all teachers read the same piece of research and meet to share their reactions;
enabling and encouraging staff to enrol for higher degrees;
producing a digest of teacher reports into their enquiries.
And as this innovation goes along, the big lessons for senior leaders are to:
keep close to the developments;
keep it high profile in school, visit classrooms regularly;
talk with teachers about how they are weaving the ideas into their lessons;
focus on the kinds of learning processes teachers are routinely asking students to use;
identify where the new practice is really taking hold or is faltering.
Ensure that phase / curriculum leaders pick up on this and support such discussions. This will stimulate an emerging debate about why and how things might need to be done differently.
3b. Enable exploration
Use of the ‘Re-energising‘ resource has been found to be more successful when leaders enable teachers to seek and try out creative and innovative ways of working and overcome barriers to change.
Teachers’ habits as learners have to become part of the picture; how they go about changing as well as those changes they are aiming to bring about. In other words, staff learning has to undergo the same sort of shifts as students’ learning. So the school needs to think of professional development in terms of ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned. Critically – Learning Walks, regularly undertaken, are focused on learning from, rather than judging, what is observed (4a).
Key ideas include:
encouraging staff to actively experiment in their classrooms;
supporting the freedom to take risks and learn from mistakes;
emphasising the school is learning its way forward;
promoting the idea of teachers being leaders of their own learning.
Ask yourselves:
how does our culture encourage teachers to experiment and take risks in their classroom?
do teachers feel able to try things out, get things wrong and learn from them?
is there a feeling that it is through experimentation against agreed and known indicators of good practice that learning develops?
can teachers share what they are wanting to find out either through school wide formal professional groups or within their team?
are the outcomes from the resulting experiments (both positive and negative) shared and learned from?
critically – are we as leaders modelling experimentation and adopting ‘no blame’ attitudes to risk taking?
3c. Self-monitoring
As this culture consolidates, people get used to watching out for and recording changes in their practice, and changes in students’ learning behaviour, motivation, or achievement. They might note, for example, the extent to which students are:
showing greater interest in learning;
taking more responsibility for learning;
becoming less dependent;
asking deeper, more insightful, or more frequent questions;
showing more confidence in tackling difficulty.
This is teachers self-monitoring the results of their changing practice.
Teachers may also undertake an annual self-review of their practice against indicators such as those shown opposite.
Structure or organisational structure refers to having a clear chain of command to avoid chaos & confusion. Structure is a simple yet crucial element because it creates a sense of accountability within the school.
In a school this includes:
who will lead the change strategy and what accountability may be needed in the system?
agreeing role responsibilities, introducing ‘Re-energising‘ to staff, managing the monitoring system.
Structural tweaks to accommodate ‘Re-energising’
All schools have a leadership and management structure with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Many have someone who holds a responsibility for ‘teaching and learning’, or maybe even ‘learning and teaching’, but few schools have a leadership role that focuses on the planning for and delivery of interventions to improve students’ learning behaviours.
Ask yourself:
Who is best placed to take the lead on ‘Re-energising‘?
Will you add it to someone’s existing responsibilities? Or do it yourself?
Or could this be a role for an untested mover and shaker?
What information will they need to run the change strategy effectively?
And for whoever you decide to lead on this:
How will you make time available for ongoing monitoring and the sharing of best practice?
Working in a culture of trust and openness, teachers will become increasingly confident to experiment and take risks. But this is no free-for-all: the quality of learning in classrooms and around the school will benefit from being kept under regular review.
It’s important that teachers get used to being observed regularly, and come to trust that such observation is in the spirit of learning support for them, and not a process of judgement or appraisal. Staff need to see classroom observation as part of a dynamic, reflective and development process across all levels of the school. As the new culture consolidates, people will get used to watching out for and recording changes both in their practice and in students’ learning behaviours, motivation and achievement.
Key idea:
Regular classroom reviews are conducted in a spirit of learning enquiry and support, NOT judgement or appraisal.
As leaders you’ll be instrumental in setting up and being involved in monitoring learning practice across the school. Such monitoring will give you a valuable handle on how the overall development of students’ resilience and perseverance as a learner is progressing and will feed back into planning to steer individual, team and school developments.
We offer 2 possible observation tools which take differing approaches to monitoring progress – use either or both to look for resilience in classrooms.
The ‘Rating Wheel’ is a lesson observation tool that focuses on resilient behaviours. Take a copy into lessons to record what you are seeing and hearing. By its nature, this tool shifts the observation focus away from observing teaching behaviours to observing students’ learning behaviours.
At the end of the observation, simply shade in each of the 16 segments depending on how evident the resilient behaviour was during the lesson. You might do this on your own, or in consultation with the teacher.
You could end up with something like the one shown alongside.
The Lesson Observation Proforma is a more formal observation tool than the ‘Rating Wheel’.
The 12 aspects of resilience are organised in 3’s – the first 3 relate to how students deal with being Stuck, the next 3 relate to Managing Distractions and so on.
The majority of these ‘observations’ will result from discussions with students and their teacher rather than by you simply ‘looking around’. In the download below we provide a crib sheet for completing this format.
Systems refer to the school processes and operational procedures used to complete a school’s routine activities. In businesses these are known as SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures); instructions for how staff need to go about completing certain tasks and processes in the organisation that are there to ensure all runs smoothly.
When thinking about changing your school’s systems, it might be necessary to assess the different types of project management and workflows which are currently in place.
System tweaks to accommodate ‘Re-energising’.
Schools can do anything they want. But they can’t do everything they want!
If a school wishes to introduce ‘Re-energising’ and for it not to become an additional workload issue for staff, some adjustments may well be necessary.
Schools have standard ways of operating on a day to day, week to week, term to term, even on a year to year basis – a ‘usual’ way of organising the school day, a weekly meeting cycle, a termly curriculum plan, a yearly reporting structure, a directed time budget that changes little year on year etc.
These ‘standard’ ways of operating, the ‘way we do things around here’, may, or may not, be helpful in terms of ‘Re-energising‘.
One of the problems is that while schools are adept at taking on new ideas, they are sometimes poor at moving on from earlier ones. Systems that were designed for one purpose are ‘tweaked’ (or not!) to accommodate changing times.
It’s worth giving time to think about whether your existing systems, your ways of organising the learning year, need adjustment to give ‘Re-energising‘ the best chance of successful implementation.
The problem schools have, and rightly so, is that there are only 1265 hours specified as directed time. This means that if/when you want to add something new it usually means having to adjust regular routines keeping within the specified hours. The question then becomes…
5b. What are the implications of ‘Re-energising‘ for the directed time budget?
Subsequent questions might include;
which members of staff should be involved?
all teachers and TA’s
just teachers
how do we see this project operating beyond teaching timetables?
through our usual meeting structure
or through newly formed teacher learning community meetings (7b)
how much time will this need?
one meeting dedicated to it each month
or squeezed in as an agenda item in usual meetings
where will that time come from?
Also allow for time to set up the project…
For an introductory meeting to get things going.
For maybe having a 4 week ‘try something out’ period with a short ‘how is it going?’ catch up meeting.
After about half term, a meeting to distil:
what has been learned;
which ideas gave the greatest traction;
which strategies would be worth adopting school-wide;
and to decide what to do next.
So – perhaps 2 and a half meetings each half term?
How will you find time for this? Will you need to use some INSET time?
A hard question: Ask yourself – which meetings / agenda items that currently form part of your directed time budget are less important than addressing ‘Re-energising Learners’ Resilience’?
Answer – Ditch them – they are less important! You cannot do everything, and some things may just have to wait.
Or maybe add one week to the usual weekly meeting cycle to add a staff development meeting to accommodate this project?
6. Skills
Competencies
Skills refer to the abilities of employees to complete tasks. There are many studies that suggest that skill gaps cause a loss of productivity and overburden experienced colleagues who have to pick up the slack of inexperience. It’s thought to be essential to identify skill gaps and shape development programmes to bridge the gaps. Since education is at the forefront of developing the citizens of tomorrow, schools must surely find ways to ensure teachers are learning about and using the new sciences of learning.
Skills issues in relation to ‘Re-energising‘.
There are 2 considerations:
Student learning behaviours / skills: How can we establish a measure of our students’ current learning behaviours to act as a baseline against which to evaluate the impact of ‘Re-energising‘?
Teaching behaviours / classroom cultures: How do we view our existing classroom cultures, and how might they need to adapt in light of ‘Re-energising’?
These important because:
your evaluation of student learning behaviours may well guide your decisions about the order in which you tackle the 4 sections of ‘Re-energising’;
your evaluation of classroom cultures will yield insight into those areas of the school where integrating learning behaviours will most readily take root, and those classrooms that may well struggle to blend learning behaviours into everyday practice.
Use the 8 quizzes in the following toggle box (4 relating to students and 4 for classroom culture) to explore these 2 considerations further.
As teachers embark on the bottom 4 dark green key cells of ‘Re-energising‘ (stuck / distraction / challenge / goals) they are invited to undertake 2 quizzes in each one – 8 quizzes in total. The first of these quizzes explore how they perceive their learners, and the second how they view their classroom culture. They will, of course, complete these quizzes in relation to their own students / classroom.
6a. Establish a baseline – student skills
As a senior leadership team, you could also complete these quizzes, but thinking at whole-school level.
To gain an insight into your students’ current learning behaviours, undertake the 4 quizzes (to the right).
No need to go into classes, just trust your instincts. Ignore the outliers, the ‘golden children’ who are already highly resilient learners, and also ignore those students who have yet to develop many positive resilient behaviours – just focus on your ‘average’ students. You may even choose to do these quizzes for each year group rather than for the whole school.
Ask yourselves:
how can we capture the outcomes of these quizzes to establish a baseline measure of where our students’ resilient behaviours are now, with a view to repeating the quizzes after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of teachers’ interventions?
whether these quizzes are raising any questions for us?
whether there’s any suggestion that student skill levels are rising as students move through the school?
[For ease of access, links to the 4 quizzes relating to students’ resilient behaviours are reproduced opposite. You can use these quizzes as many times as you like.]
The second set of 4 quizzes concerns the classroom culture. Each question describes a fairly traditional, teacher-focused classroom culture and invites you to compare it with the features of a more learning-friendly classroom culture.
Ask yourselves – how can we capture the outcomes of the quiz to establish a baseline measure of where our classroom cultures are now, with a view to repeating the quiz after a year or so to gain a sense of the impact of interventions? As with the learning behaviour quizzes, focus on your ‘average’ classroom culture – this will inevitably lead you into identifying classrooms where classroom cultures are more (or less) learning-friendly.
[For ease of access, links to the 4 culture related quizzes are reproduced opposite.]
This element of the 7-S model represents the talent pool the organisation needs, the size of the existing workforce, and their motivations. It also considers how they are trained and rewarded within the organisation so it is here that we consider a range of staff development options for use with ‘Re-energising‘
Staff development opportunities to generate ‘Re-energising’.
The ‘Re-energising‘ online resource can of course be accessed by any member of staff at any time of day and such personal exploration should be encouraged; teachers’ habits as learners become part of the picture. However, rather than simply relying on staff to look at and act on ‘Re-energising’school leaders have to organise how this rich, practical source of information might best be utilised as a professional development resource; answering the questions ‘what’ has to be learned and ‘how’ it might be learned?
In any school there will be enthusiasts, early adopters, cautious observers (waiting to be reassured or convinced), and maybe a few who actively resist changing their ways. You may need to work with different groups in different ways for a while. It’s important to see using ‘Re-energising’ as a process of gradual, cumulative culture change across the whole school that might take several terms to really embed.
One or more of following types of professional development could be built into the CPD programmes of your school. The more you activate professional development opportunities to affect change, the more the school will become a culture of enquiry. Useful types of CPD include:
Teacher learning communities, or as we refer to them, Professional Learning Teams;
Coaching partnerships;
Small-scale learning enquiries;
Classroom observations and personal review;
Learning walks.
Your strategic managing change plan will need to explain which of the various alternative staff development routes will be utilised to support ‘Re-energising’.
7a. Why is changing teachers’ practice so difficult?
When teachers want or need to improve it actually involves them in changing their teaching habits. It’s not just about knowingnew stuff, it is about doing what you do differently. That’s much harder. It involves changes to:
what you know – knowledge;
what you believe – feelings or attitudes;
what you can do – your skills;
what you actually do – putting it all into practice.
So changing how you teach is a delicate, complex process……...that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting new ideas into teachers’ heads . . .
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones.
All the evidence shows that teachers change their practice when they work together and support each other in trying out new teaching strategies, within a culture of classroom based action research. It is about teachers being empowered to explore together to find out what works with their students, in this context, at this time. As a consequence, the school learns its way forward, together.
7b. How Professional Learning Communities work
PLCs are groups of 8-10 teachers (and TA’s?) who meet together regularly to deepen their understanding of an approach. They try out ideas offered in ‘Re-energising‘ and reflect on and share their experiments with each other. Such communities work best when they are voluntary, grouping similar subjects or age groups and meet monthly for about 75 minutes over a couple of years. Such communities support and scaffold teachers’ habit change. In short this approach:
deepens staff understanding of learning;
draws on the support of colleagues;
unpacks the ‘how to’ together when it’s unclear;
results in a plan to try out new things, considering what’s doable for their students;
benefits from reflection on and sharing of data from their experiments with each other;
draws on sharing trials and tribulations and what they will do differently.
The ‘Re-energising’ resource could easily take teams 2 or 3 terms to complete.
7c. Small Scale Enquiries
Small scale enquiries are action research, with a small ‘r’, not the kind of ‘R’esearch undertaken at universities. They are about teachers making a small change to their practice, and monitoring the impact of this change on themselves and their learners. Small scale enquiries invite teachers to explore what works, at this time, with our learners.
This approach involves individual teachers, experimenting in their classrooms to see what happens. They may then share the outcomes of these experiments with other colleagues in a team meeting or other safe learning environment.
Formalising Learning Enquiries: an intentional and systematic attempt to explore how changes in teacher behaviours can lead to positive changes in student learning behaviours.
1) Typically, such enquiries begin with an itch of dissatisfaction – ie my students give up too readily.
2) It may be that the teacher wonders whether they are contributing to this by the way they behave – ie by providing too much support.
3) Teachers may explore relevant sections of ‘Re-energising‘ for any ideas as to what might be done differently?
4) From this, the enquiry question emerges, usually in the form ‘if I do ‘x’, will students do ‘y’?
– ie If I enable my students to develop and use Stuck Posters, will their inclination to persevere improve?
5) They monitor these changes in terms of both the changes they made and the resulting changes in student behaviours. Both are decided before the intervention starts.
As John Hattie says:
The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and students become their own teachers.
7d. Classroom observations and personal review
As schools push on into developing teachers’ learning habits, they come to question how and why they undertake classroom observation, especially where it is currently viewed as part of an appraisal leading to a graded assessment of performance and linked to a performance management system that sets targets for teachers. This view limits the learning that can take place – none of us is at our most open-minded when we feel we are being judged – and inhibits teachers from engaging in professional dialogue about how students learn.
A powerful way of developing teachers is by using classroom observation as a developmental entitlement of self-organised improvement. Here the observer is often as much of a learner as the observed colleague is, and the observation ‘schedule’ is designed in a more open-ended way, to encourage reflection and imagination by both parties.
Before an observation takes place teachers themselves:
identify what learning habits they will be focusing on;
generate the most appropriate tools for capturing data to stimulate the ensuing discussion.
Many of the observation tools shown in previous sections could be used in this sort of reflective classroom observation. It is observation as development, as shown in the diagram alongside. Such an approach readily supports peer to peer observation.
Changing how you learn is a complex process……..that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting the new ideas into your head…
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones……so we have provided materials here to help you to plan the changes you want to make, monitor what happens, and reflect on the impact of those changes; their worth and value.
4.2 Think about where you are on the progression chart
Things to remember about the stages
Think about where you seem to be on the progression chart.
Remember your development as a learner isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, you have to make them happen.
Each stage takes quite a while to work through and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next stage.
Take a look back at section 2 to remind yourself of the detailed descriptions of the stages.
These Perseverance behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits. Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Perseverance into their learning character could easily take three or four years of supported and focused development.
4.3 Think about the activities and self-talk you might try
Take it steady
If you aren’t sure where you are on the chart, and as this is your first plan, it’s better to pitch your first plan low rather than high.
There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where you will be listening carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But you could also try some of your own self-talk phrases to help you take some responsibility for thinking about your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from purple to blue your aim will be to rely on your own nudges and prompts to make sure you are monitoring and reflecting on your learning.
If you think you are already doing this in some subjects you could focus your plan on covering more or trickier subjects.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from blue to green you must be confident that you are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Your aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to your learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a good thing for your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving beyond green you must be sure you’re ready to look at what you are doing with a critical eye and make your own improvements along the way. Your aim here is to be constantly on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.
4.4 Put a do-able plan together
Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for you to complete. This means that what you are planning will be put into action, by you, over about six months. At the end of six months you will need to review your plan, estimate your progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or more likely strengthen your growth in the same phase.
Filling in the easy bits:
Record your name and class and
the date you made the plan
the date the plan will be reviewed
In the little table indicate the level of Perseverance where you feel secure. This shows your starting point. If you mark Purple to Blue it means you think you are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
Record the Goals you’ve chosen and make a note of:
any actions you intend to try
the sort of self-talk you want to say quietly to yourself.
Reviewing the plan:
After about 6 months it will be time to review your plan to prove to yourself that you are taking action and the effect this is having over time.
When you review how your plan worked:
write down what went well and
what could have been even better.
Here’s a plan we filled in earlier to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like.
The best way of keeping your plan going is by getting used to looking at the changes you are making and their impact on your learning.
Self-monitoring. As your plan unfolds it’s a good idea to keep track of the actions or self-talk you are trying in your classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming there are some very simple ways of slowing down and getting an objective view of what you are doing.
For example, you could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times you use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help you become more consciously competent.
Bit by bit, the more you question yourself about what you are doing the more you will consolidate your approaches to developing your learning behaviours.
I stopped . . .
I tried . . .
I used . . .
4.6 Keeping your plans under review
At the end of the six months take a look back at your plan.
Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.
Look back at your Action Plan and any notes you made. Think about:
Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.
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.
the 4 toggles in 3.2 need a re-write based on the contents of ‘1) section 3s’ above
3.1 Confirm where you are now.
Which coloured row best describes your Perseverance skills?
You met this progression chart in the previous section.
Take time to think about how you behave across a range of school subjects and activities outside school. Be honest with yourself – which coloured row best describes your current Perseverance skills?
Why do this?
Because only you know yourself well enough to judge this, although of course you could seek advice from a friend or your teacher if you find that helpful.
And secondly, where you are now should determine what you do next.
For example, if you think that the Purple row best describes you, then your immediate target should be to consider advice to move into the Blue row.
Look below for ideas to help you to move one level up from your current secure ‘row’.
What is the main difference between the Grey row and the Purple row?
If you think you are in the Grey row you just do what you want and how you want to do things. You maybe reluctant to change the way or how you do things saying ‘I can’t’ or ‘I won’t’.
If you think you are in the Purple row you are becoming familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how you are learning things, but you need plenty of your teacher’s support to do so.
So – the big difference here is that Purple learners accept advice from their teachers to monitor how they are doing with a view to changing things if it is not going as expected. To be strong in purple you need to be like this in all your learning, not just the subjects you like. Being strong in Purple is the first big step in becoming a good reviser
A couple of useful activities
a) Monitor how you are feeling about your learning.
You could cut a strip of card and write on it:
Absorbed……………………………..Distracted OR
Too Easy………………………………Too Hard OR
Interested……………………………Bored
Take the strips to use during lessons to help you monitor and become more conscious of your feelings about learning. This is just a small beginning but will help you get a feel for learning to begin to take more responsibility for it.
b) Use a checklist to monitor how things are going
If your teacher offers you a checklist, then take their advice and use it to keep an eye on things. If your teacher does not offer you a checklist, try making a copy of this simple checklist and refer to it in lessons to help you to keep close eye on how things are going. Use the checklist as you are working, and again after you think that you have finished.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you begin to monitor how things are going
How am I getting on?
Am I ‘on track?’
What is working well for me here?
Is this going OK?
Do I need to try a different approach?
Is this going to be good enough?
To help you begin to think about how it went
How did that go?
What worked well?
Did it go as I expected?
Am I happy with that?
Make a quick reflection on what you’ve done become part of your daily or lesson routine.
Your questions might include:
Today I have learned….
Today I have tried to…
My biggest success today has been….
What will I tell my family when they ask ‘What did you do at school today’?
The most important thing I have learned today.
What has inspired me today?
Each, in different ways, encourages you to think about how your thinking / understanding has changed, how you have revised/amended your view of things.
What is the main difference between the Purple row and the Blue row?
Learners in the Purple row have become familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how things are going with plenty of help from their teacher’s.
Learners in the Blue row use a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standards.
So – the big difference is that learners in the Blue zone have become far more interested in their learning, monitoring and evaluating what they are doing in order to achieve good standards and without being told / helped to do so. Keeping an eye on how they are learning helps Blue learners to achieve good standards.
A couple of useful activities
a) Create your own checklists
You do not need to wait to be given a checklist by your teacher. Why not create one for yourself?
Suppose that you wanted to create a list that focuses specifically on numeracy/ maths? You might end up with something like the checklist opposite.
Challenge yourself – how would you adapt this checklist to make it relate to literacy rather than numeracy?
b) Trying something different
We all have our preferred ways of working, and if that way is successful we tend to use that method again and again. But what if our preferred way of working is not working as well as we had hoped?
The answer is, of course, to ditch an unsuccessful strategy in favour of a better one.
So where can you find alternative ways of working? Easy – Just stop and look around your class!
Ask yourself:
who has found a successful way of doing this?
what, precisely, are they doing to be successful?
do I need to talk to them to fully understand their approach?
how can I copy or imitate their successful strategy?
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you to learn from mistakes
What went wrong there?
What can I learn from this mistake?
If I have another go what would I change?
Do I need to try something different?
What have I misunderstood here I wonder?
To develop a sense of what ‘good’ looks like
What made me think this wasn’t quite right/good enough?
Am I (un)happy with this? Why?
What hint could I give myself so I can figure it out?
Can I do something more/better to meet my success criteria?
How you could I improve this.
Am I happy with what I’ve achieved?
To explore externally set standards
Have I 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 me?
Try these If/Thens statements to help you to monitor how things are going:
If I am working on something, then I will stop occasionally and ask myself how well I am getting on.
If I’m working on something then I will ask myself why I think it’s okay/good/meeting the success criteria.
What is the main difference between the Blue row and the Green row?
Learners in the Blue row employ a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standard.
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
So – the big difference is that Green learners not only monitor progress while they are doing something, but also look back to evaluate what they have achieved once they have completed a task. Green learners recognise that doing those things brings worthwhile benefits so they keep on doing them.
A couple of useful activities
a) I used to think . . . Now I think . . .
This routine helps you to reflect on how and why your thinking/understanding is changing. It encourages you to recognise that new learning often requires you to change what you were thinking previously.
For example, at the beginning of a lesson or topic, ask yourself what you understand by one of the key concepts that you will be studying. (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson/topic ask yourself what you now understand by the term in light of what you have learned.
It is about noticing, acknowledging and celebrating a change of mind.
b) Use a checklist to evaluate a completed piece of work
Monitoring and evaluation are slightly different. You monitor as you go along, as you are doing your learning. Evaluation is what you do after the learning/task has been completed. It involves stopping to look back over what you have done, how you did it, how successful you were, and how you might do it differently next time.
At the end of a substantial piece of work, use the checklist opposite to reflect on what you have achieved.
What is the main difference between the Green row and the rows beyond Green?
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing, but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
Learners in the rows beyond Green organise themselves to meet their own high standards through a combination of reflecting while they are learning (monitoring) and reflecting after the have learned (evaluation). This reflection sets them on a pathway of change and improvement.
So – the big difference is that learners beyond Green have taken control of their own improvement and use monitoring and reflection independently to ensure that they meet the highest standards.
A couple of activities to try
a) Acting on feedback
Students receive feedback from their teachers, parents and friends. Mostly the feedback is spoken, but some feedback might be offered to you in written form.
Positive feedback is always welcome and tends to make us feel good. But the most valuable feedback you can receive is feedback that points to ways that you can improve. Perhaps not as comfortable as the positive, praise type feedback that gives you that warm glow of satisfaction at a job well-done, the most useful feedback you can receive focuses on how you can do even better next time.
So – be alert to all of the sources of feedback around you, listen very carefully, and, most importantly, act on the feedback. Keep asking yourself: ‘How will I do it differently next time?’
b) Slow down, get creative, look at the options
Often when faced with a task there are one or two obvious courses of action. These tend to be the ones that you have used successfully in the past. But are there any other options that might be even better?
Try the routine ‘Options Explosion’ to explore hidden options before committing to a course of action.
Begin by listing the obvious options, then . .
Brainstorm all sorts of different options to find the “hidden” options. Often there are hidden options that are the real best choices. Be imaginative! Piggyback on ideas you have already, combine ideas to get new ones, look for ideas of a very different kind. . .
And finally, select your course of action.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To make choices about standards
How will I decide if it is good enough?
What standards have I set myself for this?
Why did I choose to judge it against these criteria?
Are there other criteria I could / should have used?
To detect errors
Am I using the most efficient way of doing this?
Could / should I change what I am doing here?
Can I spot any errors/ a better way to do this/to change my original plan
It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Perseverance habits – that you are liable to give up at the first sign of difficulty, or that you are always tenacious when the going gets tough. This could not be further from the truth!
The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.
In this section, we explore the shifts that gradually transform you into a learner who rises to challenges with relish, tenacity and skill.
2.2 Progression in Perseverance
A Perseverance progression chart
The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the growth of a good Perseverance habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Perseverance, to the highly aware and Perseverance savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Perseverer to an expert Perseverer.
The chart offers glimpses of how Perseverance may grow across three columns.
Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.
Column 2 describes how the skills and behaviours may change and grow over time.
Column 3 shows the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.
Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.
Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills and behaviours look like as learners become increasing effective Perseverers.
Column 3 is a really important one. It alerts you to how your attitudes and self-talk change as your Perseverance skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s your own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of your learning behaviours. If you don’t care about it it’s unlikely to improve.
2.4 What the rows are about?
Looking closely at grey
In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you are minded to give up easily. There are all sorts of reasons for this; you may just be constantly distracted from the activity in hand; you may just need constant support from an adult; you may not know which resource might help you or you simply don’t know what stuck means, let alone how to get unstuck. You may need to be eased into learning how to learn in a classroom setting and how/what perseverant learners behave/do.
ALL IMAGES NEED UPDATE
Looking closely at purple
In the Receives (purple) phase, you have made a big leap from having a negative mindset to a neutral one. Here you are inclined to play it safe, staying within your own comfort zone to ensure success and avoid perceived failure. You still need adult support to maintain focus and optimism when tackling tasks you think are difficult, but you are beginning to show a willingness to take more responsibility.
Looking closely at blue
In the Responds (blue) phase you are developing greater independence and are motivated by trying to reach achievable goals. You are realising that fear, the need for adult support, and distraction can be overcome by having/using more coping strategies and practical ideas to get yourself unstuck.
Looking closely at green
In the Values (green) phase you have developed a strong belief that you can get better at learning. You become curious about mistakes and care about the goals you are trying to reach. You develop and use many practical strategies to assist yourself in dealing with challenge, being stuck and staying focused.
Looking beyond green
In the Organises (yellow) phase you organise yourself to get the job/task/problem done. Risk-taking is underpinned by sound strategies. Failures are analysed for greater understanding. You have accepted responsibility for your persevering behaviours.
In the Embodies (orange) phase, your perseverance is pervasive and consistent, predictable and importantly characteristic of how you learn. Persevering effectively is now part of your learning character.
Ask yourself . . .
Which colour row best describes your current Persevering skills, behaviours and attitudes?
Attention can be broken when learning gets blocked, but good learners have learnt the knack of maintaining or quickly re-establishing their concentration when they get stuck or frustrated. Perseverance is often undermined by two common and erroneous beliefs. Firstly that learning ought to be easy. If learners think that they will either understand something straight away, or not at all, then there is simply no point in persisting and struggling. Secondly that bright people pick things up easily, so if you have to try it means you’re not very bright. Clearly the idea that effort must be symptomatic of a lack of ability makes persevering an unpleasant experience. Good learners develop perseverance when their parents and teachers avoid conveying these messages, even unwittingly.
It is about keeping going in the face of difficulties; channelling the energy of frustration productively; knowing what a slow and uncertain process learning often is.
1.2 What does being a good perseverer involve?
Being ready, willing and able
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, how you relate to a challenge and whether you are influenced by goals whether they be your own or imposed by others. All these things contribute to being 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.
The growth chart in section 2 intertwines these important contributors to our growth in the habit of Perseverance.
Being a good perseverer involves:
Keeping going in the face of difficulties;
Enjoying working at the edge of our comfort zone;
Channelling the energy of frustration productively, marshalling positive emotions to succeed;
Understanding that learning is often a slow and uncertain process that requires grit, risk-taking and different ways of working;
Relishing working towards ever more challenging goals without fear of ‘failure’.
1.3 Spot yourself persevering in lessons
Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about your perseverance habits at this stage. Use the chart alongside, take it with you into lessons and make a note of whether and how often you display these characteristics.
Take the outcomes of this little questionnaire into account when you tackle section 2.
1.4 What teachers can do to help you become a good perseverer
look at stuff in nutshells section 2 for ideas
Your teachers will:
encourage you to change the way you are doing things if necessary
help you to view change as a natural part of learning
want you to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
focus their feedback on what you need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what you got right
offer you checklists that help you to keep an eye on how your work is progressing
create opportunities for you to stop and to consider how things are going
Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you just want or like things to stay the same you are unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.
As a good reviser you’ll also need to know what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going and be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing your revising habits is much more than you ‘having another go’.
Changing how you learn is a complex process……..that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting the new ideas into your head…
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones……so we have provided materials here to help you to plan the changes you want to make, monitor what happens, and reflect on the impact of those changes; their worth and value.
4.2 Think about where you are on the progression chart
Things to remember about the stages
Think about where you seem to be on the progression chart.
Remember your development as a learner isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, you have to make them happen.
Each stage takes quite a while to work through and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next stage.
Take a look back at section 2 to remind yourself of the detailed descriptions of the stages.
These Collaboration behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits. Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Collaboration into their learning character could easily take three or four years of supported and focused development.
4.3 Think about the activities and self-talk you might try
Take it steady
If you aren’t sure where you are on the chart, and as this is your first plan, it’s better to pitch your first plan low rather than high.
There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where you will be listening carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But you could also try some of your own self-talk phrases to help you take some responsibility for thinking about your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from purple to blue your aim will be to rely on your own nudges and prompts to make sure you are monitoring and reflecting on your learning.
If you think you are already doing this in some subjects you could focus your plan on covering more or trickier subjects.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from blue to green you must be confident that you are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Your aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to your learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a good thing for your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving beyond green you must be sure you’re ready to look at what you are doing with a critical eye and make your own improvements along the way. Your aim here is to be constantly on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.
4.4 Put a do-able plan together
Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for you to complete. This means that what you are planning will be put into action, by you, over about six months. At the end of six months you will need to review your plan, estimate your progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or more likely strengthen your growth in the same phase.
Filling in the easy bits:
Record your name and class and
the date you made the plan
the date the plan will be reviewed
In the little table indicate the level of Collaboration where you feel secure. This shows your starting point. If you mark Purple to Blue it means you think you are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
Record the Goals you’ve chosen and make a note of:
any actions you intend to try
the sort of self-talk you want to say quietly to yourself.
Reviewing the plan:
After about 6 months it will be time to review your plan to prove to yourself that you are taking action and the effect this is having over time.
When you review how your plan worked:
write down what went well and
what could have been even better.
Here’s a plan we filled in earlier to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like.
The best way of keeping your plan going is by getting used to looking at the changes you are making and their impact on your learning.
Self-monitoring. As your plan unfolds it’s a good idea to keep track of the actions or self-talk you are trying in your classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming there are some very simple ways of slowing down and getting an objective view of what you are doing.
For example, you could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times you use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help you become more consciously competent.
Bit by bit, the more you question yourself about what you are doing the more you will consolidate your approaches to developing your learning behaviours.
I stopped . . .
I tried . . .
I used . . .
4.6 Keeping your plans under review
At the end of the six months take a look back at your plan.
Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.
Look back at your Action Plan and any notes you made. Think about:
Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.
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.
the 4 toggles in 3.2 need a re-write based on the contents of ‘1) section 3s’ above
3.1 Confirm where you are now.
Which coloured row best describes your Collaboration skills?
You met this progression chart in the previous section.
Take time to think about how you behave across a range of school subjects and activities outside school. Be honest with yourself – which coloured row best describes your current Collaboration skills?
Why do this?
Because only you know yourself well enough to judge this, although of course you could seek advice from a friend or your teacher if you find that helpful.
And secondly, where you are now should determine what you do next.
For example, if you think that the Purple row best describes you, then your immediate target should be to consider advice to move into the Blue row.
Look below for ideas to help you to move one level up from your current secure ‘row’.
What is the main difference between the Grey row and the Purple row?
If you think you are in the Grey row you just do what you want and how you want to do things. You maybe reluctant to change the way or how you do things saying ‘I can’t’ or ‘I won’t’.
If you think you are in the Purple row you are becoming familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how you are learning things, but you need plenty of your teacher’s support to do so.
So – the big difference here is that Purple learners accept advice from their teachers to monitor how they are doing with a view to changing things if it is not going as expected. To be strong in purple you need to be like this in all your learning, not just the subjects you like. Being strong in Purple is the first big step in becoming a good reviser
A couple of useful activities
a) Monitor how you are feeling about your learning.
You could cut a strip of card and write on it:
Absorbed……………………………..Distracted OR
Too Easy………………………………Too Hard OR
Interested……………………………Bored
Take the strips to use during lessons to help you monitor and become more conscious of your feelings about learning. This is just a small beginning but will help you get a feel for learning to begin to take more responsibility for it.
b) Use a checklist to monitor how things are going
If your teacher offers you a checklist, then take their advice and use it to keep an eye on things. If your teacher does not offer you a checklist, try making a copy of this simple checklist and refer to it in lessons to help you to keep close eye on how things are going. Use the checklist as you are working, and again after you think that you have finished.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you begin to monitor how things are going
How am I getting on?
Am I ‘on track?’
What is working well for me here?
Is this going OK?
Do I need to try a different approach?
Is this going to be good enough?
To help you begin to think about how it went
How did that go?
What worked well?
Did it go as I expected?
Am I happy with that?
Make a quick reflection on what you’ve done become part of your daily or lesson routine.
Your questions might include:
Today I have learned….
Today I have tried to…
My biggest success today has been….
What will I tell my family when they ask ‘What did you do at school today’?
The most important thing I have learned today.
What has inspired me today?
Each, in different ways, encourages you to think about how your thinking / understanding has changed, how you have revised/amended your view of things.
What is the main difference between the Purple row and the Blue row?
Learners in the Purple row have become familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how things are going with plenty of help from their teacher’s.
Learners in the Blue row use a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standards.
So – the big difference is that learners in the Blue zone have become far more interested in their learning, monitoring and evaluating what they are doing in order to achieve good standards and without being told / helped to do so. Keeping an eye on how they are learning helps Blue learners to achieve good standards.
A couple of useful activities
a) Create your own checklists
You do not need to wait to be given a checklist by your teacher. Why not create one for yourself?
Suppose that you wanted to create a list that focuses specifically on numeracy/ maths? You might end up with something like the checklist opposite.
Challenge yourself – how would you adapt this checklist to make it relate to literacy rather than numeracy?
b) Trying something different
We all have our preferred ways of working, and if that way is successful we tend to use that method again and again. But what if our preferred way of working is not working as well as we had hoped?
The answer is, of course, to ditch an unsuccessful strategy in favour of a better one.
So where can you find alternative ways of working? Easy – Just stop and look around your class!
Ask yourself:
who has found a successful way of doing this?
what, precisely, are they doing to be successful?
do I need to talk to them to fully understand their approach?
how can I copy or imitate their successful strategy?
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you to learn from mistakes
What went wrong there?
What can I learn from this mistake?
If I have another go what would I change?
Do I need to try something different?
What have I misunderstood here I wonder?
To develop a sense of what ‘good’ looks like
What made me think this wasn’t quite right/good enough?
Am I (un)happy with this? Why?
What hint could I give myself so I can figure it out?
Can I do something more/better to meet my success criteria?
How you could I improve this.
Am I happy with what I’ve achieved?
To explore externally set standards
Have I 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 me?
Try these If/Thens statements to help you to monitor how things are going:
If I am working on something, then I will stop occasionally and ask myself how well I am getting on.
If I’m working on something then I will ask myself why I think it’s okay/good/meeting the success criteria.
What is the main difference between the Blue row and the Green row?
Learners in the Blue row employ a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standard.
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
So – the big difference is that Green learners not only monitor progress while they are doing something, but also look back to evaluate what they have achieved once they have completed a task. Green learners recognise that doing those things brings worthwhile benefits so they keep on doing them.
A couple of useful activities
a) I used to think . . . Now I think . . .
This routine helps you to reflect on how and why your thinking/understanding is changing. It encourages you to recognise that new learning often requires you to change what you were thinking previously.
For example, at the beginning of a lesson or topic, ask yourself what you understand by one of the key concepts that you will be studying. (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson/topic ask yourself what you now understand by the term in light of what you have learned.
It is about noticing, acknowledging and celebrating a change of mind.
b) Use a checklist to evaluate a completed piece of work
Monitoring and evaluation are slightly different. You monitor as you go along, as you are doing your learning. Evaluation is what you do after the learning/task has been completed. It involves stopping to look back over what you have done, how you did it, how successful you were, and how you might do it differently next time.
At the end of a substantial piece of work, use the checklist opposite to reflect on what you have achieved.
What is the main difference between the Green row and the rows beyond Green?
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing, but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
Learners in the rows beyond Green organise themselves to meet their own high standards through a combination of reflecting while they are learning (monitoring) and reflecting after the have learned (evaluation). This reflection sets them on a pathway of change and improvement.
So – the big difference is that learners beyond Green have taken control of their own improvement and use monitoring and reflection independently to ensure that they meet the highest standards.
A couple of activities to try
a) Acting on feedback
Students receive feedback from their teachers, parents and friends. Mostly the feedback is spoken, but some feedback might be offered to you in written form.
Positive feedback is always welcome and tends to make us feel good. But the most valuable feedback you can receive is feedback that points to ways that you can improve. Perhaps not as comfortable as the positive, praise type feedback that gives you that warm glow of satisfaction at a job well-done, the most useful feedback you can receive focuses on how you can do even better next time.
So – be alert to all of the sources of feedback around you, listen very carefully, and, most importantly, act on the feedback. Keep asking yourself: ‘How will I do it differently next time?’
b) Slow down, get creative, look at the options
Often when faced with a task there are one or two obvious courses of action. These tend to be the ones that you have used successfully in the past. But are there any other options that might be even better?
Try the routine ‘Options Explosion’ to explore hidden options before committing to a course of action.
Begin by listing the obvious options, then . .
Brainstorm all sorts of different options to find the “hidden” options. Often there are hidden options that are the real best choices. Be imaginative! Piggyback on ideas you have already, combine ideas to get new ones, look for ideas of a very different kind. . .
And finally, select your course of action.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To make choices about standards
How will I decide if it is good enough?
What standards have I set myself for this?
Why did I choose to judge it against these criteria?
Are there other criteria I could / should have used?
To detect errors
Am I using the most efficient way of doing this?
Could / should I change what I am doing here?
Can I spot any errors/ a better way to do this/to change my original plan
It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Collaboration habits – that either you find it really hard to engage constructively with others, or that you skilfully learn with and from others. This could not be further from the truth!
The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.
In this section, we explore the shifts that gradually transform you into becoming an outstanding team player.
2.2 Progression in Collaboration
A Collaboration progression chart
The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the growth of a good Collaboration habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Collaboration, to the highly aware and Collaboration savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Collaborator to an expert Collaborator.
The chart offers glimpses of how Collaboration may grow across three columns.
Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.
Column 2 describes how the skills and behaviours may change and grow over time.
Column 3 shows the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.
Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.
Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills and behaviours look like as learners become increasing effective Collaborators.
Column 3 is a really important one. It alerts you to how your attitudes and self-talk change as your Collaboration skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s your own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of your learning behaviours. If you don’t care about it it’s unlikely to improve.
2.4 What the rows are about?
CHANGE IMAGES
Looking closely at grey
In this ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase, you may be unsure of yourself in a group. You often learn alongside others but collaborating together is far more tricky. Your social skills may not be conducive to working with others either tending to push yourself forward and take control or shying away and saying/contributing little. You have much learning and adapting to do before you are really ready to work in a collaborative team.
Looking closely at purple
In the Receives (purple) phase, you are making a big leap from being wary of others, being unaware of social conventions or any of the advantages of working/learning with others. Here you are collaborating with others because you are required to. There is much to be done in this phase: social skills, sharing ideas, working out what needs doing, playing your part and even thinking about how you have contributed to the team.
Looking closely at blue
In the Responds (blue) phase you are willing to develop your understanding of what being part of a team involves, agreeing goals together, trying out different roles, broadening social skills and opening up others.
Looking closely at green
In the Values (green) phase you see/appreciate the value of a team member and honing your skills in different roles, planning action more carefully, and being flexible in your own views for the sake of the team. Once this phase is secure you are likely to develop further skills by having opportunities to work in this way.
Looking beyond green
In the Organises (yellow) phase, you organise yourself to work as part of a team. You learn that skilful teams manage conflict and that conflict and controversy are positive keys to involvement and creativity; that high-performing teams frequently check their progress and adjust their practice to stay on track.
In the Embodies (orange) phase, being a skilled team player is what characterises you. You work happily and skilfully in any team, confident in your social, task development, planning, reviewing, and team evaluation strategies. You are a valuable member of any team.
Ask yourself . . .
Which colour row best describes your current Collaboration skills, behaviours and attitudes?
Collaboration involves knowing how to learn with others. It means being able to work as part of a pair or a team, in a situation where no one person is in possession of all parts of the puzzle, and where the sharing of information and ideas is essential. Collaboration means being willing to share, and having the skills of communication to do so effectively.
At its least sophisticated, it is little more than being cooperative. At its most sophisticated it goes beyond learning ‘in a team’ and becomes learning ‘as a team’.
It is an invaluable life skill that involves having both the skills and the inclination to contribute positively to group work in order to learn productively with and from others.
1.2 What does being a good collaborator involve?
Being ready, willing and able
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.
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.
Being a good collaborator involves:
working effectively with others towards agreed, common goals, acting flexibly in response to circumstances;
adopting different roles and responsibilities in pursuit of agreed goals and the well-being of the team;
holding and expressing opinions coherently, compromising and adapting when appropriate;
seeking to understand what others are saying;
sharing, challenging, supporting and building on ideas.
1.3 Spot yourself collaborating in lessons
Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about your collaboration habits at this stage. Use the chart alongside, take it with you into lessons and make a note of whether and how often you display these characteristics.
Take the outcomes of this little questionnaire into account when you tackle section 2.
1.4 What teachers can do to help you become a good collaborator
Your teachers will:
encourage you to change the way you are doing things if necessary
help you to view change as a natural part of learning
want you to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
focus their feedback on what you need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what you got right
offer you checklists that help you to keep an eye on how your work is progressing
create opportunities for you to stop and to consider how things are going
Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you just want or like things to stay the same you are unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.
As a good reviser you’ll also need to know what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going and be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing your revising habits is much more than you ‘having another go’.
Changing how you learn is a complex process……..that’s why it’s hard!
And the hardest thing isn’t getting the new ideas into your head…
It’s getting the old ones out…….that’s why it takes time and effort.
It takes time and practice to undo old habits and become graceful at new ones……so we have provided materials here to help you to plan the changes you want to make, monitor what happens, and reflect on the impact of those changes; their worth and value.
4.2 Think about where you are on the progression chart
Things to remember about the stages
Think about where you seem to be on the progression chart.
Remember your development as a learner isn’t a race and the stages don’t just happen, you have to make them happen.
Each stage takes quite a while to work through and become competent in. It’s not about acting in that way once or twice but acting it that way most of the time, consistently, before being ready to move on to the next stage.
Take a look back at section 2 to remind yourself of the detailed descriptions of the stages.
These Questioning behaviours may look and sound straightforward but they make up one of the most valuable and important learning habits. Working through these stages to become someone who absorbs the various aspects of Questioning into their learning character could easily take three or four years of supported and focused development.
4.3 Think about the activities and self-talk you might try
Take it steady
If you aren’t sure where you are on the chart, and as this is your first plan, it’s better to pitch your first plan low rather than high.
There’s nothing wrong with starting in grey to purple where you will be listening carefully for teachers’ suggestions. But you could also try some of your own self-talk phrases to help you take some responsibility for thinking about your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from purple to blue your aim will be to rely on your own nudges and prompts to make sure you are monitoring and reflecting on your learning.
If you think you are already doing this in some subjects you could focus your plan on covering more or trickier subjects.
If you think you are ready to work on moving from blue to green you must be confident that you are employing a range of monitoring strategies. Your aim will be to add looking back to evaluate/review to your learning repertoire and to recognise why this is a good thing for your learning.
If you think you are ready to work on moving beyond green you must be sure you’re ready to look at what you are doing with a critical eye and make your own improvements along the way. Your aim here is to be constantly on the lookout for how to improve or reinvent something in the light of deeply reflective experience.
4.4 Put a do-able plan together
Here is a fairly straightforward six month Action Plan format for you to complete. This means that what you are planning will be put into action, by you, over about six months. At the end of six months you will need to review your plan, estimate your progress and then make a new plan. The new plan may tackle the next phase of growth or more likely strengthen your growth in the same phase.
Filling in the easy bits:
Record your name and class and
the date you made the plan
the date the plan will be reviewed
In the little table indicate the level of Questioning where you feel secure. This shows your starting point. If you mark Purple to Blue it means you think you are secure at Purple and will be working towards Blue
Record the Goals you’ve chosen and make a note of:
any actions you intend to try
the sort of self-talk you want to say quietly to yourself.
Reviewing the plan:
After about 6 months it will be time to review your plan to prove to yourself that you are taking action and the effect this is having over time.
When you review how your plan worked:
write down what went well and
what could have been even better.
Here’s a plan we filled in earlier to give you an idea of what the plan and its review might look like.
The best way of keeping your plan going is by getting used to looking at the changes you are making and their impact on your learning.
Self-monitoring. As your plan unfolds it’s a good idea to keep track of the actions or self-talk you are trying in your classrooms. This monitoring doesn’t have to be sophisticated or time consuming there are some very simple ways of slowing down and getting an objective view of what you are doing.
For example, you could use a simple tally chart to log the number of times you use a chosen activity, or try one of the self-talk phrases. Just noting this down can help you become more consciously competent.
Bit by bit, the more you question yourself about what you are doing the more you will consolidate your approaches to developing your learning behaviours.
I stopped . . .
I tried . . .
I used . . .
4.6 Keeping your plans under review
At the end of the six months take a look back at your plan.
Look closely at what you have changed about your way of working.
Look back at your Action Plan and any notes you made. Think about:
Things you started doing that you hadn’t done previously
Things that you stopped doing in order to improve the habit.
Things you did more often and less often in order to hone the habit.
Things you were already doing and kept on doing because they were on the right track.
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.
the 4 toggles in 3.2 need a re-write based on the contents of ‘1) section 3s’ above
3.1 Confirm where you are now.
Which coloured row best describes your Questioning skills?
You met this progression chart in the previous section.
Take time to think about how you behave across a range of school subjects and activities outside school. Be honest with yourself – which coloured row best describes your current Questioning skills?
Why do this?
Because only you know yourself well enough to judge this, although of course you could seek advice from a friend or your teacher if you find that helpful.
And secondly, where you are now should determine what you do next.
For example, if you think that the Purple row best describes you, then your immediate target should be to consider advice to move into the Blue row.
Look below for ideas to help you to move one level up from your current secure ‘row’.
What is the main difference between the Grey row and the Purple row?
If you think you are in the Grey row you just do what you want and how you want to do things. You maybe reluctant to change the way or how you do things saying ‘I can’t’ or ‘I won’t’.
If you think you are in the Purple row you are becoming familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how you are learning things, but you need plenty of your teacher’s support to do so.
So – the big difference here is that Purple learners accept advice from their teachers to monitor how they are doing with a view to changing things if it is not going as expected. To be strong in purple you need to be like this in all your learning, not just the subjects you like. Being strong in Purple is the first big step in becoming a good reviser
A couple of useful activities
a) Monitor how you are feeling about your learning.
You could cut a strip of card and write on it:
Absorbed……………………………..Distracted OR
Too Easy………………………………Too Hard OR
Interested……………………………Bored
Take the strips to use during lessons to help you monitor and become more conscious of your feelings about learning. This is just a small beginning but will help you get a feel for learning to begin to take more responsibility for it.
b) Use a checklist to monitor how things are going
If your teacher offers you a checklist, then take their advice and use it to keep an eye on things. If your teacher does not offer you a checklist, try making a copy of this simple checklist and refer to it in lessons to help you to keep close eye on how things are going. Use the checklist as you are working, and again after you think that you have finished.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you begin to monitor how things are going
How am I getting on?
Am I ‘on track?’
What is working well for me here?
Is this going OK?
Do I need to try a different approach?
Is this going to be good enough?
To help you begin to think about how it went
How did that go?
What worked well?
Did it go as I expected?
Am I happy with that?
Make a quick reflection on what you’ve done become part of your daily or lesson routine.
Your questions might include:
Today I have learned….
Today I have tried to…
My biggest success today has been….
What will I tell my family when they ask ‘What did you do at school today’?
The most important thing I have learned today.
What has inspired me today?
Each, in different ways, encourages you to think about how your thinking / understanding has changed, how you have revised/amended your view of things.
What is the main difference between the Purple row and the Blue row?
Learners in the Purple row have become familiar with the idea of keeping an eye on how things are going with plenty of help from their teacher’s.
Learners in the Blue row use a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standards.
So – the big difference is that learners in the Blue zone have become far more interested in their learning, monitoring and evaluating what they are doing in order to achieve good standards and without being told / helped to do so. Keeping an eye on how they are learning helps Blue learners to achieve good standards.
A couple of useful activities
a) Create your own checklists
You do not need to wait to be given a checklist by your teacher. Why not create one for yourself?
Suppose that you wanted to create a list that focuses specifically on numeracy/ maths? You might end up with something like the checklist opposite.
Challenge yourself – how would you adapt this checklist to make it relate to literacy rather than numeracy?
b) Trying something different
We all have our preferred ways of working, and if that way is successful we tend to use that method again and again. But what if our preferred way of working is not working as well as we had hoped?
The answer is, of course, to ditch an unsuccessful strategy in favour of a better one.
So where can you find alternative ways of working? Easy – Just stop and look around your class!
Ask yourself:
who has found a successful way of doing this?
what, precisely, are they doing to be successful?
do I need to talk to them to fully understand their approach?
how can I copy or imitate their successful strategy?
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To help you to learn from mistakes
What went wrong there?
What can I learn from this mistake?
If I have another go what would I change?
Do I need to try something different?
What have I misunderstood here I wonder?
To develop a sense of what ‘good’ looks like
What made me think this wasn’t quite right/good enough?
Am I (un)happy with this? Why?
What hint could I give myself so I can figure it out?
Can I do something more/better to meet my success criteria?
How you could I improve this.
Am I happy with what I’ve achieved?
To explore externally set standards
Have I 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 me?
Try these If/Thens statements to help you to monitor how things are going:
If I am working on something, then I will stop occasionally and ask myself how well I am getting on.
If I’m working on something then I will ask myself why I think it’s okay/good/meeting the success criteria.
What is the main difference between the Blue row and the Green row?
Learners in the Blue row employ a range of strategies to enable them to keep an eye on how things are progressing towards achieving a goal and meeting the required standard.
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
So – the big difference is that Green learners not only monitor progress while they are doing something, but also look back to evaluate what they have achieved once they have completed a task. Green learners recognise that doing those things brings worthwhile benefits so they keep on doing them.
A couple of useful activities
a) I used to think . . . Now I think . . .
This routine helps you to reflect on how and why your thinking/understanding is changing. It encourages you to recognise that new learning often requires you to change what you were thinking previously.
For example, at the beginning of a lesson or topic, ask yourself what you understand by one of the key concepts that you will be studying. (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson/topic ask yourself what you now understand by the term in light of what you have learned.
It is about noticing, acknowledging and celebrating a change of mind.
b) Use a checklist to evaluate a completed piece of work
Monitoring and evaluation are slightly different. You monitor as you go along, as you are doing your learning. Evaluation is what you do after the learning/task has been completed. It involves stopping to look back over what you have done, how you did it, how successful you were, and how you might do it differently next time.
At the end of a substantial piece of work, use the checklist opposite to reflect on what you have achieved.
What is the main difference between the Green row and the rows beyond Green?
Learners in the Green row have come to understand the benefit of monitoring how things are progressing, but also take time to look back over what they have done to consider whether they have achieved what they intended and how they might do it differently next time.
Learners in the rows beyond Green organise themselves to meet their own high standards through a combination of reflecting while they are learning (monitoring) and reflecting after the have learned (evaluation). This reflection sets them on a pathway of change and improvement.
So – the big difference is that learners beyond Green have taken control of their own improvement and use monitoring and reflection independently to ensure that they meet the highest standards.
A couple of activities to try
a) Acting on feedback
Students receive feedback from their teachers, parents and friends. Mostly the feedback is spoken, but some feedback might be offered to you in written form.
Positive feedback is always welcome and tends to make us feel good. But the most valuable feedback you can receive is feedback that points to ways that you can improve. Perhaps not as comfortable as the positive, praise type feedback that gives you that warm glow of satisfaction at a job well-done, the most useful feedback you can receive focuses on how you can do even better next time.
So – be alert to all of the sources of feedback around you, listen very carefully, and, most importantly, act on the feedback. Keep asking yourself: ‘How will I do it differently next time?’
b) Slow down, get creative, look at the options
Often when faced with a task there are one or two obvious courses of action. These tend to be the ones that you have used successfully in the past. But are there any other options that might be even better?
Try the routine ‘Options Explosion’ to explore hidden options before committing to a course of action.
Begin by listing the obvious options, then . .
Brainstorm all sorts of different options to find the “hidden” options. Often there are hidden options that are the real best choices. Be imaginative! Piggyback on ideas you have already, combine ideas to get new ones, look for ideas of a very different kind. . .
And finally, select your course of action.
Become your own learning coach
Things to say to yourself
To make choices about standards
How will I decide if it is good enough?
What standards have I set myself for this?
Why did I choose to judge it against these criteria?
Are there other criteria I could / should have used?
To detect errors
Am I using the most efficient way of doing this?
Could / should I change what I am doing here?
Can I spot any errors/ a better way to do this/to change my original plan
It may be tempting to think that either you do, or you do not, use your Questioning habits – that you accept what you are told without question, or that you are curious, inquisitive and healthily sceptical in all aspects of learning. This could not be further from the truth!
The reality is that there are lots of little steps, skills and attitudes that lie between these two extremes.
In this section, we explore the shifts that gradually transform you into becoming a curious finder-outer.
2.2 Progression in Questioning
A Questioning progression chart
The chart alongside outlines a possible trajectory of the growth of a good Questioning habit. It moves from being the learner at the bottom who is unaware of Questioning, to the highly aware and Questioning savvy learner at the top. Between the two lies a progression that can be mapped and described. The statements in the diagram hint at the journey from novice Questioner to an expert Questioner.
The chart offers glimpses of how Questioning may grow across three columns.
Column 1 identifies 6 phases of development.
Column 2 describes how the skills and behaviours may change and grow over time.
Column 3 shows the self-talk; what students may quietly say/explain to themselves at each phase of development.
Column 1 charts 6 phases of development, going from Grey at the bottom, through to Orange at the top. These phases describe the journey from ‘I can’t / I won’t’ at the bottom, through to ‘I can’t not do this’ at the top. These phases are not inevitable or automatic; they don’t just happen.
Column 2 puts flesh on these phase bones, and identifies what the developing skills and behaviours look like as learners become increasing effective Questioners.
Column 3 is a really important one. It alerts you to how your attitudes and self-talk change as your Questioning skills develop and grow. Interestingly it’s your own feelings, inclinations and desires that drive the development of any of your learning behaviours. If you don’t care about it it’s unlikely to improve.
2.4 What the rows are about
CHANGE IMAGES
Looking closely at grey
In the ‘Lacks’ (grey) phase there are a range of possible negative or controlling issues to overcome. Not all students will display all of these but these are the type of behaviours that need to be remedied. The first issue is that you may need to feel that asking questions is the most important part of learning and not something to be afraid of. You may need to be encouraged to find things out for yourself and to be interested in the answer as much as the question. Moving out of the lacks phase is the first stage of thinking and finding things out for yourself. Alternatively you may have a constant stream of questions but perhaps you need help with looking at/caring more about the answers.
Looking closely at purple
In the Receives (purple) phase, you are shifting from perhaps a general lack of awareness of the role and power of questioning to trying out questioning because you are being required or encouraged or reminded to do so. Here you may need help; to ask a ‘good’ question (i.e. generative, will get you somewhere); to become aware of what the questions uncover and whether it was sufficient/good enough/unexpected; to practise using open and closed questions and know what they are for, and to begin to use some simple search techniques.
Looking closely at blue
In the Responds (blue) phase, you show more willingness to find things out and learn to focus your questioning efforts more effectively. You become very interested in and aware of the detail or meaning of what your questions reveal. Your search skills are becoming more specific and your closed and open questions are becoming more profitable. And alongside these closer questioning skills you can vary the tone and emphasis of your questioning in order to build rapport with others.
Looking closely at green
In the Values (green) phase, you have really understood the value of the skill of asking questions. You like and are able to dig more deeply or expansively to satisfy your curiosity. With greater skill comes more risk taking and questioning that ventures into the unknown. This phase is about honing your detective skills.
Looking beyond green
In the Organises (yellow) phase you organise yourself to keep on track. You have become highly skilled in various search skills, you know how to prepare the right sort of questions for pursuing your own lines of enquiry. You are familiar with various question frameworks and your lines of enquiry may have become more risky or provocative.
In the Embodies (orange) phase you have become a skilled and seasoned ‘finder-outer’. You are fully and skilfully absorbed in seeking new ideas or experiences and your questioning style and demeanour has become sensitive to any occasion. So while your curiosity would lead you to want to ask questions in almost any situation, you know when and where and how not to.
Ask yourself . . .
Which colour row best describes your current Questioning skills, behaviours and attitudes?
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.
It’s all about being curious, inquisitive and sceptical.
1.2 What does being a good questioner involve?
Being ready, willing and able
We tend to think of questioning as a common everyday skill that we all use and indeed it is. But questioning is rooted in curiosity and is therefore big driver of learning. But as with any learning behaviour it can wither and atrophy if left unattended. If students are made to feel stupid for asking questions, or told that questioning is cheeky, or that questioning is time wasting they are more than likely to give it up…it has little value to them. So this grid draws together all the aspects of learning that might contribute to questioning becoming a vital, well-honed skill for navigating life. It deals with the details of questioning skill but also touches on search skills and indeed how we ask questions of others such that it’s accepted and generously answered.
Being a good questioner involves:
not taking things at face value;
being less likely to accept answers uncritically;
asking questions of oneself as well as of others;
getting under the surface of things;
being comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity;
not being afraid of the ‘don’t know’ state of mind;
being playful, yet systematic and analytical;
being socially aware of the impact that questions may have on others;
challenging others’ thinking;
understanding and using different types of question for different purposes;
recognising that revealing their own uncertainties helps them learn.
1.3 Spot yourself questioning in lessons
Just to get you tuned in – have a quick think about your questioning habits at this stage. Use the chart alongside, take it with you into lessons and make a note of whether and how often you display these characteristics.
Take the outcomes of this little questionnaire into account when you tackle section 2.
1.4 What teachers can do to help you become a good questioner
Your teachers will:
encourage you to change the way you are doing things if necessary
help you to view change as a natural part of learning
want you to view making corrections as an opportunity to improve
focus their feedback on what you need to do to improve, rather than simply praising what you got right
offer you checklists that help you to keep an eye on how your work is progressing
create opportunities for you to stop and to consider how things are going
Good revisers have had to learn how to deal with change, both emotionally and practically. If you just want or like things to stay the same you are unlikely to recognise the need to change your ideas or the way you do something.
As a good reviser you’ll also need to know what ‘good’ looks like; how to keep an eye on how things are going and be willing to evaluate how good things are against external standards. Growing your revising habits is much more than you ‘having another go’.
This section invites you to take a closer look at progression and how your students are reacting to the changes you are making in classroom culture.
The whole point of what you’ve been doing in your classroom over the last four or five months has been to help shape and strengthen your students’ dispositions for learning. Before that you’d had a stab at estimating the strength of your students’ learning behaviours, using the learning charts, and that deeper awareness of progression has enabled you to focus your efforts more precisely to make a difference for every student.
In this section you will find:
an exploration of three aspects of progression – frequency, scope and skilfulness
a re-evaluation of the security of your original:
perseverance profiles
questioning profiles
collaboration profiles
revising profiles
and an examination of the difference your shifts in classroom practice have made to students’ attitudes
Getting your head round progression in learning dispositions
progression in learning dispositions can be a game-changer – for students and teachers
understanding the journey from ‘can’t/won’t’ to ‘can/do’, helps you design more precise learning experiences to generate greater independence
progression trajectories add richness and subtlety to the learning language of classrooms
tracking progression motivates and encourages students to put in the effort to continue improving their learning behaviours
Understanding progression provides students with a way of seeing themselves as a learner beyond simply academic performance indicators.
1. There’s more to ‘getting better’ than you might think
Supporting students to become better learners actually involves you in assisting them across three dimensions; to spontaneously make more, wider, and increasingly sophisticated use of their learning behaviours. Ultimately students need to be able to make these behaviours their own; intuitively see the point of them; call them to mind for themselves when needed, and become ever more skilful in their use. There are three key dimensions to the growth of learning behaviours – firstly the frequency/how often the behaviour is being used; secondly the range/scope of contexts in which it is used; and thirdly the skilfulness with which it is employed.
1a. Getting better = using it more frequently The first dimension of progression, and easiest to activate, is frequency/how often. The distinction between skill and habit is important – skills are what you can do, whereas habits are what you do do. A skill that is only rarely employed, or only employed when adult-directed, is at best embryonic. Initially the aim is to activate the skill more frequently through direct intervention with a view to reducing the level of intervention as the skill becomes stronger through more frequent use. The target is to develop the skill into a habit that the student employs frequently, without support, as and when the need arises.
The message here is to spot students using a learning behaviour and point this out.
1b. Getting better = using it in different contexts The second dimension of progression relates to the range of contexts within which the skill is deployed. The child who is tenacious and thoughtful on the play station can equally be defeatist and impulsive in the classroom – they have the skills, but fail to recognise that the perseverance that leads to success on the play station is precisely the same outlook that is needed for success in the literacy lesson. Initially the skill is used only in familiar circumstances, but the aim is to help students to recognise and exploit opportunities to utilise their leaning behaviours in new and uncharted territory.
The message here is to look out for and comment on students using the habit, however tenuously, in different subjects or perhaps in the playground.
1c, Getting better = becoming more skilled in its use The third dimension, and by far the most subtle, is that of skilfulness. While we may start by encouraging students to ask more questions, more often and in different subjects, we rapidly turn our attention to the quality of the questions that are being asked. It is not too difficult to describe the attributes of a high level, sophisticated questioner who is skilled at asking incisive, generative questions, but it is very difficult to map out and sequence the steps between the natural curiosity of a three year-old and the sophisticated skill-set of the consummate question-asker/enquirer. This is the challenge, and why skilfulness is the most complex of the three dimensions. However, once mapped, the impact on how you mentor, set targets, enable self and peer assessment, design tasks, and plan the curriculum etc. is immense.
Helping students become more skilled in their learning behaviours is the role of a teacher in learning-friendly classrooms.
It is only when you see all three dimensions at work, in any phase of growth, can you say that the behaviour is secure.
2. Taking a more informed look at learning profiles
When you first came across the learning behaviour charts you were probably unaware of all three dimensions of progression that are woven into the charts. Now you’ve made some changes in your classroom to grow and strengthen just four learning behaviours it’s a good time to reflect on your class profiles as you build on your growing understanding of progression. It’s important to say that, at this stage, you should not be expecting to see all columns on all the profiles showing an increase. The sort of learning character development you are working on can’t be accomplished in a matter of few weeks. But when you first filled in the charts you may not have thought about how often the students behaved in that way, nor whether that behaviour seemed to apply to most lessons/subject areas. The point here is to re-look at your charts of the 4 behaviours you’ve been working on and ask yourself;
given what I know now about progression, do any of my earlier judgements need amending?
From the readily distracted and easily defeated, through to the tenacious, determined problem solver, becoming better at perseverance requires students to develop their:
coping strategies;
ability to manage their own learning environment;
appetite for challenge;
ability to work towards longer term goals;
and most importantly, their inclination to deploy abilities as and when they are needed.
This single, much distilled column for perseverance tries to capture the facets of the behaviour shown above. So take a closer look at your class profiles a while ago and ask yourself whether you’ve noticed any changes since you started working on perseverance. For example:
grey…students giving up less, being less distracted, needing less support
purple… giving attention to something; becoming aware, not avoiding or rejecting it; being alert to
blue… going beyond merely attending to actively attending; complying; taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action
green… accepting the worth of something; preferring something; being committed to the value of something
beyond green… organising themselves to persevere more often
The three column resource opposite offers you:
a column showing the growth statements you are trying to re-assess;
a column offering questions you might ask that would give you greater clarity about the behaviour;
a column showing the criteria describing what being secure means.
Use it to reconsider, say, the upper purple phase for perseverance (They know it’s OK to find things hard and so they are beginning to tackle more challenging tasks). Consider the questions column, ask yourself whether the students would be able to answer these convincingly and thereby show/convince you that they meet the success criteria. Furthermore, ask yourself:
Do these questions and secure criteria enrich my understanding of what any of the phase statements mean?
Should I use these questions and secure criteria to re-evaluate my previous impressions of my students’ perseverance in learning?
Here’s a crib sheet to help you check whether your estimate is right; whether the level is indeed secure.
From the accepting, credulous and uncritical, through to the intensely curious and healthily sceptical, becoming better at questioning requires students to develop their:
inclination to show interest in and ask about what is around them;
ability to ask closed questions to find required information, and open questions to explore possibilities;
search skills that enable them to find out for themselves;
ability to ask questions with sensitivity;
and most importantly, their inclination to deploy these abilities as and when they are needed.
This single, much distilled column for questioning tries to capture the facets of the behaviour shown above. So take a closer look at your class profiles and ask yourself whether you’ve noticed:
grey…needing less support for asking a question
purple… giving attention to the answers as well as the questions themselves
blue… taking more responsibility for asking deeper or more generative questions
green… being committed to the value of asking questions
beyond green… organising themselves to question more deeply and with sensitivity
Furthermore, ask yourself:
Do these questions and secure criteria enrich my understanding of what any of the phase statements mean?
Should I use these questions and secure criteria to re-evaluate my previous impressions of my students’ questioning behaviours?
From the isolated, socially awkward, self-centred and inward looking, through to the generous, networked team player with a sophisticated range of social skills, becoming better at collaborating requires students to develop their:
social interaction skills;
inclination to contribute their ideas to others and build shared understandings;
ability to contribute constructively and flexibly to group work;
team planning skills;
inclination to reflect on how the team is functioning and how it might function better in future;
and most importantly, their inclination to deploy these abilities as and when they are needed.
This single, much distilled column for collaboration tries to capture the facets of the behaviour shown above. So take a closer look at your class profiles and ask yourself whether you’ve noticed:
grey…students accepting help to interact more effectively with other students
purple… giving attention to improving team planning skills
blue… taking more responsibility for trying out more team roles
green… recognising that it’s worth reflecting on how the team is working
beyond green… organising themselves in various ways to collaborate more often
Furthermore, ask yourself:
Do these questions and secure criteria enrich my understanding of what any of the phase statements mean?
Should I use these questions and secure criteria to re-evaluate my previous impressions of my students’ collaborative behaviours?
From the rigid thinker who fails to learn from experience and repeats previous mistakes, through to the flexible, reflective thinker who takes responsibility for their own improvements, becoming better at revising requires students to develop their:
willingness to change;
understanding of what constitutes high standards and the desire to meet them;
inclination to monitor learning as it is happening and to evaluate it after it has happened;
and most importantly, their inclination to deploy these abilities as and when they are needed.
This single, much distilled column for revising tries to capture the facets of the behaviour shown above. So take a closer look at your class profiles and ask yourself whether you’ve noticed:
grey…students showing any willingness to change a bit or need less support
purple… giving more attention to the standard of their work or monitoring what they’re doing
blue… taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action
green… students always accepting that it’s always worth evaluating their own work
beyond green… organising themselves to achieve high standards more often
Furthermore, ask yourself:
Do these questions and secure criteria enrich my understanding of what any of the phase statements mean?
Should I use these questions and secure criteria to re-evaluate my previous impressions of my students’ revising/refining learning behaviours?
We’ve borrowed ideas from Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Objectives of the Affective Domain to outline the five main phases of growth, namely: Receiving. (purple)…which involves giving attention to something; becoming aware, not avoiding or rejecting it; being alert to something. Responding. (blue)…which involves going beyond merely attending to actively attending; complying; taking more responsibility for and enjoyment in initiating action. Valuing. (green)…which involves accepting the worth of something; preferring something; being committed to the value of something. Organisation. (yellow)…which involves adding to, formulating and organising their values into how they live their life. Embodies. (Characterisation in the original)(orange)…which involves behaving consistently in accordance with their values, living what they stand for.
3. Talk, support and plan with colleagues
Your Professional Learning Team will give you the support you need to develop your practice. These meetings will support you in converting the information and ideas in the online materials into “lived” practices in your classroom.
Learn with colleagues by;
kicking around ideas from the online content,
unpacking it’s meaning when it’s unclear,
considering what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
making plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
sharing and unpacking what you have tried in the classroom
relating your triumphs and tribulations
supporting colleagues through their changes in practice
reflecting on what you hope you might do, or have done, differently
The format of the agenda below is based on research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame. Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.
Reporting from colleagues about how their 9 think lesson plans have been going have worked (15 mins)
Re-capping the online materials (10 mins)
Deciding what’s to be done across the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Evaluating the meeting process (5 mins)
1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
For example;
learn from what and how previous ideas have worked in classrooms
feel confident to apply the ideas from online materials in the classroom
decide the strategic ideas that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
plan some do-able shifts in classroom culture
2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Remember, this is the most important part of the meeting. Sharing and talking about teachers’ practice is a valuable source of learning for everyone.
what you each tried to implement using the 9 thinks lesson plan
how it worked
what you could/did change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
3. Recapping on-line materials: What the materials made us think (10 mins)
Try a PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) routine to help sort out your thinking. Think about:
where your own progression charts were worth changing i.e. those you have upgraded showing improvement or downgraded where behaviours weren’t really secure;
how changes to your progression charts compares with those of other teachers/year groups;
how understanding of progression could impact on future changes to your classroom culture;
which of the four learning behaviours seems to need the most development.
4. Planning what to do across the school. (5 mins)
Decide
Are there any ideas that we all need to adopt?
Should such ideas be woven into school policies?
5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
Gain more value from a plan by creating it around a question. Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (student behaviour) when you change something specific. Think of it like this:
If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes! Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students. Developing an enquiry question – .pdfThe learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can choose which aspect(s) of classroom culture to focus on;
think about the aspect of culture that is likely to have the greatest benefit for your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than two or three actions;
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
it’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Download MS Word version As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks. Changes you expect to see in your classroom culture. For example what do you expect to:
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure that the changes you are making are having an impact of your students?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
begin to take greater responsibility for their own learning;
be more inclined / better able to talk about learning;
be better able to recognise/ describe how they are learning;
show a deeper understanding of the process of learning;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Whether we are aware of it or not all our lessons function on two levels, they have twin intentions. On the one hand there is content to be acquired, and on the other there are learning behaviours being exercised in pursuit of this content. What differentiates a standard lesson that effectively ‘delivers the content’ from a learning powered lesson is that you, as a teacher, have to think, in advance, about:
the learning behaviours that are necessary for successful content acquisition;
the design of activities or tasks that will stimulate these learning behaviours;
how learners could reflect on and evaluate their use of these behaviours.
The culture shift here is about understanding how students are learning as well as what they are learning. i.e. a learning powered lesson has a dual focus.
In this section we start to zoom in on what you need to do: how to design lessons and activities, and how to orchestrate the classroom environment, so that your students stretch their learning muscles and gradually build their learning power.
In this section you will find:
explanations of the three fundamentals of dual focused lessons
linking content and process
rich and challenging activities
building in reflection
a format to assist planning dual-focused lessons
activities to help start this journey
encouragement to try things out with your learners
examples from teachers in classrooms
The key features of dual-focused teaching
Lessons exercise both the what and the how of learning
The how of learning, rather than performance, is made the object of learning
Reflecting on learning and reviewing learning become part and parcel of how we learn
Learning activities are designed to stretch and challenge content acquisition and learning behaviours
1. What you’re aiming to achieve…
…is to work out how you might plan and deliver lessons that strengthen learning behaviours
Listen to the teacher in this short video talking about the learning behaviours she uses in Year 6 classes.
The Yr 6 teacher in the video from a school in Bradford
This school has worked with learning power for many years. After having introduced and used all the behaviours across the school for years they now work on a useful but different cluster of behaviours in each year group.
Here Year 6 are focusing on a Distilling, Interdependence, Meta Learning and Reasoning. These are seen as a particular set of ‘learning muscles’ important to learner development in this school, at this stage
Notice too how each ‘muscle’ has been broken down into 3 aspects, any one of which may be focused on in a lesson
In this course you are being encouraged to work on the Foundational Four behaviours Perseverance, Questioning, Collaborating and Revising. How might you break these down into important 3 aspects: for example in Persevering
Overcoming being stuck
Managing challenges
Selecting their own goals
Would these aspects of perseverance be useful to your students? How would you break Questioning, Collaborating and Revising into 3 aspects so that students get a better understanding of and practical grip on these learning behaviours?
Year 6 concentrate on Distilling, Meta-learning, Interdependence and Reasoning
2. Three fundamentals in lesson design
The Constructing aspect of the Teachers’ Palette is about making learning itself the object of learning: i.e. the activities and classroom routines must feed the growth of learning habits. So to build students learning power your lessons need to be made up of challenging learning activities designed to enable students to understand both the content and the process of learning. You do this by having a dual focus – to explore content and stretch students’ use of their learning behaviours. This is helped by a strong underpinning of not just ‘doing’ learning but reviewing and reflecting on the process, so helping students to make meaning and apply it elsewhere. Think of your curriculum as something that will provide an apprenticeship for students to become effective lifelong learners; a curriculum that will weave together ‘what’ will be learned and ‘how’ it will be learned in order to develop effective dispositions to learning.
How might we design lessons that intentionally blend the content to be acquired with the learning behaviours needed to acquire it?
Consider the three fundamentals:
Fundamental 1: Create dual-focused lessons – design your lessons so that they intentionally deliver content and exercise learning behaviours, and make your students aware of both. The learning behaviours drive the content acquisition, the content is the exercise regime for the learning behaviours, each enhancing the other. Turn your thinking around. Don’t ask...’How can I best put this over to students?’ Do ask… ‘What learning behaviours will best enable students to get to grips with this content? What type of activity will best harness and stretch these learning behaviours?’ At the heart of this dual focused lesson is the design of activities. The diagram alongside shows teachers the questions they need to ask themselves when designing learning activities; 1.What do students need to understand about/from this content? i.e. the learning outcomes 2. Using which learning behaviour? i.e. which behaviour would be the most useful/valuable 3. By doing what? What sort/type of learning activity fits best here? You are used to asking questions 1 and 3 but question 2 is new; it forces you to think about which learning behaviour would be the most appropriate.
Fundamental 2: Design increasingly open-ended activities to engage, to stretch and to challenge. Try not to over-scaffold the learning, making sure the inherent difficulties in the learning are not avoided or diluted by an overly-helpful teacher. The activities you offer should stretch and challenge both content understanding and learning behaviours.
Fundamental 3: Routinely build in reflection on content and reflection on learning behaviours into lessons. Review points, rather than the formulaic plenary, should focus students on what students have learned and how they have learned it. Try to ensure reflection is undertaken by students for themselves, not by you on their behalf.
Design your lessons so that they intentionally deliver content and to exercise learning behaviours, and make your students aware of both. The learning behaviours drive the content acquisition, the content is the exercise regime for the learning behaviours, each enhancing the other.
Whether we realise it or not, all lessons have a dual purpose:
The content dimension, with material to be mastered
The ‘epistemic’ dimension, with some learning skills and habits being exercised.
But which learning behaviours do we need to exercise? In conventional lessons where a teacher remains the focus of attention and the initiator of all activity, and where the epistemic dimension is not acknowledged, students can gain habits of compliance and dependence, rather than curiosity and self-reliance. In developing learning power, you, the teacher, are making conscious choices about which habits to introduce and stretch and how best to couple these with content so that lessons become more interesting and challenging. Through such overt coupling of content and specific types of process, students come to know, understand and take control of their learning behaviours – they knowingly use and develop the whole range of learning behaviours.
Ask yourself:
‘How are students going to learn it?’ rather than ‘How am I going to teach it?’
2: Rich and challenging activities
Here the idea is to gradually design more open-ended activities to engage, to stretch and to challenge. Try not to over-scaffold the learning, making sure the inherent difficulties in the learning are not avoided or diluted by you being overly-helpful. The activities you offer should stretch and challenge both content understanding and learning behaviours.
Learning is always an emotional business and learning how to manage this is best done in the course of learning. Emotional engagement is a prerequisite of powerful learning, it’s what gets you interested enough to be willing to put in the effort to get better and see the value of pushing yourself. So your lessons aren’t just designed to make use of different kinds of learning behaviours but to give those behaviours a good work-out. Activities are designed to:
be challenging, where being stuck and confused are regular and fruitful experiences.
give students the opportunity to ‘learn what to do when they don’t know what to do’ – to work on wild tasks, rather than tame ones, where there’s plenty of scope to get lost and perplexed.
“The presence of challenging learning intentions has multiple consequences. Students can be induced to invest greater effort, and invest more of their total capacity than under low demand conditions.”
(Hattie, Visible Learning)
Ask yourself:
What proportion of tasks in my lessons are rich and challenging?
3: Lessons with in-built reflection
Build in reflection on content and reflection on learning behaviours routinely into lessons. Review points, rather than the formulaic plenary, should focus students on what they have learned and how they have learned it. Reflection should be done by students for themselves, not by you on their behalf.
Build in lesson review points – so that students reflect for themselves
The importance of reflection in the learning process is well documented. We don’t learn simply by doing, we learn by doing and by reflecting on what we have done and how we have done it. But lesson review points (or plenaries) are often teacher-led. Too often reflections are a just a recap of what teachers wanted students to learn – little more than a restating of the learning intentions and a quick check of student understanding. Students need the opportunity to reflect for themselves on what they have learned and how they have learned it. It might be as simple as students talking in pairs to distil:
three things they have learned today;
three things they still need to find out;
three ways they learned today;
three things they hope to do next lesson.
Select a couple of pairs to feed their opinions back to the class. The advantages for you are:
You get to hear what students think they have learned, as opposed to them getting to hear what you think you have taught them;
You get a rest at the end of the lesson while they do their reflection activity.
Ask yourself:
To what extent is Reflection on either content or process a consistent feature in your classroom?
3. Gauge your classroom culture for constructing learning lessons
What you are aiming to achieve is to design and deliver learning opportunities that strengthen students’ learning behaviours. This will involve making classroom activities and routines feed learning habits. You may design learning challenges to enable students to understand both the content and the process of learning. It’s not just about ‘doing’ learning but reflecting on the process to create self-regulated learners. Take a look at the Constructing for Learning chart alongside. Each cell of the chart blends statements about Constructing Learning, with how teachers:
create opportunities for reflection;
link curriculum content with learning behaviours;
create rich, challenging activities.
and links these cultural shifts with the anticipated outcomes for students. Ask yourself:
Which cell best describes my current classroom culture and how my students are responding to it?
Download the chart and record your first impressions. You might use this ‘first stab’ as a baseline measure against which you can judge the impact of your efforts in the future.
We are well aware of the difficulties teachers often have when they begin trying to design lessons that intentionally blend the content to be acquired with the learning behaviours needed to acquire it. Take a look at the 9 Thinks idea below. It’s simply a tool to get you started on the process. Over the next few weeks use the 9 Thinks tool to help you shape your lessons using the fundamental design features. It will feel ponderous for a while but you’ll master it swiftly.
4a. Get started with ‘9 Thinks’
Begin by thinking through an upcoming lesson. What is it about? What are your students supposed to achieve? What are the Learning Intentions and Success Criteria**? These questions will always be the essential drivers of your lessons. The 9 Thinks tool has three design aspects: Connecting students to the learning; Stretching students’ learning behaviours; Transferring learning into students’ long term memory. [**We choose to use the terms ‘Learning Intentions and Success Criteria’, but many schools use ‘Objectives’ or even WALT (for intentions) and WILF (for Success Criteria), or Outcomes instead of Criteria. Feel free to continue using whatever your school’s usual terminology is.]
This first phase is about getting learners ready for and in tune with the lesson. It’s concerned with building interest and motivation and re-connecting with what they’ve already met, or know, or can do. It also begins to link learning behaviours with content.
Stretching learning
This second phase is about engaging learners in a challenge. It’s about designing learning challenges that will stretch students’ learning capacities, making sure that they are aware of what they will be learning and how they will be learning. The key is to enable learners to keep an eye on (monitor) what they are learning (content) and how they are learning it (learning behaviours) as they go along.
Transferring learning
This third phase is about ensuring students have opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and how they have learned it. It encompasses the important job of identifying, distilling and consolidating new learning such that it can be readily recalled and applied elsewhere.
4b. ‘9 Thinks’ in action in a real lesson plan
Ask yourself:
What is the topic of your lesson?
What knowledge/skills are you aiming for?
What are the learning intentions (or objectives)?
What are the success criteria ?
Note that even at this stage the emphasis is on what students will be learning/ achieving. NOT, what you will be teaching. Ask yourself
Think #1: Is there a driving question that will inform this lesson?
Can the learning intentions be translated into an intriguing question that grabs attention?
Connecting
Think #2: Which learning behaviours(s) will be most useful in enabling this learning to be acquired?
This apparently simple question is quite searching. It requires you, the teacher, to identify the key learning behaviour(s) that are needed to access this particular content. Often this is determined by the subject matter in hand.
Try asking yourself – which learning behaviour, if missing, would make this accessing this content impossible?
Connecting
Think #3: How will the lesson starter ready students for learning?
Will you use a warm up that gets the students ready for:
a) this content?
b) this / these learning behaviour(s)?
Connecting
Think #4: How will you ensure students make links to prior learning about this content?
But be careful – students need to make these links for themselves, otherwise it is just you reminding them what they did last time.
If possible, try to connect thinks #3 and #4 – so that the lesson starter both readies students for learning and reconnects them to retrieve their prior learning.
Stretching
Think #5: What is the learning challenge activity for this lesson? What will students be expected to do? How will they be expected to do it?
This is the heart of task design. The nature of the task that you design and the way you plan to deliver it may well introduce further essential learning behaviour(s) that should be added to those already identified in Think #2.
Stretching
Think #6: How will students be made aware of the key learning behaviours already identified in Think #2 and Think #5?
Go back to your original Learning Intentions identified in ‘Getting Started’ – consider how you might weave the key behaviours into these intentions, perhaps prefacing your original learning intentions with (for example) ‘By using your Noticing skills’, thereby weaving the key behaviour (Noticing in this case) into your existing content-related intentions.
Do you need to put more flesh on these learning bones? Do you need to go beyond saying, for example, ‘Noticing’, and clarify what particular aspect of ‘Noticing’ (ie noticing similarity and difference) will be required?
Stretching
Think #7: What will students self-monitor?
Go back to your original Success Criteria identified in ‘Getting Started’ – consider how you might weave the key learning behaviours into your Success Criteria so that students can keep an eye on both what they are learning and how they are learning it.
Transferring
Think #8: How will students consolidate what has been learned through reflection?
Be careful – reflection needs to be done by the learners, otherwise it tends to become the teacher re-stating the intended learning outcomes. Quality reflection needs time, and has to be done by the learners for themselves.
Perhaps you might use the Success Criteria from Think #7 as the basis for reflection.
Transferring
Think #9: How will students consolidate how they have been learning through reflection?
As with Think #8, use the Success Criteria to encourage reflection on the learning processes that students were using.
Do not always pair reflection with the plenary, end of lesson activity. There is plenty of evidence that ongoing mini-review points are at least as effective as leaving reflection to the very end of the lesson.
4c. Applying 9 Thinks to a lesson. Before and after examples
Here we consider the maths lesson you have just seen above and show how adding learning power makes a difference. The first sequence has been designed without reference to student learning behaviours. The second sequence then shows a re-think of the same lesson by using ‘9 Thinks’.
Firstly, the standard lesson:
Learning Intentions and Success Criteria
The intentions and the success criteria have been identified and will be shared with students, and a short starter activity connects students with the upcoming content.
Re-connecting with prior learning
At the start of the lesson, the teacher plans to remind students of how they can use number lines to visualise / calculate differences between positive numbers and shows how this can be applied to the difference between positive and negative numbers.
Stretching learning
A learning challenge has been created. Students are expected to work in a small group, to use the clues to identify the temperatures and to find differences in temperatures. [There are 3 challenges at increasing levels of difficulty. To view all of the resources for the 3 challenges, use the download button opposite.]
There is an end of lesson plenary to check student learning, as shown in this written lesson plan.
Secondly, re-thinking the lesson using ‘9 Thinks’:
The Connecting phase
Think #1: is about creating a question that will hook and intrigue students: a driving question. Negative numbers are unlike positives in the sense that we can count things with positive numbers, but we cannot count things with negatives. That gave rise to the driving question: ‘Do we really need to count below zero?’ Think #2: is about deciding which learning behaviour is essential if students are to access the content of the lesson? While any lesson will trigger a wide range of learning behaviours at various points, accessing the content will be impossible unless students are enabled to use their Reasoning skills. Think #3: is about creating a quick starter and here the starter activity remains largely as it was.( but see intentions and criteria below) Think #4: is about building in retrieval practice and re-connecting with prior learning and here it remains as it was.
Refining Learning Intentions and Success Criteria
As a result of Think #2, the teacher has recognised that students will be required to use their Reasoning skills if they are to access the content successfully. As a result of Think #6 (see below), the teacher has spotted an opportunity to encourage better collaboration. Hence the learning challenges have been designed to be tackled in small teams ensuring students will have to Collaborate and Reason in order to be successful. The Intentions and the Success Criteria have been re-worked to enable students to understand what they are going to learn andhow they are going to learn it. Note the subtle change to the quick challenge – because collaboration is now a key learning behaviour in this lesson, the teacher has cleverly added ‘Only 1 person may look at the information card’ to ensure that the quick starter connects with both the upcoming content and readies students for collaboration.
The Stretching Phase
Think #5: is simply about creating learning challenges. In this case the original challenge is unchanged with students working collaboratively with material that requires reasoning. Think #6: is about making students aware of which learning behaviours they are using and ensuring these get a good work out by the way you have designed the task. As mentioned above, the learning challenge in Think 5 requires students to work in small groups. Hence to be successful, students will need to be collaborate well and are offered a short list of collaboration features (in Think 7). Think#7: is about what you want students to self-monitor? This is a big change from the original lesson. There was no element of self-monitoring in the lesson as originally planned, but here the teacher decides to offer students a range of collaborative learning behaviours that they can use to keep an eye on how effectively they are collaborating. This is displayed in the classroom and students are invited to monitor the extent to which they are using these fine-grain collaborative behaviours as they work through the learning challenge. By taking a quick look at section 6 of this module – can you see how the teacher used the Collaboration chart in ‘How are my learners developing?’ to create this checklist? Had the teacher decided to emphasise reasoning skills, the list of what to keep an eye on might have looked something like this.
Transferring learning
Think #8: is about reflecting on the lesson content and how this has been improved. Here students work in pairs to consolidate and explain their own learning. Think #9: is about reflecting on the process so here they consider how effectively they have used their collaboration skills. This is new, but as a result of sharing Think #7 with students, it is easy to begin a conversation about how effectively students were collaborating. Taking all of these changes into account the updated lesson plan shows the blends of learning behaviours and content.
Evidence shows that goals that relate to doing something or researching something, or creating something . . are better motivators than goals that relate to knowing something or doing well in a test.Put the ‘how’ before the ‘what’. Write goals that start with some indication of the sort of ‘effort’ or way of doing something:
work with a partner to decide why…….
use your problem solving skills to work out……
use your imagination to …
using your xxx (closed/open/sifting) questioning skills work out/identify…
By devising learning intentions such as these you are paying some attention to how students will be learning as well as what they will be learning. So the ‘9 thinks’ lesson you have just been considering you will have noticed how the content intention was added to as follows…. By collaborating with each other and by using your reasoning skills……..
4d. Have a go at using ‘9 Thinks’ to design a lesson
Find a lesson that you are about to deliver. Create a draft lesson plan, in whatever format your school uses, as you would normally do. Don’t worry about ‘9 Thinks’ at this stage – just use your usual planning strategies. Once you completed your usual lesson plan, use ‘9 Thinks’ to further shape your plan and blend in learning behaviours. You can do this in one of 2 ways:
You can reflect on your plan individually, using the prompts shown opposite, to refine your plan;
Or you can choose to pair up with a colleague and coach each other in this respect.
After reflection (or coaching), re-write your plan. Consider – does your school’s usual planning format need updating to facilitate this change of planning approach?
5. The ‘must-do’ ideas for designing learning powered lessons
The key, must-do ideas
Sitting behind each of the yellow cells there’s just one ‘must do’ idea. These are reproduced here on the right, and they’re expanded on and developed elsewhere in this section. Even just blending these ideas into your everyday practice will begin to make a difference.
Incorporating Persevering: Provide tasks that are designed to offer low, medium and high challenge (often referred to as cool, spicy, hot.) BUT now remove the labels and encourage students to decide the level of challenge that right for them. Invite them to simply read the questions and decide what they feel will challenge them. Always support them in aiming high. Incorporating Questioning: As shown in the example above use driving questions to intentionally provoke. Use at the start of lessons to stimulate, intrigue and hint at the upcoming content without actually stating it directly. For example, the question ‘Why don’t people just stay at home?‘ could kick start a module tackling migration. Incorporating Collaboration: The old favourite Think Pair Share aims to give learners time to think by themselves, share ideas with a partner before discussing it more widely. Grapple tasks invite students to tackle something they haven’t met before. They help students to:
develop problem solving skills
build resilience
‘have a go’
reduce fear of mistakes.
Blending Grapple tasks with Think / Pair / Share helps to bridge and strengthen private thoughts and collaborative learning. Incorporating Revising: Begin by offering students some partial information e.g. part of an image, or some text etc. Enable students to speculate about it before revealing more information. This causes students to have to revise their first impressions. The point is to show that new information often forces us to change our original understandings.
In the maths lesson earlier in this section, students were required to monitor how well they were using their collaboration skills at Think #7. If you want students to monitor how well they are persevering, you might use a checklist like this or refer to the learning progression chart for ideas. Download as a pdf
Strengthening Perseverance
Increase opportunities to persevere
Re-frame Challenge by giving mistakes a status, a key role in learning.
Give mistake quotas. Tell students you expect them to make, say 3 in a lesson. If not, the challenges they are tackling are too easy and they should move to harder ones.
Explore the concept of ‘Good mistakes’ – where the student has misunderstood something thus enabling you and the student to track the issue
Offer a range of ‘good mistakes’ at the start of a lesson for students to find, explore and correct.
Give time in lessons for students to Trial and Improve something. Discard ‘trial and error’.
Incorporating QUESTIONING
Monitoring questioning
If you want students to monitor how well they are using their questioning skills, you might use a checklist like this or refer to the learning progression chart for ideas. Download as a pdf
Offer students greater involvement in their learning and ways to strengthen questioning at the same time.
For example offer students a set of cards that describe the 10 or so sections for an extended project based on the Driving Question: Where’s the safest place to live? Invite them to sequence the material to make clearest sense and to give each section a generic heading. Challenges where students are invited to prepare the outline structure in response to a Driving Questions gives them a greater stake and interest in the upcoming learning. Other questions might include.. ‘Where did the dinosaurs go?’ ‘What if we all lived for exactly 70 years?’ ‘What would happen if the moon vanished?’ Agree with the class the generic headings for an extended piece of work – display it as an aide-memoire in the future.
Find ways to shape the curriculum around learners’ questions.
Question Dice
Create (or buy) two dice. One has What/Where/Who/Which/Why/How. The other has Is/Was/Could/Would/Should/Might. Towards the end of a lesson/module, generate question stems comprising a question word and a verb by rolling the 2 dice. Ask students to create a question about the topic in hand using the question stem as a starting point.
Which xxxx could….?
Why was…….?
What might……?
“Is” will generate answers about the present, “Was/Did” about the past, “Can/Could” requires students to explore possibilities, “Would” requires students to consider what is probable, “Will/Should” requires students to predict/hypothesise, “Might” requires students to imagine/speculate. Use the learners’ questions to frame the next lesson.
A Visible Thinking Routine – Think, Puzzle, Explore – A routine that sets the stage for deeper, independent inquiry
At the outset of a topic, ask these three questions:
What do you think you know about this topic?
What questions or puzzles do you have?
How can you explore this topic?
The first helps students to connect with prior knowledge, allowing you to understand what they do and do not already know/understand. This aspect alone helps us to shape the upcoming learning to their existing understandings and so they are making an input in to curriculum design. The second invites curiosity and begins to identify lines of enquiry that they might wish to pursue. Their questions, not ours! The third (which you may choose to delay until questions 1 and 2 have been sorted) offers them the opportunity to make decisions about what they want to explore and how they want to explore it. To read more: Think Puzzle Explore
Incorporate COLLABORATING
Monitoring collaboration
In the maths lesson earlier in this section, students were required to monitor how well they were using their collaboration skills at Think #7 or refer to the learning progression chart for ideas. Download a copy below. Download as a pdf
Combine grappling with collaborating
A good grapple problem is challenging and centres on learning that is just beyond the students’ reach/experience. They give students a chance to wrestle with the problem before they have been taught methods for tackling it. They are allowed to solve it in any way they want and in doing so they are discovering their own approaches and exposing their own tricky bits. Blend grapple tasks with Think Pair Share to give learners time to think by themselves, share ideas with a partner before discussing it more widely. By using grapple tasks you are getting the students to:
develop problem solving skills
build resilience
‘have a go’
reduce fear of mistakes.
And by blending Think / Pair / Share, you are promoting pair work, the bridge between private thoughts and collaborative learning. This often used T/P/S activity gives students a voice, and represents a tiny shift in the relationship between teacher and pupil. Don’t forget to discuss which strategies were used, which were successful/effective and why.
Jigsaw groups
Jigsaw is used to describe the whole class making up a picture from its parts. The idea is to divide an area of enquiry into different sections, each one of which is allocated to a sub-group of the class (Aronson and Patnoe, 1997). There are two phases to jigsaw groups:
Phase I, the sub-groups become temporary experts in their section of the project by researching what is needed. Students A,B,C,D, work on a subset of the project
Phase II the groups are recomposed with one ‘expert’ from each section in the (now) ‘jigsaw’ group, i.e. all the A’s in a group. All the B’s etc.
Now the big picture of the project focus is created – through students who have now created a grasp of that picture through their own efforts and understandings.
Jigsaw methodology is used in all phases of education and importantly builds a climate of interdependence in the classroom, as each person’s activity is necessary for their colleagues to be able to learn. The focus shifts from the teacher to the student
The teacher’s role is to facilitate
Collective responsibility
Students’ work judged by peers
Student participation and interaction increase dramatically
The process is useful for revision.
Case studies of this effective practice can be found in; Chris Watkins;Eileen Carnell;Caroline M Lodge. Effective Learning in Classrooms. https://www.jigsaw.org/#overview
Another collaboration reflection tool
Learning Mat… a simple tool to encourage students to become more self-aware of how they are using a learning habit. An A3 or A4 laminated sheet kept on tables or used as part of a wall display. Shows various aspects of the collaborating learning habit.
Students;
refer to them during lessons
use them as prompts
use them as self-assessment tools
use them as reflection tools
join in meta-cognitive talk.
Teachers can use them as an audit tool to support their 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. Download as a PDF
REVISING
Monitoring revising
If you want students to monitor how well they are revising, you might use a checklist like this or refer to the learning progression chart for ideas. Download as a pdf
Build ‘What I would do differently next time?’ into learners’ responses to feedback
Insist that when students respond to your feedback they indicate what they will do differently next time. Get them in the habit of acting on feedback rather than merely reading it. ‘What they will do differently next time’ is their self-generated target for development.
Teacher talk
How could you have done this differently / better?
How will you do it differently next time?
What will you take forward from this?
How will you decide if it is good enough?
What standards have you set yourself for this?
Why did you choose to judge it against these criteria?
Are there other criteria you could / should have used?
You are going for really high standards here. Well done.
Build in opportunities for students to self-check their work
Monitoring checklists
Construct checklists with students itemising the important things to check before they consider something is finished. Use such checklists as they work through something, and use it again as a final check before they submit work for assessment. How we relate to standards of excellence, quality, and correctness is key. It is about developing a sense of standards; a view of what’s good, bad or indifferent. Initially students accept what they are told by teachers about what something needs to look like, be like, feel like. But with support and encouragement students are able to begin to think for themselves about what makes something good and eventually determine their own standards.
Strengthen Revising
What do you see here?
[Reveal an image a bit at a time. In this case alongside reveal from the top downwards] Use this type of lesson starter to frame students’ minds to be ready to adjust their point of view, to change their mind or revise their ideas. The technique, illustrated here through the picture of a dog carrying a message leaping over First World War trenches, can be applied to any image where there is some kind of unexpected juxtaposition of conflicting aspects within the same picture. The purpose is to draw students into speculating about various parts of the image before revealing the full image. This will necessarily require them to revise and build on their first impressions. The underlying message is that new information often forces us to change our original understandings.
Very young learners may well display a degree of independence, but such ‘innate’ learning behaviours rarely withstand ‘schooling’ – curiosity is often a similar casualty. In order to help learners to become increasingly independent and self-sufficient, you will need to design tasks that, over time, afford learners opportunities to do more for themselves as you reduce the teaching scaffold is slowly reduced. In the early stages, tasks may be highly structured with the whole class following a path pre-determined by you. As you decrease the amount direction you might still set the agenda and provide the necessary resources to answer the questions you’ve set, but how the questions are to be tackled begins to shift towards the learner – controlled enquiry. At the level of guided enquiry, you still identify the topic / area of study, but your learners decide how to tackle it. And at the level of free, independent enquiry, learners determine the area of study and how they wish to pursue it.
Ask yourself the hard questions:
Are any of these type(s) of enquiry evident in your school curriculum or in your classroom?
How might you begin to gradually shift task designs away from Structured Enquiry and towards Free Enquiry?
Think about the oldest students in your school – which level of Enquiry might they be capable of working at? How will you plan, at whole-school level, to achieve this?
Using Learning Power in lessons {a 20 min. read, watch and digest}
Please note, this school has been developing its approach to learning power for 6 or 7 years.i.e. it takes time to get this good!
Sadly the sound quality on some video pieces is poor but it’s worth persevering with.
From St Herbert’s C of E primary school in Keswick. Take a closer look at what’s going on in a learning powered maths lesson in Year 6 and notice how the story of the lesson unfolds. Year 6 have been working on a unit of algebra and their teacher Ms Mann now thinks the children are ready to explore their understanding by trying to solve challenges. The story arc of the lesson goes as follows:
Introduction, setting out the main challenge and linking this to the learning behaviours to be used
Grapple challenge, talk partners having a go at a challenge…a sort of try out
Demonstrating how, students invited to demonstrate, to the class, how they came to the solution
Selecting challenges, a range of challenges introduced, for selection by the students
Teacher coaching, visiting talk partners and coaching the students on working through the challenges
Reflecting on the session, drawing things to a close with the class reflecting on the learning achieved and the learning powers used.
So far so common. What’s new here you might say? It’s not so much in the structure but in how the details of this play out across the 45 mins. You might watch out for how Ms Mann, the teacher; talks about learning; what she is saying when she coaches the students; how she requires the students to think for themselves; how and what she praises as she visits each group. It’s in these almost hidden, private moments with the children that Ms Mann works her learning power magic.
Introduction
1. The challenge for the whole lesson appears on the whiteboard. It’s an objective that’s written in an engaging way. No… ‘be able to….’ just a personal invitation to see if you can…
2. The challenge is accompanied by a reminder of which learning behaviours need to be in particular play today
The particular learning powers in play are shown on an easily amended display at the front of the classroom:
Making links... back to their previous learning in algebra
Distilling down to the most important aspects of the challenges, separating the critical aspects that shape the algebraic solution from the background, contextual information
Questioning – the sort of questions the students need to ask themselves to get them to a successful answer.
You might well say “What about reasoning?” since this is, after all, a maths lesson? Well of course the reasoning behaviour will be used but here the emphasis is on meta-cognitive behaviours. Of course all your lessons have a dual purpose even though you may not realise it: the content dimension, with material to be mastered; the ‘epistemic’ dimension, with some learning skills and habits being exercised. The point about this learning power approach is that teachers make conscious choices about which habits to introduce and stretch and how best to couple these with content so that lessons become more interesting and challenging. Through such overt coupling of content and specific types of process, students come to know, understand and take control of their learning behaviours – they knowingly begin to use and develop the whole range of learning behaviours. Read on for a closer look at how.
Grapple challenge
3. The students learn with their talk partners as they wrestle with the initial challenge
Despite a small and cramped classroom every talk partner pair immediately had fun trying to work things out. They are clearly at ease with this way of working. Notice here how the children react when, by checking their working out with each other, they realise that it has worked!
4. Ms Mann visits each talk partnership to see how things are going
Ms Mann is taking the role of learning coach. She knows that when children are curious they are genuinely interested in learning. So curiosity lies at the heart of her coaching. She listens carefully and asks questions to open dialogue without it sounding like an interrogation. This helps the children to see what they are doing more clearly and discover their own ways to improve. Above all, she resists offering solutions. Offering solutions does little to secure learning as the student hasn’t been allowed to confront and engage with the problem and find their own way forward. Notice how she gently points out what’s happening and encourages with ‘nearly there’.
Demonstrating how
5. As the starter task is completed Ms Mann sums up what she has seen happening and asks for some partnerships to demonstrate, on the whiteboard, how they worked things out
Here Ms Mann is reiterating the learning habits being used and how they are helping. The language of learning is being infused into every part of the lesson. Thus it becomes familiar and gives useful meaning to everything the children are doing. They are not just sitting at tables doing the task, they are making links, asking themselves questions, noticing patterns, thinking ‘what if’. It is these learning processes that are being reinforced, made visible and given a status by the teacher. It is this that leads to the students making conscious use of such behaviours. And it’s only when you use behaviours consciously that you can get better at them. Here the children are being given a chance to show how their challenge turned into an algebraic expression. This opportunity allows them to model what they have been doing, and talk it through aloud for the benefit of everyone including peers who haven’t ‘got it’ yet and who can now imitate this modelled process.
Selecting challenges
6. Choosing the level of challenge
Now Ms Mann carefully explains what she wants the children to do. The key point here is that the challenge sheets being given out do not contain any clues about the different levels of challenge. It is up to the students to read them and then think carefully about which will stretch them. They can do this because they have been helped to understand what a ‘stretching’ challenge is and how they can turn challenges 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. Every time you are able to offer learners a choice their engagement is likely to increase and learners set themselves a level of challenge that’s right for them. We noticed that as this happened the classroom fell silent because the students were seriously considering how and if they would learn together and which challenges they would each tackle.
Teacher coaching
7. Coaching and checking how things are going
Here Ms Mann is finding out how they are choosing their level of challenge rather than simply asking which one they are intending to do. She wants to make sure the students know when and how they are challenging themselves. Notice how she discovers why students think some of the challenges would be too difficult for them. She can see from what they have written where they are trying things out, grappling happily with the challenge. This talking through the learning process helps students to become conscious of using their learning behaviours. Ms Mann’s classroom talk is all focused on the process and experience of learning itself. Sometimes her comments encourage students to pay attention to how they are learning. Her comments help them to slow down and notice and appraise the strategies and steps they are using along the way.
8. Experiencing the joy of sorting out the problem yourself
Here Libby realises that what she has done hasn’t worked out too well. Ms Mann nudges her to think about the questions she needs to ask herself in order to try to fix it. Libby carries on with revising her way of doing it, noticing and checking back over the steps again and, looking more closely at the rubric, she notices she had misread it. She changes tack and even has time to assist her partner without losing pace on her own learning. Then suddenly, “Hey, I’ve done it!” Obviously pleased and satisfied that she has worked things out for herself, she shares her success with her partner explaining what and how she worked it out.
Reflecting on the session
9. Reflecting on the what AND the how
As the lesson draws to a close the students share their experiences and their learning. They are completely unafraid of sharing their mistakes or if they found anything tricky. There’s a culture of acceptance in terms of struggle…it’s not something to be ashamed of and the students know they are learning from it.
End note
As we all know emotional engagement is a prerequisite of powerful learning, it’s what gets you interested enough to be willing to put in the effort to get better and see the value of pushing yourself. The activities in this lesson were designed to be challenging and the teacher gave students the opportunity to learn more about how to tackle them themselves. There was plenty of scope for students to get lost or perplexed but this learning friendly culture carried the students through successfully. As these students move on to their secondary school we hope they will be coached to carry on strengthening their own internal learning powers. In case you were wondering ……The challenges come from the Nrich website- a teaching resource the school uses to stretch their learners. https://nrich.maths.org/public/leg.php?group_id=5
6. Redesign your practice
Take a look at a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of planning and delivering learning is a fairly big shift so it’s worth moving forward slowly and thoughtfully.
Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas.
What do you think?
Which of the ideas appeal to you most?
Can you see ways of incorporating these into your classroom?
Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
Which would make your life easier?
Make a note of…
Ideas that you want to try and the impact you hope they will have on your classroom culture and on your students.
In relation to designing dual-focused lessons for your students note down your personal commitment to a couple of:
things you want to start doing
things you think you need to stop doing (that’s harder)
things you want to keep doing
things you want to do more often
things you want to do less
Take your filled in pentagon to your next Professional Learning Team meeting.
7. Talk, support and plan with colleagues
Your Professional Learning Team will give you the support you need to develop your practice. This team will support you in converting the information and ideas in the online materials into “lived” practices in your classroom.
Learn with colleagues by;
kicking around ideas from the online content,
unpacking it’s meaning when it’s unclear,
considering what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
making plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
sharing and unpacking what you have tried in the classroom
relating your triumphs and tribulations
supporting colleagues through their changes in practice
reflecting on what you hope you might do, or have done, differently
The format of the agenda below is based on research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame. Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.
Reporting from colleagues about how previous ideas have worked (15 mins)
Re-capping the online materials (10 mins)
Deciding what’s to be done across the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Evaluating the meeting process (5 mins)
1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
Feel confident about working as a team
Learn from what and how previous ideas have worked in classrooms
Feel able to apply the ideas from online materials in the classroom
Decide the strategic cultural issues that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
Plan some do-able shifts in classroom practice
2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Your opportunity to talk, probe and learn from each other. Analyse;
what you each tried to implement
how it worked
what you could change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
3. Recapping on-line materials: What the materials made us think (10 mins)
Try a PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) routine to help sort out your thinking. Think about:
how the ideas would suit your students as learners
whether this approach is realistic both for you and your students
how the ideas would impact on your lesson planning
which routines are front runners and why?
might some subjects be easier than others to experiment on?
Which aspect of a lesson seems the place to start?
4. Planning what to do across the school. (5 mins)
Decide
Are there any ideas that we should all adopt as whole school strategies?
Should such ideas be woven into school policies?
5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
Gain more value from a plan by creating it around a question. Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (student behaviour) when you change something specific. Think of it like this:
If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes! Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students. Developing an enquiry question – .pdfThe learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can adapt the activities/ideas that you chose to ensure they meet the needs of your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than three actions;.
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
It’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Download MS Word version As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks. Changes you expect to see in your practice. For example what do you expect to;
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure more meta-cognitive talk becomes established?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
reflect more readily / perceptively on how they are / have been learning;
show greater engagement with the lesson learning intentions;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Celebrating and valuing learning is about making learning the object of attention. The values of learning bubble up and show themselves in what you attend to, what you recognise, what you praise, what you display and celebrate. In learning friendly classrooms failure, mistakes, being stuck and effort are re-framed so that learners come to view these old adversaries as valuable, interesting and essential. Furthermore, in the learning friendly classroom the development and growth of learning behaviours themselves is given attention, praise and recognition.
In this section you will find:
examples of how learners can celebrate their learning
examples of different ways to celebrate learning
in the growth of learning behaviours
in re-defining failure
in displays in the classroom
encouragement to try things out with your learners
suggestions of ways to plan to expand what you celebrate about learning
Key points in celebrating Learning Power growth
The process of learning is the object of attention
The underlying values of learning become visible through what is enabled, recognised, praised, displayed.
Failure is re-defined and mistakes, effort and being stuck are recognised as valuable
Good questions are recognised as important as good answers.
Metacognitive behaviours are given their essential place in the learning process
Growth in learning behaviours is provided for, looked for and celebrated
Aspect 1: Growing Learning habits – finding ways to notice, track, record and celebrate learning behaviour growth. It implies that teachers and learners have a good understanding of themselves as learners and of what ‘getting better’ at learning looks and feels like. In the same way that attainment is routinely tracked, recorded and celebrated, so is learning itself.
Ask yourself:
Are students in our school becoming increasingly skilful as learners during their time with us?
What evidence do we have for this?
Aspect 2: Re-defining failure – turning the lens around: mistakes become learning opportunities; difficulty is when learning happens; struggle is to be expected; asking questions shows curiosity, not a lack of intelligence; effort not just talent is what leads to success. It is about ensuring that hard won gains over the difficult are preferable to effortless success over the easy. Ask yourself:
How do I treat ‘stuck’, ‘mistakes’ and praise in my classroom?
How much have we re-defined failure?
Aspect 3: Displaying values – the process of learning (as opposed to the finished outcomes of learning) are on display. Annotated work in progress, first attempts, revisions, failed lines of enquiry, leading, of course, to the finished article. What we choose to display tells students a lot about what we truly believe: displaying/praising only the finished article suggests that whatever we might say, we are more interested in the outcome than the process. In such ways are the underlying values of the classroom revealed to learners. Ask yourself:
What does the display in my classroom reveal about my priorities and my commitment to keeping the process of learning in the foreground?
1. What you’re aiming to achieve…
…is to get a feel for how your classroom walls and reward systems could highlight students’ learning habits.
Take a moment to leaf through these examples of classroom displays. They aim to highlight, support and enable students to take understand and take charge of their own learning dispositions.
Here you will see just eight examples of the sort of classroom display evidencing the four aspects of a learning-friendly classroom:
devolving responsibility towards the learner: students questions and their explanations about getting unstuck
enriching their learning talk and understanding: teacher feedback mentioning the use of a behaviour and animals that help students ‘hook on’ to the learning vocabulary
constructing learning activities: learning behaviours to be used and reflecting on learning together
celebrating the growth of learning dispositions: learning ladders showing students growth in learning and catching the use of a behaviour on camera
You will find a great variety of displays that surface learning behaviours throughout this course. Now take a look at the download of the Learning Amble and use it to focus your reflection on the range of displays in your classroom and school. What do they reflect about learning values in the school and where does the focus of change need to be?
Hallbankgate Primary school near Carlisle has been developing its students learning power for more than ten years. This tiny school offers a first class example of what it takes to ensure its students become lifelong learners. Let’s start with something obvious like the use of wall displays – often easy to dismiss as simply wallpaper. Displays across the school illustrated just how deeply the school understands and is committed to learning; turning its pupils into lifelong learners. Ideas from the Building Learning Power stable blended perfectly with the ideas from Growth Mindsets – both woven together to show a picture of a powerful learner.Here we see the school’s interpretation of growth mindset on a display in the hall. The fixed mindset brain is dull and uninteresting while the growth mindset brain is bold and varied. Both sides show what the learner might be saying to themselves; the voice of self-awareness. Deeper into the school on a classroom door we catch a glimpse of two learning characters: Orla the orangutan who is a bad learner, and Colin the crow who is a good learner – and again the display shows the things these learners say to themselves; how they see themselves as learners. In the KS1 classroom, every day, Orla the bad learner is brought to life through their teacher Clare. Orla sets the children a problem which she can’t manage – Are the numbers in the right order? And off pupils go to work it out for themselves. In this short video clip from the end of this maths lesson Orla is wanting to know what’s been going on. The children gather together to discuss what and how they have been learning. Can the children explain to Orla how they have done something? Notice that Orla wears a school shirt, she’s seen as one of them. Through the use of Orla’s questions this relaxed and purposeful metacognitive activity is helping the children to reflect, revise, reinforce and understand their learning. The what and the how. The language of learning is being skilfully and fluently brought to life by the teacher, Orla and the pupils. It all looks effortless, but as usual when you see experts at work, it’s all the result of lots of purposeful practice and rigorous, careful planning. And as we watch transfixed, we notice a class book on the floor which the teacher sometimes refers to. This is Orla’s maths book and the children record the answer and how they found out about it each day. Looking at displays elsewhere we see the all-familiar original Building Learning Power learning behaviours have been depicted as animals. They are high up on the wall now because the children are familiar with them all – what they mean, how they use them, where they are useful and even how to get better at them. On another wall we see these same learning characters but here the dry conceptual language explaining a learning behaviour is brought to life again in a sentence to show what they say – the self-talk that teachers are trying to cultivate in establishing pupils’ growth mindset. And furthermore, in the KS2 classroom we notice Self Talk translated into a progression of statements – ever more sophisticated and skilful things to say to yourself when you are persevering or listening or noticing or collaborating. It is this type of learning language – born out of learning behaviours – that you hear children using and understanding in this school. Wall displays prompt and stimulate them into taking learning action and grow their learning mindsets. Now you could look at the walls and see a lot of apparently disconnected bright, colourful displays about growth mindset, or learning behaviours, or independent learning or learning outside school or learning ladders. But as you look closely and make links you see a long and powerful learning journey. From the standard learning behaviour concepts ( with not an R in sight thankfully), to a translation of learning behaviours into simple self-talk statements, which become ever more searching and sophisticated; acting as something to aim for as their self-awareness grows. And in talking to the children you realise that what is on the walls has fully migrated into how the children think about themselves and act as learners. However, while the wall displays may reveal the journey of the language of learning in this school, it’s the classroom culture and the coaching based teaching that make that journey happen. This is but a snippet of what sophisticated learning powered classrooms are about. It takes time, commitment and perseverance to cultivate but even seeing the pictures is enough to inspire your own learning journey.
2. Explore ways of celebrating learning
Celebrating learning – making learning the object of attention: the outward signs of the values that underpin the culture. In this dimension common notions of classroom learning are flipped or re-defined – being stuck is seen as interesting and mistakes valuable. Effort, questioning and taking risks are defined, recognised, attended to, acknowledged and praised. These and the recognition of the development of learning habits serve to make visible and public the underlying values of the learning friendly environment, one in which learners are being coached to be meta-learners.
1 Growing learning habits. Begin to notice, track and celebrate students’ growth in learning behaviours by displaying progression charts / ladders, written in ‘student speak’, to enable students to understand how they are improving as learners and to hint at things they might need to do.[see more detail below]
2 Redefining failure. Seeing failure in a new light, as an essential and natural part of learning; using mistakes as an inevitable consequence of breaking new ground; viewing being stuck as an interesting, not shameful, place to be; asking questions as an indication of curiosity rather than ignorance.
3 Learning values on display. The process of learning becomes visible in classrooms. Prompts on ‘how’ to learn, examples of what is valuable in learning and displays of students’ growth as a learner can be seen, heard and felt. Display pays as much attention to the ‘how’ of learning as it does to ‘what’ is being learned, and the displays illustrate the links between process and content.
The whole point of focusing attention on the ‘how’ of learning is to enable young people to become better learners, to grow a supple learning mind, to become a lifelong learner. So the growth of learning behaviours is attended to closely. Successful growth or progression means that not only can students make use of reflection, or imagination, or managing their distractions, but that over time they spontaneously make more and better use of these learning skills and tools and secure them as habits. It is this type of growth and improvement that is acknowledged, recognised, celebrated or praised in some way. Teachers look out for and celebrate three dimensions of progress:
the frequency and strength of the habit – how often it is used spontaneously as the need arises;
the scope of its use – the range of contexts within which the skill is used (from the familiar to new uncharted territory);
the skilfulness of the habit – how the skill becomes more subtle, more appropriate to circumstances, more sophisticated.
In other words, students ask more and more questions not only in one subject but across all subjects and moreover they ask increasingly better, more searching, more generative questions. They take a questioning approach to learning. Learning behaviours take time to recognise and grow, and it’s important to develop maps or progression ‘trajectories’ that show/unpick the steps between, for example, the natural curiosity of a three year-old and the sophisticated skill-set of the consummate questioner. The trajectories allow teachers to identify, nudge and design activity to help students build progressively the fine grain learning behaviours of the effective learner. What is being celebrated here is how young people are getting better at how, when and where they are using their learning behaviours. It’s the Building bit of Building Learning Power. There would be little point in introducing such learning behaviours if we didn’t attend to having them grow.
Re-defining classroom learning: new ways to view learning
“The hallmark of successful individuals is that they love learning, they seek challenges, they value effort, and they persist in the face of obstacles.” (Carol Dweck, 2000)
Mistakes or errors
‘Errors represent invaluable aids with the potential to help us learn. When we see failure in a new light, success becomes a new and exhilarating concept’. Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success. Matthew Syed. Making mistakes, and more importantly covering them up – or rubbing them out – is now viewed as wasteful. Mistakes are a natural part of learning and recognised as valuable; something to learn from, something to improve on, something to change and try new ways, taking a risk and then learning from it if it doesn’t work. Mistakes are having a makeover not just in classrooms but in wide range of progressive institutions. Redefining failure is and will be an essential part of reversing students’ fixed mindsets
Stuck
Similarly, ‘stuck’ is promoted as an interesting place to be rather than a place of shame. Getting stuck, coming against a brick wall, not knowing what to do next are all natural parts of learning. If you don’t get stuck the learning is probably not challenging enough. Being stuck is where real learning begins. Students who never experience being stuck or struggle with learning can become fragile learners unable to cope emotionally with the inevitable difficulty of learning and life.
Viewing learning as interesting, challenging, stimulating and worthy of effort needs to feed into changing students’ fixed mindsets
Effort
Effort is a word we use often without really thinking about what it means. What do children understand by ‘effort’ or ‘try harder’? Using a learning language helps teachers to be much more specific about what sort of effort they suggest students make. As one teacher put it;
‘I often used to just tell students to make more effort, and got blank stares back. But when I started using Building Learning Power language I realised I could be much more specific about “making more effort.” I could turn my prompts and nudges into really useful statements. So now I watch students carefully through the Building Learning Power lens and say things like “how could you use your imagination to…?”, Or, “what questions might be helpful to take you further with this?” I’ve started defining the sort of effort I want them to make’
Praise
The negative value of too much general ability praise, uncovered by Carole Dweck in her research into Growth Mindsets, has caused teachers to think differently about giving praise. Suggested shifts in giving praise include:
Praise the effort, not the ‘ability’;
Praise the process not the outcome;
Praise in specifics of learning behaviours, not generalities;
Praise privately;
Praise authentically, and not too much;
Praise should be seen as separate from feedback; (praise is evaluation)
If using stickers, awards, treats etc (concrete tokens of recognition), make sure they’re given for accomplishing specific process or product goals.
Learning on display
In a learning powered classroom learning will be on display in what you will see, hear and feel. In other words learning is visible in all sorts of ways. You might find several ways of acknowledging learning on the walls:
useful prompts for use when stuck;
a list of agreed ground rules for the social habits the class have created and are focusing on;
displays of students’ efforts showing drafts and examples of work in progress to emphasise the idea of learning as a process;
a humorous display of mistakes of the week;
a display showing a partly completed class plan for their next school assembly;
a five point scale students have devised about levels of distraction;
some If -Then statements to encourage habit formation;
whiteboard display of icons showing the learning behaviours they are focusing just now;
photographs taken by some of the students which capture their peers displaying some learning behaviours;
statements showing what superpower learners say;
a ladder or learning line showing descriptions of how students might feel about the activities and their learning stretch just completed (low, good, high, overstretched) around which the students gather at the end of a session to reflect on their efforts.
a review table for students to park their exercise books with the intention of coming back to review and improve them later.
3. Gauge your classroom culture for celebrating learning
What you are aiming to achieve is to ensure that the look and feel of your classroom, its walls and reward systems, serve to strengthen your students’ learning habits. This will involve you in giving more attention to learning rather than performance; flipping or re-defining more traditional ideas of classroom so that – being stuck is seen as interesting, mistakes valuable and effort is defined, attended to, acknowledged and praised. Your classroom culture will make learning visible to learners and you coach them to become meta-learners. Take a look at the Celebrating Learning chart alongside. It shows aspects of classroom culture moving from being teacher focused (at the bottom of the chart) to being learning focused (at the top). Each cell of the chart blends statements about Celebrating Learning, with how teachers:
actively grow student learning behaviours;
re-define failure;
display the learning values of the classroom.
and links these cultural shifts with the anticipated outcomes for students. Ask yourself:
Which cell best describes my existing classroom culture and how my students are responding to it?
Download the chart and record your first impressions. You might use this ‘first stab’ as a baseline measure against which you can judge the impact of your efforts in the future.
Walls displays and reward systems make learning visible and strengthen learning habits
Invite students to brainstorm their own definitions and come up with a list. An achievement is something;
you can be really proud of
you have never done it before
that you kept trying to do and finally succeeded
you have done that you found difficult
you have worked hard to finish
you have done that teachers tell you is good
Notice that all these are aimed towards a growth mindset. Teachers need to ensure their praise matches these statements. Why not group children’s learning on a wall display around such categories.
4b The ‘must-do’ ideas for celebrating learning power
The key, must-do ideas
Sitting behind each of the yellow cells there’s a ‘must do’ idea. These are reproduced here on the right, and they’re expanded on and developed elsewhere in this section. Even just blending these ideas into your everyday practice will make a difference.
Persevering: Redefining Failure – Display failure in a new light. View mistakes as a natural part of learning. Treat being stuck as an interesting, not shameful, place to be. Questioning: Create a Question Wall in the classroom to illustrate and prompt questioning. For example, the question wall might focus on student generated questions about the topic in hand, or it may just be a space for learners to share any questions they may have about anything that interests or puzzles them. Collaborating: Work with students to create a charter of matching rights and responsibilities or ground rules for collaboration. If everyone has a right to have their voice heard, everyone also has a responsibility to listen attentively to others etc. Revising: Use display walls to include early drafts of work that show where students felt challenged, annotated with students’ comments about how they improved it or how their thinking changed.
Display stuck prompts in all shapes and sizes, including:
Quick reminder sheets on group tables
A special Stuck Table with plenty of resources
Stuck Prompts
Containers (e.g. wellies) holding laminated reminders of things to do. Spots=numeracy. Stripes=literacy
Stuck Walls with multiple displays of Stuck Posters, ‘stuck-of-the-week’, the Learning Pit and so forth.
During lessons students post up stuck problems and other students suggest solutions (see below)
Ensure students are involved in creating stuck prompts.
Help students to change their thinking about failure
Turn the lens around, make it clear that we FAIL before we succeed, shift the thinking . . .
From ‘Challenge’ to ‘Interesting challenge’
From ‘Mistake’ to ‘Learning opportunity’.
From ‘It’s hard’ to ‘It’s tricky’.
From ‘Too hard’ to ‘Tricky learning builds my brain.’
From ‘I can’t do it’ to ‘I can’t do it yet’.
From ‘I’m stuck’ to ‘I’m about to learn’.
From ‘I can’t . . . ‘ to ‘How can I . . . .?’
From ‘I’m good at this’ to ‘This is too easy for me’.
From ‘I don’t know how to’ to ‘I’m learning how to’.
This is about Growth Mindset and self-belief, challenging that little voice that says ‘I can’t . . . ‘ Create a display around these ideas to initiate a learning conversation to shift the pessimistic, ‘glass half empty’ outlook towards an optimistic, ‘already half full’ attitude.
Public recognition for growing learning behaviours
All the students in this classroom own a coloured piece of A4 paper on the classroom wall. There is an envelope attached to the paper which contains a piece of card cut up into five pieces. Each piece of card has a student generated ‘learning how’ goal. For example;
I can take turns in a group.
I can ignore things that distract me.
I can keep calm when I get stuck
I found a way of getting unstuck
I learned how to improve something after making a mistake
I built on other people’s ideas
When a student achieves a stated behaviour the card is taken out of the envelope and stuck to their piece of paper. The aim is to have all five pieces of card making up a completed jigsaw on the wall in a given time. e.g. a fortnight. This one example of public recognition being given to learning behaviour goals.
Using circle time to recognise and celebrate learning behaviours
We use circle time to discuss our learning each week and to positively identify children who have done well. Initially the children who were seen as being traditionally successful were selected; good students as opposed to good learners. However, as discussion gradually changed through modelling from the teacher, the children began to realise that just because someone didn’t get it ‘right’ didn’t mean they weren’t a good learner. We talked about Karl who had really persevered with his learning in a science investigation by repeating the test when it had gone wrong. We also thought about Sophie who had imitated the process her friend had used to solve a Maths problem, showing that copying how it had been done was fine. The children now value how they learn and are beginning to take greater notice of how others learn too.
Growing and celebrating Questioning
Appoint ‘question spotters’ when you are having a class discussion time. Ask the spotters to listen for ‘great’ questions. Later discuss what makes a good question.
Celebrating learners’ questions.
Create a Question Wall in the classroom to illustrate and prompt questioning. For example, the question wall might focus on student generated questions about the topic in hand. Use their questions to help to focus / shape their enquiry. Alternatively, it may just be a space for learners to share any questions they may have about anything that interests or puzzles them. In either case, it is a clear message that student questions are important and welcome, and that they contribute to / inform / drive the learning agenda.
Growing and celebrating Collaboration
Work in pairs or small groups to suggest a charter of matching rights and responsibilities or ground rules for collaboration. If everyone has a right to have their voice heard, everyone also has a responsibility to listen attentively to others. If everyone has a right to take part, everyone also has a responsibility to include others. If everyone has a right to experience different group roles, everyone has a responsibility to be flexible in the roles they play.
Show drafts of work to show learning as a process not an end result
Use display walls to include early drafts of work that show where students felt challenged. Encourage students to write on a separate note how they got unstuck or how their thinking changed and display the note with the work. Make this a constant feature of the classroom.
Reflect on challenge after the event
Draw a thermometer on the wall, with a scale from overstretched to low or coasting. Work with the class to describe the various levels. High might read “I took the step to try something just a bit harder than before. I worked on it until I could do it and understood it clearly” and Overstretched might be “This was a few steps too far … next time I will chose a more manageable task.” Talk to children about the degree to which they have felt stretched and ask them to move photos of themselves up and down the scale. Use it to stimulate discussion about sticking with tasks and understanding when it is not wise to do so. This activity helps students understand risk and challenge. It is worth routinising this until students get the measure of it.
5. Redesign your practice
Take a look at a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of celebrating learning is often a fairly big shift so it’s worth moving forward slowly and thoughtfully.
Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas.
What do you think?
which of the ideas appeal to you most?
can you see ways of incorporating these into your classroom?
which would make the biggest difference to your students?
In relation to recognising and celebrating your students’ growth as powerful learners note down to a couple of:
things you want to start doing
things you think you need to stop doing (that’s harder)
things you want to keep doing
things you want to do more often
things you want to do less
Take your filled in pentagon to your next Professional Learning Team meeting
6. Talk, support and plan with colleagues
Your Professional Learning Team will give you the support you need to develop your practice. This will support you in converting the information and ideas from the online materials into “lived” practices in your classroom.
Learn with colleagues by;
kicking around ideas from the online content,
unpacking it’s meaning when it’s unclear,
considering what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
making plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
sharing and unpacking what you have tried in the classroom
relating your triumphs and tribulations
supporting colleagues through their changes in practice
reflecting on what you hope you might do, or have done, differently
The format of the agenda below is based on research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame. Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.
Reporting from colleagues about how previous ideas have worked (15 mins)
Re-capping the online materials (10 mins)
Deciding what’s to be done across the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Evaluating the meeting process (5 mins)
1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
For example;
feel confident about working as a team
learn from what and how enquiry plans have worked in classrooms
feel confident to apply the ideas from online materials in the classroom
decide the strategic issues that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
plan some do-able shifts in classroom practice
2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Share, probe, learn about;
what you each tried to implement
how it worked
what you could change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
3. Recapping on-line materials: What the materials made us think (10 mins)
Try a PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) routine to help sort out your thinking. Think about:
how the ideas would suit your students as learners
which aspects of this approach are realistic both for you and your students
how the ideas would impact on your classroom culture
which ideas are front runners and why?
might some ideas be easier than others to introduce?
which aspect seems the trickiest and why?
4. Planning what to do across the school. (5 mins)
Decide
Are there any ideas that we should all adopt as whole school strategies?
Should such ideas be woven into school policies?
5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
Gain more value from a plan by creating it around a question. Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (student behaviour) when you change something specific. Think of it like this:
If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes! Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students. Developing an enquiry question – .pdfThe learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can adapt the activities/ideas that you chose to ensure they meet the needs of your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than three actions;.
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
It’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Download MS Word version As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks. Changes you expect to see in your practice. For example what do you expect to;
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure more meta-cognitive talk becomes established?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
see themselves as developing learners;
value effort over easy success;
be less fearful of making mistakes / asking questions;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Learning Power invokes a language for understanding and discussing the learning process. Having this language enables you as a teacher to plan lessons that deliberately stretch learning behaviours one or two at a time and talk about learning in a way that enhances it. The way you express yourself 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 students to discuss, understand, and become conscious of using and improving their learning behaviours.
In this section you will find:
examples of how learners can talk about learning
examples of ways to talk about learning by:
nudging the process
encouraging reflective self-talk
offering feedback
encouragement to try things out with your learners
suggestions of ways to plan to expand your learning language
Key points of developing Learning Power language
The process of learning becomes the object of conversation.
This helps students to become conscious of using their learning behaviours.
Extending the learning language helps learners talk about, understand and improve how they learn.
Encouraging learners to notice, talk about and assess how their learning is going helps them become meta-learners.( meta-cognitive and self-regulating)
Having a language that captures the richness of learning helps teachers and students to uncover learning as a visible process that can improve. The learning language offers you, as a teacher, and your students a way of talking about what learners actually do, and this in itself enables them to expand their capacity and appetite for learning.
The language of learning has many uses. It helps;
The Supple Learning Mind ingredients
you to think about how you might talk in a way that helps to cultivate each of the learning behaviours.
students to notice and recognise learning behaviours they were unaware of.
students to gain a better personalised understanding of content by consciously engaging the behaviours.
to name learning behaviours explicitly so that students (and their parents) know what it is you are noticing and valuing.
to know which learning habits and attitudes are being exercised by the way subjects are being presented, taught and assessed.
you to become aware of which learning behaviours you routinely require students to use in lessons — and then to think more carefully about whether there might be others you could profitably call on instead.
you todesign activities that stretch and strengthen learning behaviours so that they become student’s learning habits. You begin to think;
How is learning happening?
What habits of mind am I cultivating in students by the way we I’m designing and delivering the curriculum/this lesson?
Which learning behaviours need to be used more often so that they become habits?
It’s not only the words themselves that are powerful but the variety of functions they have in making learning behaviours visible, learnable and habitual. The learning behaviours themselves become even more useful when brought to life through everyday phrases that promote, encourage and strengthen them.
1. What you’re aiming to achieve…
…is an understanding of how using a learning language gives students more control of their learning
Take a moment to watch and listen to these children talking about their learning. They have learned about the learning behaviours they can and do use to advantage. They are becoming confident meta-learners who, because of their knowledge of learning power, are able to self-modify their approach to learning.
In the first clip a group of six children from Years 3 to 6 came along to offer their thoughts about learning power. There was no script, there had been no practice. The teacher simply drew them together and asked them what good learners do, which learning powers they found useful and how the classrooms helped them to learn. The children are able to talk fluently about several learning powers and how these work together. When children are as articulate as this about learning powers or muscles you know that they are aware that it’s working for them and those ways of learning will become their learning capital for life. Here they are talking about how their learning powers will help them in their future lives. They speak with self-assurance and clear knowledge of themselves as learners. These children are already confident meta-cognitive learners. They have gone well beyond the ‘I can’t do it yet’ belief stage because now they know they have the cognitive, emotional and social tools to enable them to engage with most learning encounters, in school and out. Having the belief is one thing, knowing you are developing the necessary tools is quite another. Now take a look at the download, using it to focus your reflection on learning talk in your classroom and how it compares to the videos you have just seen.
Many schools use the word muscle rather than ‘powers’. The choice of the word ‘muscle’ is not accidental, of course, words matter. Muscles, like minds, are expandable. And muscles get stronger by exercising, just as minds get stronger by practising and continually challenging themselves.
Some teachers find the language strange at first.
‘ When we started it was a bit clunky, a bit formulaic. And for some teachers that was good—they felt reassured that they knew what “the right thing to do” was. But others—me included—wanted to get more into the spirit of BLP, and not so much the particular words. A child saying “I need to be more resilient” doesn’t make them more resilient: we need to be cultivating that spirit more across the board. Talk less about work and more about learning’ Wren Academy
Most report that, while any new terms are unfamiliar at first, the fact that BLP language is different is useful, focusing attention as it does on the fact that these muscles are really ‘attributes’, ‘dispositions’, ‘capabilities’, and so on. Indeed, teachers who have been using the approach for a while often remark on how, while it may seem strange to begin with, very rapidly they realise that there is a shift in what they are noticing about students and that this is helpful.
‘I often used to just tell students to make more effort, and got blank stares back. But when I started using BLP language I realised I could be much more specific about “making more effort.” I could turn my prompts and nudges into really useful statements. So now I watch students carefully through the BLP lens and say things like “how could you use your imagination to…?”, Or, “what questions might be helpful to take you further with this?”. I’ve started defining the sort of effort I want them to make’. Secondary Teacher
The language can help teachers to think about how they might talk in a way that helps to cultivate each of the learning muscles and help students to gain a better personalised understanding of content.
Schools that have adopted BLP approaches tend to:
customise the BLP language: play about with the words and create their own versions.
create versions for younger children
extend the vocabulary
add more capacities
blend it with other lists of habits
2. Explore ways of talking
Talking for learning – making learning the object of conversation: the sort of language content and style to enhance learning. 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 students to discuss, understand, and become conscious of using their learning behaviours;
How might we catch learners actually learning, alert them to it, remind them about it, and suggest how they might get better at it?
You could:
Nudge the process. Turn each of the learning behaviours into sets of casual prompts or nudges to move students along in learning.
For example, to nudge curiosity/questioning:
What’s odd about that?
What does that make you wonder?
What do you want to find out?
How else could you do that?
See more ideas in Nudges download
Encourage reflective self-talk. Encourage students to pay attention to how they are learning, to slow down and notice steps they are using along the way
For example to slow learners down
What would have made this easier for you?
Where else could you use that?
What’s making you do it that way?
This helps students to become more reflective and thoughtful about their own learning.
Offer feedback. Angle your feedback prompts at three levels…about the task, about the process, about self-regulation Notice that all the prompts ask rather than tell. [Read more in ‘feedback talk’ below]
For example: Teachers might reinforce getting unstuck with supportive marking comments that focus on the process used rather than the outcome:I know that you found this tricky. I can see that you used . . . [one of the stuck prompts] . . to get through it – well done!Even though this was difficult, you remained upbeat and positive. It was this that led to your success – great stuff!There’s only one point where you got stuck here. Can you find it? I can see that you have remembered two earlier stuck points and used them to work this out …How do you plan to work yourself out of this situation? What might help?
Task-Level Feedback Prompts (adapted from Nuckles et al, 2009)
Does this answer meet the success criteria?
Is this right?
Could you elaborate on this answer?
What aspect of your response to this assignment are you pleased with/unhappy about?
What other information do you need to meet the criteria?
What’s the sticking point in this task?
Process-Level Feedback Prompts (adapted from Nuckles et al, 2009)
What strategies are you using?
Are there more efficient strategies you could use?
What other questions could you ask about this task?
Do you grasp the concept underpinning this task?
Have you done anything similar to this before?
Self-Regulation-Level Feedback prompts (adapted from Nuckles et al, 2009)
What would be the best way of checking your work?
How could you reflect on these answers?
What happened when you …?
How can you account for …?
What learning goals have you achieved?
How have your ideas changed?
What aspect of this work could you now teach to others?
3. Gauge your classroom culture for talking with students about learning
What you are aiming to achieve is to use a learning language to give students more understanding of their learning. This will involve you in talking about the ‘how’ of learning; creating a powerful linguistic environment that teaches your students the best of what we know about learning. The language of learning will begin to help students discuss, understand, and become conscious of using their learning behaviours. Take a look at the Talking for Learning chartalongside. Each cell of the chart blends statements about Talking for Learning, how teachers:
are sharing a language of learning;
enable students to explore and understand the process of learning;
nudge learning through written and oral feedback.
and links these cultural shifts with the anticipated outcomes for students. Ask yourself:
Which cell best describes my existing classroom culture and how my students are responding to it?
Download the chart and record your first impressions. You might use this ‘first stab’ as a baseline measure against which you can judge the impact of your efforts in the future.
Help students to understand the learning behaviours (e.g. Collaborating or Persevering) by having toys/puppets/images embodied with the behaviours. However, these will work better if the toy…animal. bird, fish etc… is, in nature, invested with the characteristics of that learning behaviour. Resist working with alliterations like…cat and capitalising. A school in Exeter decided that Emperor Penguins would represent Interdependence… why would that be?
4b The ‘must-do’ ideas for talking about learning power
The key, must-do ideas
Sitting behind each of the yellow cells there’s a ‘must do’ idea. These are reproduced here on the right, and are expanded on and developed elsewhere in this section. If you do nothing else, blend these ideas into your everyday practice.
To nudge Perseverance, use phrases like:
Can you explain why you are stuck?
What happened when you got stuck before? What did you do to work it out?
Great! You have come through the confused / stuck feeling. What helped you?
It’s when you get stuck that you really start to learn.
When it happens again just say ‘I can’t do it – yet’.
That’s an interesting mistake.
What do you know? What do you need to know? How might you bridge the gap?
Give it a go and see what happens.
How can you avoid that distraction?
Is this goal worth going for?
To nudge Questioning, use phrases like:
What sort of questions might help you get a bit further with this problem?
What questions did we ask last time?
That’s an interesting/insightful question.
How can you get to the bottom of this?
You might find it useful to try and predict what you think will happen.
Could you speculate about the possible results and solutions.
Do you believe that? Might there be more to it?
A closed question might focus your search.
A hypothetical question might help to stimulate your ideas.
How can you phrase that so that you don’t upset people?
To nudge Collaboration, use phrases like:
Choose different groups today so that you work with different people.
Have you worked together to discover what this task/problem is about?
Who is going to be responsible for how the team gets on?
Time to check you are on the right lines.
Are you making the most of everybody’s talents?
How can you / did you help to get everyone more involved?
How will you find a way to agree / make a decision?
Will you / did you contribute your own ideas and listen to other’s ideas?
How will you / did you help your team?
How and why was your team successful?
To nudge Revising/reflecting, use phrases like:
Keep an eye on what you are doing and change things as you go
Think about your success criteria and check that you’re still on track to meet them.
Ask yourself from time to time: Is this going ok?
Are there other ways you might do it?
How can you improve this?
It’s OK to amend your plan and approach it differently.
What can you learn from this mistake?
Ask yourself: ‘Am I happy with what I have achieved?’
Effort is a word that teachers use frequently, but what does it mean? How might students decode this and begin to do it purposefully?
Explore what is meant by ‘effort’ with your students, and discuss with them the ways in which they might apply it.
Encourage them to come up with a definition of effort and specific examples of what it might look like – for example by;
trying different strategies to solve a problem,
using a Visible Thinking Routine (VTR)
aiming to achieve challenging goals, or
using different un-sticking techniques when something is tricky.
paying attention to whoever is speaking
Students need to be aware of a connection between effort and improvement; that the sort of effort being used is causing their improvement. This is why it is important to give effort meaning. Meaning often underpins motivation which in turn drives behaviour.
Talk to strengthen Questioning
Build a three-level questioning habit
‘ReQuest’ is a structured process for deepening questions. For example, start with an image or a painting such as 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?’
Talk to strengthen Collaboration
This is an extended learning mat. This one shows different aspects of collaboration which serve to prompt students about how and when to use them during team working. The problem solver offers ideas for getting through tricky aspects of team working. A Group Splat is used during or at the end of the activity to help pupils self-assess their learning and how they are progressing. The RAG rating panel encourages students to assess their management of distractions. The collaboration arrow invites the group to gauge their progress on a simple line and explain the basis of this self-assessment.
Talk to strengthen Revising
Use the Visible Thinking Routine:
I used to think . . . . . Now I think.This routine helps students to reflect on how and why their thinking/understanding is changing.Remind students of the topic you have been working on. Ask them to respond to each of the sentence stems: I used to think…, Now, I think…Alternatively ask students to write down their views at the beginning of a topic. Invite them to revisit & update their answer during and at the end in light of what has been learned.Or, at the beginning of a lesson ask students to write down what they understand by a particular term that will be explored in the coming lesson (e.g. Phrase (English); Proof (Maths); Power (Science) etc). At the end of the lesson, ask them to write down what they now understand by the term.
Talk to strengthen Reflection
At the end of a week of linked lessons, have a ‘Desert Island Disc’ session where pupils choose four aspects of what they have learned to take with them. These can be skills / techniques / approaches / formulae that they think would be useful to them in a different environment—as well as specific bits of knowledge and understanding.
And finally . . .
We have largely treated talking about learning in terms of oral feedback. Challenge yourselves to go back through these ideas and ask yourself how you might use these phrases in your written feedback. Could you use variants on these phrases in your reports to parents? Or to set learning targets? Or to enhance display?
5. Redesign your practice
Take a look at a few more ideas you might want to try. Take it steady, this way of commentating on learning is often a fairly big shift so it’s worth moving forward slowly and thoughtfully.
Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas.
What do you think?
Which of the ideas appeal to you most?
Can you see ways of incorporating these into your classroom?
Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
In relation to talking the language of learning with your students note down a couple of:
things you want to start doing
things you think you need to stop doing (that’s harder)
things you want to keep doing
things you want to do more often
things you want to do less
Take your filled in pentagon to your next Professional Learning Team meeting.
6. Talk, support and plan with colleagues
Your Professional Learning Team will give you the support you need to develop your practice. These meetings will support you in converting the information and ideas in the online materials into “lived” practices in your classroom.
Learn with colleagues by;
kicking around ideas from the online content,
unpacking it’s meaning when it’s unclear,
considering what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
making plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
sharing and unpacking what you have tried in the classroom
relating your triumphs and tribulations
supporting colleagues through their changes in practice
reflecting on what you hope you might do, or have done, differently
The format of the agenda below is based on research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame. Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.
Reporting from colleagues about how Learning enquiry plans have worked (15 mins)
Re-capping the online materials (10 mins)
Deciding what’s to be done across the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Evaluating the meeting process (5 mins)
1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
For example;
feel confident about working as a team
learn from what and how previous ideas have worked in classrooms
feel confident to apply the ideas from online materials in the classroom
decide the strategic ideas that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
plan some do-able shifts in classroom practice
2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Remember, this is the most important part of the meeting. Sharing and talking about teachers’ practice is a valuable source of learning for everyone.
what you each tried to implement
how it worked
what you could change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
3. Recapping on-line materials: What the materials made us think (10 mins)
Try a PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) routine to help sort out your thinking. Think about:
how the ideas would suit your students as learners
which are realistic both for you and your students
how the ideas would impact on your classroom culture for developing the language
which activities and routines are front runners and why?
Which aspect of teacher talk seems the place to start?
4. Planning what to do across the school. (5 mins)
Decide
Are there any ideas that we should all adopt as whole school strategies?
Should such ideas be woven into school policies?
5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
Gain more value from a plan by creating it around a question. Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (student behaviour) when you change something specific. Think of it like this:
If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes! Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students. Developing an enquiry question – .pdfThe learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can adapt the activities/ideas that you chose to ensure they meet the needs of your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than three actions;.
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
It’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Download MS Word version As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks. Changes you expect to see in your practice. For example what do you expect to;
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure more meta-cognitive talk becomes established?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
be more inclined to talk about learning;
be better able to recognise/ describe how they are learning;
show a deeper understanding of the process of learning;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
If we want children to become better learners we first need to offer them more opportunities to use and cultivate their learning powers. This involves shifting the culture of classrooms so that they systematically cultivate the positive learning habits and attitudes of young people. ‘Culture’ is about all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’; where, hour by hour, day by day, term by term students experience the values and practices that are embodied in the school.
Here we look at the teacher’s role through:
examples of the sort of responsibilities teachers might devolve to learners
examples of different ways to be as a teacher
modelling the process of learning
acting as a coach; asking not telling
enabling greater learner responsibility
encouragement to try things out with your learners
suggestions of ways to plan to expand devolving responsibility to students
Key points in devolving responsibility for learning:
Give students more of a stake in the process of their own learning
Become the learning coach; enable students to find their own ways to improve
Help students to see each other as resources for learning by using collaborative activities
Offer students choices about what and how to learn
Encourage students to talk more; adults talk less
Model being a learner
Promote, enable and support the best of what we know about learning
An important way of bringing learning to the surface is to let students do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Active learners are not only offered more opportunities to decide what to do, but are also actively learning through the explicit review of their own experience. The focus on students’ activity as learning rather than performing, hence the teacher makes sure that:
there is plenty ofcollaborative activity, since this helps students to see each other as resources (not rivals) for learning
students can make choices about what and how to learn (high levels of learner autonomy)
students experience failure as a necessary and useful part of learning (tolerating uncertainty, mess, error and initial failure)
students are given a chance to talk more – and adults talking less
students experience more open-ended activities – and create their own
students have more opportunity to spend longer on an activity, to feed their interest/engagement in it
students establish high-level goals for their own learning, based on challenge and quality feedback including their own
students have access to learning experiences that are under-, rather than over-engineered, with elements of ambiguity
students can decide on admissible outcomes
This shift to more learner involvement offers deep professional satisfaction and a new set of learning relationships. Ask yourself :
How many of the above do I use in order to enable my students to become better learners?
How frequently do I offer such opportunities?
1. What you’re aiming to achieve…
…is to work out how you could give your students a more active role in their learning
Bringing learning to the fore is to let students do more of it; to become more active in the learning process. Becoming more active learners involves offering them more opportunities to decide what to do, being given a chance to talk more and actively learn by reviewing of their own experience. Take a moment to watch and listen to these two short videos.
In the first one Ms Mann is carefully explaining what she wants the children to do. The key point here is that the challenge sheets being given out do not contain any clues about the different levels of challenge. It is up to the students to read them and then think carefully about which will stretch them. She has devolved that responsibility to her students. In the second one Ms Mann is finding out how they are choosing their level of challenge rather than simply asking which one they are intending to do. She wants to make sure the students know when and how they are challenging themselves. Notice how she discovers why students think some of the challenges would be too difficult for them. She can see from what they have written where they are trying things out, grappling happily with the challenge. She is coaching her students through the process. Now download the quiz and estimate how you enable your students to deal with challenge.
1) Relating for learning – making learning a shared responsibility: the changing roles and responsibilities of teachers and learners, where learning becomes a shared responsibility. Students are given more responsibility for their own learning, the role of the teacher changes from ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide by your side’; the role of the student moves from ‘passenger’ to ‘crew’ and ultimately ‘pilots of their own learning’.
How might we cultivate learners to take responsibility for their learning, alert them to productive learning attitudes, remind them about it, and suggest how they might get better at it?
You could consider:
Devolving responsibility – by shifting the emphasis towards learners taking increasing responsibility for their own development. It includes a shift towards students asking more of the questions, monitoring their own learning, doing more of the work, making more choices, pursuing their own lines of enquiry.
Using a coaching approach – by moving away from ‘telling’ whenever possible. It is one of the hardest of balancing acts: knowing when you can coach and when you have to tell requires the teacher to have a deep understanding of both the subject matter and the learner.
Modelling the learning process – by showing ways in which we, too, are learners. It’s a shift away from teachers being ‘all-knowing subject specialists’ to displaying uncertainty, to sharing their own learning stories, to learning ‘aloud’, to learning alongside students.
Develop students as meta-learners who become able to understand and grow themselves as learners. You might start by using learning mats: A4 laminated sheets that show aspects of a learning habit. Keep on desks/tables or as a wall display. Students can refer to them during lessons, using them as prompts about the aspects of a learning habit that is being stretched.
“Expert tutors often do not help very much. They hang back, letting the student manage as much as possible. And when things go awry, rather than help directly they raise questions: ‘Could you explain this step again? How did you… ?’” (Mark Lepper) When we are curious we are genuinely interested in learning. Curiosity lies at the heart of coaching, hence coaches are effective listeners and ask questions to open dialogue without sounding like an interrogation. Coaching aims to enable people to see what they are doing more clearly and discover their own ways to improve. A coaching approach:
helps people to explore their challenges, problems and goals
provides an objective view of peoples actions to enable them to see things as as they really are
enhances motivation and raises self-esteem
builds curiosity and encourages learning
Above all, coaches resist offering solutions. Offering solutions does little to secure learning as the student hasn’t been allowed to confront and engage with the problem and find their way forward. Learning powered teachers adopt a coaching role. But…
the content /skill needs to be discoverable so teachers need to know the subject well
the learner needs to be able to discover it for themselves hence teachers need to know learners well.
The key is knowing when to coach and when to teach/tell. Hence coaching is one of the highest teaching skills, requiring both a deep understanding of both subject content and the students as learners.
The skills of effective coaches.
Effective coaches create learning by:
Asking permission to give feedback—‘I’d like your permission to. . . ‘
Offering information in a form that students can make use of: structuring it from their viewpoint, breaking it up into digestible chunks.
Being specific and objective. Concentrating on the issues, not the person—what happened, when, how—in order to avoid appearing judgemental.
Owning the feedback—‘I saw’, ‘I heard’, ‘I found’, and allowing students to choose how to use the information.
Encouraging dialogue about the evidence—‘What might this mean?’ ‘Why do you think that happened?’ ‘How does this relate to that?’
Building up confidence, giving encouragement and combating self-criticism: confident people learn better.
Being prepared to address problems and difficulties, and allowing students to be open about their feelings.
Allowing time for students to generate their own suggestions, alternatives, solutions.
Offering suggestions only when requested.
Using their knowledge of a student’s skills, experience in other aspects of their life to draw out possible solutions—‘I know you have … before. How might that experience contribute to this issue?’
Coaching is at its most effective when the person being coached has the skills and inclination to find out for themselves. Mentoring, which is frequently confused with coaching, is employed to raise skill and/or inclination so that coaching can resume. Highly effective coaches are alert to when they can afford to coach and when they have to mentor. It is about striking the balance between teachers teaching and learners learning.
Modelling ‘how to’
By Lori Yerdon
Whatever the subject, modelling ‘how to’ is given added value when linked to the learning behaviours that make for successful performance. Take on the role of an intelligent novice and model performance at a slightly higher, more coherent and informed level than is characteristic of your students. Model your ‘think alouds’.
Try the following steps for whatever skill you are modelling;
introduce the skill e.g. how to find something in an index;
explain the skill, explaining why the information is important;
model the skill, showing how you do it;
review what you have done, ask students to tell you what you did;
reflect on the use of the skill, where else the skill can be applied.
3. Gauge your classroom culture for relating for learning
As you will find, building students’ learning habits isn’t about doing more, but doing things a bit differently; becoming a learning-power coach to your students and giving your students a more active role in their learning. At first this might involve offering them more opportunities to decide what to do, to ask more questions, to learn together with others or to actively learn by reviewing their own experience. You are shaping them to become self-regulated learners. Take a look at the Relating for Learning chart alongside. It identifies aspects of classroom culture as the classroom moves from being highly teacher focused (at the bottom of the chart) to being learning focused (at the top). Each cell of the chart blends statements about Relating for Learning, to how teachers:
are devolving responsibility for learning;
adopt a coaching approach;
model themselves as learners.
and links these cultural shifts with the anticipated outcomes for students. Ask yourself:
Which cell best describes my existing classroom culture and how my students are responding to it?
Download the chart and record your first impressions. You could use this ‘first stab’ as a baseline measure against which you can judge the impact of your efforts in the future.
Offer learners more choices – so that they decide for themselves
Every time you are able to offer learners a choice their engagement is likely to increase and learners set themselves a level of challenge that’s right for them. This doesn’t mean turning lock stock and barrel to child-initiated learning overnight. It is possible to start with small-scale choices, fitting within current practices.
Choices in what to learn.
Which of this set of problems will you begin with?
Where in this text will you start reading?
Which story shall we read to the class at the end of the day?
What questions do you want to address in this topic?
Choices in how to learn.
Which reading place will you choose in the classroom?
Will you present your account to others?
How much shall we operate alone, in small groups, as a class?
What activities will help us learn this the best?
Build in Wait Time – to let students think it through for themselves
What we should do. Research suggests that the optimum time that teachers should wait after asking a closed question relating to factual recall is approximately 3 seconds. For an open question that requires a more elaborate response students should be given around 10 seconds of thinking time. What we actually do Research into the actual wait time that teachers give students before accepting an answer is closer, on average, to 1 second, irrespective of whether the question is closed or open. In other words, students aren’t being given sufficient time to think things through for themselves. Q&A sessions become an exchange between teachers and the intellectually fleet of foot and/or impulsive students. Students who want or need time to think it over and come up with their considered answer are denied the opportunity to do so. A tough question: How long do you routinely give your students to think through an answer before they give it? Are you one of the 3 second / 10 second teachers, or have you lapsed into pursuing pace at the expense of giving time for thought? Most teachers won’t know the answer, but it might be worth finding out! A challenge – ask a close colleague to monitor the time that you tend to give students to respond to your questions. If you find that you are in the 3 second / 10 second group – great! But if you find that you are giving too little time for student responses, you might consider how changing your practice might improve your students’ responses.
Build Active Listening – so that students listen for themselves
Individuals are assigned an active listening role before an input. After the input, participants with the same role meet to discuss their findings. Groups are then reorganised to contain one person of each role. The groups then review the input from various angles. Individuals could be challenged to do one of:
summarise any new information;
clarify – ask questions for clarification;
identify and prioritise – identify key points and put them in order of priority;
apply the information – give examples of practical applications;
relate information to what they already know;
identify areas of disagreement – in order to open discussion.
Build Active Noticing – so that students notice for themselves
It is easy to fall into the trap of doing the noticing for students – telling them what to look out for, what is, and what is not, important. Find images that have more to them than meets the eye – actually, with the aid of good noticing, most images fall into this category! Students work in pairs, each looking at a different image, to take turns in describing to their partner something that they have noticed in their image.
How many different things can you find in your image to tell your partner about?
Once they run out of ideas, students swap images and each try to find aspects/details that were missed by their partner.
Let students ‘get on with it’ – so that they can wrestle with it for themselves
Experiment with intervening only when absolutely necessary – stand back, listen and watch, and let the learning happen. Teachers are constantly walking a tightrope – when/whether/how to intervene, how much support to offer, how much challenge to inject etc. It is in these ways that teachers scaffold the learning for their students, offering just the right balance of challenge and support to keep students working towards the edge of their comfort zone. But if teachers always scaffold learning in this way, when will students develop the skills required to manage their own learning for themselves?
4b The ‘must-do’ ideas for building classroom relationships
The key, must-do ideas
Sitting behind each of the yellow cells there’s a ‘must do’ idea. These are reproduced here on the right, and they’re expanded on and developed elsewhere in this section. Even just blending these ideas into your everyday practice will make a difference.
Persevering: So-called stuck prompts come in various shapes and sizes, but essentially they are simply home-made lists of what students can try when they get stuck with their learning: ‘Read the question again’, ‘Split the question into smaller bits’, ‘Try sounding the word out letter by letter’, ‘Ask your neighbour’ — that kind of thing. Questioning: Coaching involves moving away from ‘telling’ whenever possible. The trick is to balance the amount of direct instruction with nudging learners to find it out for themselves.
Collaborating: Use learning mats as display on desks / tables and/or part of wall display. Students can refer to them during lessons as prompts about the finer aspects of collaborating.
Revising:Use laminated card and a clothes peg. Print on Absorbed – Distracted or Too Easy – Too Hard or Stuck – Doing Fine? Interested – Bored. etc. Use to monitor feelings about learning.
So-called stuck prompts come in various shapes and sizes, but essentially they are simply home-made lists of what students can try when they get stuck with their learning: ‘Read the question again’, ‘Split the question into smaller bits’, ‘Try sounding the word out letter by letter’, ‘Ask your neighbour’ — that kind of thing. If the teacher were simply to photocopy the list from a L2L manual and stick it on the wall it wouldn’t work. But in a learning powered classroom, the ideas are generated by the students themselves, and are the subject of continual debate and refinement.
“Instead of simply dishing out more good advice to students-as-consumers, classrooms are becoming places of day-by-day knowledge generation about learning”
Work with students to find useful questions for them to ask themselves and helpful strategies for them to use when they are stuck.
Ensure that there are plenty of options that come higher on the list than “Ask the teacher”.
Create displays as reminders.
Every classroom needs stuck prompts in one form or another.
They could be of a general nature or made relevant to a subject or topic.
It’s important to ensure that they ‘grow up’ through the school, reflecting the curriculum expectations. In essence they represent the level of independence expected in different year groups.
It can be used as an effective, low-risk, low-investment lever for creating a shift in students’ sense of what is valued, what is normal, and what is the point of their learning — and thus in the quality of their engagement.
Build responsibility to strengthen Perseverance
Use routines that put responsibility on students to do things for themselves before asking the teacher for help. C3B4Me can be used in conjunction with the stuck posters displayed in the classroom. Students should try three strategies from their stuck posters before seeking help from the teacher.
Stimulate Curiosity – Use a Visible Thinking Routine
See / Think / Wonder
See-Think-Wonder is a visible thinking routine that encourages students to notice attentively and make careful observations (See), to make thoughtful interpretations, to reflect on what they are noticing, to make links to what they already know, and to distil the important bits (Think), and finally to ask questions about what has been noticed (Wonder). It helps stimulate curiosity and sets the stage for inquiry. Use this routine;
when you want students to think carefully about why something looks the way it does or is the way it is
at the beginning of a new unit to motivate student interest
try it with an object that connects to a topic during the unit of study.
with an interesting object near the end of a unit to encourage students to further apply their new knowledge and ideas. The routine works best when a student responds by using the three stems together at the same time, i.e., “I see…, I think…, I wonder ...” However, you may find that students begin by using one stem at a time and that you need to scaffold each response with a follow-up question for the next stem.
At the start of a class project…. write a series of questions on separate pieces of cards and give each group a set of the cards to share equally. Students then decide:
the best order for the questions in order to do the project well;
whether they need all the questions or if some are irrelevant in the context;
whether there are any missing questions and if so, what they might be;
and later, what they have learnt about questions from this.
Thus students are given a real stake and sense of involvement in the process of learning both immediately and into the future of the project.
Create the foundations for Collaboration – Agree rights and responsibilities
Work in pairs and small groups to suggest a charter of matching rights and responsibilities or ground rules for collaboration. If everyone has a right to have their voice heard, everyone also has a responsibility to listen attentively to others and wait until they have finished speaking. What else might be important and why?
Build responsibility to strengthen Collaboration
Team-working mat Become aware of who is contributing what, although not a means of ensuring everyone contributes! Draw the mat onto a large piece of paper (the one shown 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.
Make reflecting on collaboration part of everyday lessons
Here is a practical example of how you might develop the social climate of the classroom and make it collaboration friendly.
Learning mats are A4 laminated sheets that show various aspects of a learning habit. Keep them on desks/tables or as part of a wall display.
Students can refer to them during lessons as prompts about the finer aspects of collaborating and later for self-reflection on what they have used, whether it was successful and how to improve it.
Encourage students to improve on their first attempts – Introduce the Editor’s Chair
Create an area of the classroom which is dedicated to and celebrates the skills of reviewing and improving. Set aside a table in the classroom, and equip it as if it were an office – writing equipment, computer, office chair etc. This is called the ‘Editor’s Desk’, which is set aside for a student to use when they are in editing, drafting, redrafting, correcting or improving mode. Underlying this idea is that we rarely get things right first time round, and that achieving high standards is a process of refining and making improvements. It requires students to act on teacher feedback and shifts the focus from ‘correcting’ to ‘improving’.
Enable students to monitor their own learning climate.
Use laminated card and a clothes peg. Print on Absorbed – Distracted or Too Easy – Too Hard or Stuck – Doing Fine? Interested – Bored. etc. Laminate and provide a peg. Have students use them during lessons to help them monitor and become more conscious of their feelings about learning. This is just a small beginning in devolving the responsibility for learning towards the learners.
Build responsibility to strengthen Revising
Monitoring content: 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.
5. Redesign your practice
Take a look at a few more ideas you might want to consider. Take it steady, these ways of relating to students are often fairly big shifts so it’s worth moving forward slowly and thoughtfully.
Look first at the Stop/avoid ideas. Some of these are far from trivial but it’s best to try to remove them before starting on the Start/do more of, Start slowly and Experiment with ideas.
What do you think?
Which of the ideas appeal to you most?
Can you see ways of incorporating some into your classroom?
Which would make the biggest difference to your students?
For devolving more responsibility for learning to your students note down a couple of:
things you want to start doing
things you think you need to stop doing (that’s harder)
things you want to keep doing
things you want to do more often
things you want to do less
Take your filled in pentagon to your next Professional Learning Team meeting
6. Talk, support and plan with colleagues
Your Professional Learning Team will give you the support you need to develop your practice. It will support you in converting the information and ideas from these materials into “lived” practices in your classroom.
Learn with colleagues by;
kicking around ideas from the online content,
unpacking it’s meaning when it’s unclear,
considering what’s do-able and appropriate for your students
making plans for what and how you might incorporate the ideas into your practice
sharing and unpacking what you have tried in the classroom
relating your triumphs and tribulations
supporting colleagues through their changes in practice
reflecting on what you hope you might do, or have done, differently
The format of the agenda below is based on research into teacher learning communities by Dylan Wiliam, of Assessment for Learning (AfL) fame. Teacher learning communities are the engines of teacher development.
Enjoy your first professional learning team meeting (or TLC )
[As this is the team’s first meeting please read these guidelines beforehand]
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. What-Why-How-of-PLT.pdf
Session agenda
Agreeing objectives and agenda (5 mins)
Considering the working practices of the team (15 mins)
Re-capping the online materials from this section (10 mins)
Deciding what’s to be done across the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Evaluating the meeting process (5 mins)
1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
Feel confident about working as a team
Learn from what and how colleagues enquiries have worked in classrooms
Feel confident to apply the ideas from these materials in the classroom
Decide the strategic cultural issues that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
Plan some do-able shifts in classroom practice
2. Consider the working practices of the team (15 mins)
Purposes of the group
Format of the sessions
Ground rules for working
Expectations of outcomes
See What-Why-How of PLT notes above for ideas
3. Recapping on-line materials: What the materials made us think (10 mins)
Think about:
your students as learners
your classroom culture for devolving responsibility to students
the ideas, activities and routines offered in the course…which seem straightforward or tricky
the ideas that might best fit your students
how such activity might change how you talk about learning
4. Planning what to do across the school. (5 mins)
Here you begin to identify any ideas which you think everyone should adopt.
Decide
Are there any ideas that we should all adopt as whole school strategies?
Would such ideas need to be woven into school policies at a later date?
5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
You gain more value from a plan by creating it around a question. Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (student behaviour) when you change something specific. Think of it like this:
If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?
This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes! Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students. Developing an enquiry question – .pdfThe learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can adapt the activities/ideas that you chose to ensure they meet the needs of your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than three actions;.
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
It’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes. The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Download MS Word version As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks. Changes you expect to see in your practice. For example what do you expect to;
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure more meta-cognitive talk becomes established?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Please note: you may have been introduced to some of the ideas and activities in Section 1 of the Finding Learning Power resource or through an introductory training session (a PD day via Zoom or in-person) provided by your school leaders. If so, please use Section 1 as a revision exercise to re-familiarise yourself with the big ideas.
Bringing ideas together
This first section picks up on your recent exploration of your students’ learning behaviours and:
reconnects you to beliefs about learning;
outlines the types of classroom culture within which these behaviours can grow and flourish;
re-states the learning behaviours of highly effective learners.
These ideas are explored in 3 separate sub-sections.
In the 3 sub-sections of section 1 you will find:
a brief exploration of your research into your students’ dispositional learning powers;
an introduction to a classroom culture framework that builds learning behaviours;
descriptions of 12 learning powers and how they grow. (as section 2 in the Finding Learning Power resource).
Navigating the content in the following 3 sub-sections
In each of the sub-sections you will find notes and tips to help you gain a coherent feel for how the material fits together and applies to your classroom practice.
Ideas in this module may take you into a new way of thinking about learning.
Make notes of your musings.
Take it slowly and try to avoid the inclination to skim through the whole programme.
Keep any completed downloads and take them to your first Professional Learning Team meeting.
To explore the 3 sub-sections:
Access them via the Unit Navigation box (top right of this screen).
Tackle them in order, and have a go at the suggested activities as you go.
These 3 sub-sections are the essential preparation for your first Professional Learning Team meeting.
3 sub-sections to explore:
1a, Starting points for learners – what learning behaviours? is it needed? how could it be done? what does it look and feel like?
1b, Starting points for classroom culture – the three types of classroom culture; where your classroom is now: what you might do differently in the future.
1c, The mysteries of learning behaviours – a reference section about learning behaviours that you met in Finding Learning Power and will likely need to keep returning to for reference.
…introduce and encourage you to branch out and play with building some of the next 8 learning behaviours. Just to get the feel of them in preparation for Phase 2 of the programme.
B. The best way of tackling this unit is to..
Skim read a couple of the sections to understand the shape of them. Consider which of the eight behaviours, according to your students’ progression charts, appear to be most needed.
Timing. If you have kept with suggested timings you should reach here by May or June. This gives you several weeks to try two or maybe three of these learning behaviours in your classroom.
Unit 4, Team Meeting 1. Scheduled around one month after starting Unit 4.
Unit 4, Team Meeting 2. Scheduled towards the end of Unit 4.
C. As a result it should have the following impact.
There is no expectation for you to activate all eight of the behaviours but we hope you’ll be inspired to try two or three and be set up in readiness for Phase 2 of the programme.
Until now you’ve worked on shifting the culture of your classroom and introduced your students to the foundational four learning behaviours. As you know there are many more learning behaviours and this section encourages you to branch out and just play with building some of the next 8 learning behaviours. We have purposely not given you progression tables at this point but we have given you a staged way to introduce these behaviours to your students.
2. Decide which behaviours to make a start on
Take a look at the learning profiles of your students. Become curious about what your data is telling you and remember not all learning behaviours are equally important. Some are more critical for success in some subjects than others, while others are critical for success across the curriculum. This table shows the average scores for an imaginary target group.
Find the behaviours to make a start on:
You may start by looking at those behaviours that apply more generally and are linked to students’ attention...(perseverance), noticing, listening, refining. These alone may account for any under-performance.
Look particularly at imagining. Imagining motivates students to explore and engage, whereas students lacking imagination maybe more rigid, having fewer ideas to play with in their learning.
Remember too, that it’s well-researched that students with well-developed meta-cognitive skills attain more highly than those who don’t. So maybe think hard about including meta learning too.
Select three or four behaviours that seem most appropriate to work on first for your students.
Alternative strategies for prioritising which behaviours to begin with:
You may have data that suggests an area of under-performance – for example suppose that outcomes for Maths and for Science are causing concern across the school. This might well lead you to begin with Reasoning and Making Links, key behaviours for Maths/Science.
Alternatively, if you are an English teacher concerned about creative writing, you may choose to start with Imagining.
3. Check out your classroom culture
Having already explored classroom culture in Unit 2 you might find it useful to consider the aspects of classroom culture that need to be present for the particular learning behaviour to flourish. The culture diagrams address 4 aspects of classroom culture:
At 9 o’clock – the dispositions, habits and behaviours you are aiming to enable your learners to develop;
At 3 o’clock – how you might talk about the learning behaviours;
At 12 o’clock – how you might organise learning to exercise the behaviours;
And at 6 o’clock – how you might organise your classroom to celebrate the behaviours.
Give time to evaluate your own classroom culture against these 4 aspects, because minor adjustments to classroom culture will make it easier for the teaching ideas that follow to achieve the outcomes you want for your learners.
The classroom culture to foster learners’ curiosity
You are now in Unit 4. Broadening the range. Introduction
Use the Section Navigation Bar below to find your way around introducing the 8 learning behaviours.
This meeting invites you to share your explorations of the 8 new learning behaviours in Unit 4.
This meeting is positioned and designed to enable you to:
Look back over and discuss with colleagues the progress you have made with your personal action plans relating to Unit 3 that you devised at the previous meeting, and . . .
Share your responses to your reading in Unit 4, Broadening the range.
Draw up a personal action plan for how you will take your practice forward based on further exploration of the ideas in Unit 4.
Share reports of how learning powered lesson plans have worked (20 mins)
Discuss the online materials that people have looked at in Unit 4 (15 mins)
Consider possible policy issues for the school (5 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Review the meeting process (5 mins)
Item 1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
Objectives should include:
learning from what and how our Action Plans have worked in different classrooms;
feeling confident to take forward ideas from online materials into our practice;
proposing actions that would benefit if everyone applied them in their practice;
planning further personal developments in classroom practice.
Item 2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
(NB. based on material from Unit 3)
Share and discuss teachers’ practice; a valuable source of learning for everyone.
what you each tried to change or try out in your lesson planning and delivery, the activities you designed/used, the VTRs that worked . . . .
how they worked
what you could/did change to make them work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
Remember…everyone is supposed to report back to every meeting.
This isn’t a simple show-and-tell session but one where the group question and probe their colleagues’ summaries of what they have done to encourage analysis and deeper reflection.
Questions to encourage deeper thinking include:
What do you think is getting in the way?
What would make this better?
How did students react to that change?
How could this technique be modified to make it work better for you?
What do you think made that work so well?
Item 3. Recap on-line materials in Unit 4: What the materials made us think (15 mins)
You will have been exploring at least some of the 8 new learning behaviours for around a month or so. What have you been trying out? Why did you choose to start with those? What was of particular interest? What more do you want to experiment with?
Try a PMI (Plus, minus, interesting) routine to help sort out your thinking.
Think about:
how the ideas would suit your students as learners
which are realistic both for you and your students
how the ideas would impact on your classroom culture and the students view of themselves as learners
which ideas are front runners and why?
Use this decision making pentagon in deciding what to do you might try.
Note down a couple of:
things you want to start doing
things you think you need to stop doing (that’s harder)
things you want to keep doing
things you want to do more often
things you want to do less
Item 4. Propose what may be needed across the school. (5 mins)
The point here is to identify ideas that are sufficiently important that they;
should be included in everyone’s action plan
i.e. you are sufficiently keen on some of the ideas that you all want to try them in one form or another
should be adopted by everyone as a whole school strategy
i.e. when discussions over time have concluded that some ideas have proved so useful across the school they should be woven into school policies or procedures.
Some of the ideas suggested in the on-line materials are likely to make greater impact if they were to be adopted by everyone across the school.
Item 5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
Think about what you are trying to achieve.
Plans at this stage should be linked to what you are learning from Unit 4 and how your students are responding to the changes you are trialling.
Gain more value from your plan by creating it around a question. Think of it as an If:Then problem.
For example, if you are intending to focus on Making Links:
If I encourage my students to create mindmaps, will I notice any improvement in their ability to understand how ideas are/can be linked together?
Or, if you are intending to focus on Reasoning and promote evidence based reasoning:
If I use the VTR ‘What makes you say that?’ fairly frequently, will I notice any development in students’ ability to support their thinking with evidence?
The learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can choose which aspect(s) of classroom practice to focus on;
think about the aspect that is likely to have the greatest benefit for your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than two or three actions;
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
it’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks.
Changes you expect to see in your classroom practice. For example what do you expect to:
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure that the changes you are making are having an impact of your students?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
begin to take greater responsibility for their own learning;
be more inclined / better able to talk about learning;
be better able to recognise/ describe how they are learning;
show a deeper understanding of the process of learning;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
The level of critical analysis which is part of small research projects has been designed/built into the Enquiry Question and Action Planning forms. In other words their very design helps you to develop effective research focused questions and provoke evidenced based reflection.
Item 6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
Any concerns at this point?
Next meeting date and time.
Unit 4, Team Meeting Agenda 2
This meeting invites you to share your explorations of the 8 new learning behaviours in Unit 4, invites you to look back over your learning over the course of the Playing the Learning Power Game programme, and offers a glimpse of what might come next.
This meeting is positioned and designed to enable you to:
Look back over and discuss with colleagues the progress you have made with your personal action plans relating to Unit 4 that you devised at the previous meeting, and . . .
Share your responses to your reading in Unit 4, Broadening the range.
Draw up a personal action plan for how you will take your practice forward based on further exploration of the ideas in Unit 4.
Share reports of progress in introducing new learning behaviours from Unit 4 (20 mins)
Consider possible policy issues for the school (5 mins)
Discuss what the school should do next to further secure and grow student learning behaviours (10 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Review the meeting process (5 mins)
Item 1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
Objectives should include:
learning from what has already been trialled in different classrooms;
feeling confident to take forward ideas from online materials into our practice;
proposing actions that would benefit if everyone applied them in their practice;
planning further personal developments in classroom practice.
Item 2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Share and discuss teachers’ practice; a valuable source of learning for everyone.
This involves thinking back to what you have been putting into practice over the last few weeks from your last Action Plan. It covers;
what you each tried to implement using ideas from Unit 4
how they worked
what you could/did change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
Remember…everyone is supposed to report back to every meeting.
This isn’t a simple show-and-tell session but one where the group question and probe their colleagues’ summaries of what they have done to encourage analysis and deeper reflection.
Questions to encourage deeper thinking include:
What do you think is getting in the way?
What would make this better?
How did students react to that change?
How could this technique be modified to make it work better for you?
What do you think made that work so well?
Item 3. Propose what may be needed across the school. (5 mins)
The point here is to identify ideas that are sufficiently important that they:
should be adopted by everyone as part of a whole school strategy
i.e. when discussions over time have concluded that some ideas have proved so useful across the school they should be woven into school policies or procedures.
Think back over the past year as you have engaged with Playing the Learning Power Game.
Some of the ideas have been trialled and found favour with particular teachers, but others seem to have had widespread interest from teachers due to their impact on student learning.
What are these ‘stand out’ ideas? How will they become ‘how we all do things here’?
Item 4. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
This is the point when everyone in the team makes an action plan which they will implement as the programme draws to a close.
A. It starts with a question
The key to developing your practice, is to think first of the need (what needs to change in students) and then think what could be done to achieve it. The knack lies in developing enquiry questions to sort out what you want to do.
Why a question? Because this is an enquiry! You want to find out if something (student behaviour) will change/improve if you change something specific.
Research suggests that you’ll gain more value from your plan by creating it around a question. Think of it like this:
If I do/plan, try xxxx will it improve/develop/ secure/ enhance xxx?
For example, if you were planning to introduce another one of the 8 behaviours to your class, your enquiry question could be:
If I introduce my students to the idea of meta learning, will they become more aware of their learning behaviours, strengths and weaknesses?
Try the planning sheet opposite.
B. Now think about a plan
But remember what you are trying to achieve.
Plans at this stage should be linked to what you are reading in Unit 4.
The learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can choose which aspect(s) of classroom practice to focus on;
think about the aspect that is likely to have the greatest benefit for your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than two or three actions;
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
it’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
See format alongside to help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Also record what you will monitor over the weeks.
Changes you expect to see in your classroom practice. For example what do you expect to:
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure that the changes you are making are having an impact of your students?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
begin to take greater responsibility for their own learning;
be more inclined / better able to talk about learning;
be better able to recognise/ describe how they are learning;
show a deeper understanding of the process of learning;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
The level of critical analysis which is part of small research projects has been designed/built into the Enquiry Question and Action Planning forms. In other words their very design helps you to develop effective research focused questions and provoke evidenced based reflection.
5. Discuss what we might do next (10 mins)
The programme Playing the Learning Power Game is phase 1 of Building Learning Power. The next phase takes you much deeper into all 12 learning behaviours, allowing you to build on the excellent foundations that you have already laid. Are you, as a school, ready to begin phase 2, The Professional Learning Power Game?
Items 6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we happy with what we have achieved?
Will we continue to learn together like this in the future?
Share reports of progress in introducing new learning behaviours from Unit 4 (20 mins)
Consider possible policy issues for the school (5 mins)
Discuss what the school should do next to further secure and grow student learning behaviours (10 mins)
Personal Action Planning (20 mins)
Review the meeting process (5 mins)
Item 1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)
Objectives should include:
learning from what has already been trialled in different classrooms;
feeling confident to take forward ideas from online materials into our practice;
proposing actions that would benefit if everyone applied them in their practice;
planning further personal developments in classroom practice.
Item 2. Reports from classroom enquiries (15 mins)
Share and discuss teachers’ practice; a valuable source of learning for everyone.
This involves thinking back to what you have been putting into practice over the last few weeks from your last Action Plan. It covers;
what you each tried to implement using ideas from Unit 4
how they worked
what you could/did change to make it work better
how students reacted
whether there may be longer term benefits for students
Ask each other questions, offer suggestions and learn from each other.
Remember…everyone is supposed to report back to every meeting.
This isn’t a simple show-and-tell session but one where the group question and probe their colleagues’ summaries of what they have done to encourage analysis and deeper reflection.
Questions to encourage deeper thinking include:
What do you think is getting in the way?
What would make this better?
How did students react to that change?
How could this technique be modified to make it work better for you?
What do you think made that work so well?
Item 3. Propose what may be needed across the school. (5 mins)
The point here is to identify ideas that are sufficiently important that they:
should be adopted by everyone as part of a whole school strategy
i.e. when discussions over time have concluded that some ideas have proved so useful across the school they should be woven into school policies or procedures.
Think back over the past year as you have engaged with Playing the Learning Power Game.
Some of the ideas have been trialled and found favour with particular teachers, but others seem to have had widespread interest from teachers due to their impact on student learning.
What are these ‘stand out’ ideas? How will they become ‘how we all do things here’?
Item 4. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)
This is the point when everyone in the team makes an action plan which they will implement as the programme draws to a close.
A. It starts with a question
The key to developing your practice, is to think first of the need (what needs to change in students) and then think what could be done to achieve it. The knack lies in developing enquiry questions to sort out what you want to do.
Why a question? Because this is an enquiry! You want to find out if something (student behaviour) will change/improve if you change something specific.
Research suggests that you’ll gain more value from your plan by creating it around a question. Think of it like this:
If I do/plan, try xxxx will it improve/develop/ secure/ enhance xxx?
For example, if you were planning to introduce another one of the 8 behaviours to your class, your enquiry question could be:
If I introduce my students to the idea of meta learning, will they become more aware of their learning behaviours, strengths and weaknesses?
Try the planning sheet opposite.
B. Now think about a plan
But remember what you are trying to achieve.
Plans at this stage should be linked to what you are reading in Unit 4.
The learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do. It takes your enquiry question from what to how. Remember:
you can choose which aspect(s) of classroom practice to focus on;
think about the aspect that is likely to have the greatest benefit for your students;
make the plan specifically focus on development;
concentrate on no more than two or three actions;
decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
it’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of to make room for the changes.
See format alongside to help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.
Also record what you will monitor over the weeks.
Changes you expect to see in your classroom practice. For example what do you expect to:
see yourself doing differently?
hear yourself saying more often, with greater commitment, more effectively?
look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
feel less stressed about? What will indicate that?
monitor to make sure that the changes you are making are having an impact of your students?
Changes you expect to see in your students. For example do you expect students to:
begin to take greater responsibility for their own learning;
be more inclined / better able to talk about learning;
be better able to recognise/ describe how they are learning;
show a deeper understanding of the process of learning;
other.
Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with your experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive. The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.
The level of critical analysis which is part of small research projects has been designed/built into the Enquiry Question and Action Planning forms. In other words their very design helps you to develop effective research focused questions and provoke evidenced based reflection.
5. Discuss what we might do next (10 mins)
The programme Playing the Learning Power Game is phase 1 of Building Learning Power. The next phase takes you much deeper into all 12 learning behaviours, allowing you to build on the excellent foundations that you have already laid. Are you, as a school, ready to begin phase 2, The Professional Learning Power Game?
Items 6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? (5 mins)
Did we achieve our objectives?
Are we happy with what we have achieved?
Will we continue to learn together like this in the future?
You are now in Unit 2. Classroom culture. Introduction
A. The intention of this Unit is to..
explore three aspects of the Teachers’ Palette framework – Relating, Talking and Celebrating and their impact on classroom culture.
deepen your understanding of the 4 key learning behaviours – Perseverance, Questioning, Collaboration, Revising . .
This content builds on what you discovered about your students’ learning characteristics in Unit 1 and suggests interventions tailored to particular levels of learner development.
B. The best way of tackling this Unit is to..
Read sections 2A, 2B and 2C to gain an overview of the Teachers’ Palette and the 3 aspects – Relating, Talking and Celebrating. As you read, consider which of these aspects of classroom culture are already in evidence in your classroom.
Then explore the interactive navigation grid in section 2D. Start with the dark green ‘Discovering’ cells, before homing in on the suggestions for your own students’ levels of learning development (this is informed by your research in finding your students’ learning characteristics in Unit 1, section 1E, Finding Learning Characteristics).
As you read, try to pick out several little shifts your classroom culture might benefit from. Plan to put one into action every couple of weeks and note the positives or negatives of making such a change.
Timing. While reading and exploring sections 2A, 2B and 2C may take an hour or two, the bigger task is to begin to integrate some ideas into your everyday practice. It’s worth taking a term or three months over this ‘integrating’ phase, as you trial ideas, undertake small enquiries, evaluate impact, talk with colleagues, and slowly begin to make your classroom increasingly learning-friendly. Remember – culture shift takes time!
Unit 2, Team Meeting 1. (One month after starting unit 2)
Unit 2, Team Meeting 2. (Two months after starting unit 2)
C. As a result it should have the following impact.
Your classroom will be well on the way to being able to cultivate learning behaviours – it is about readying your classroom culture for intentionally blending content and with learning behaviours, which we tackle in Unit 3.
You are now in Unit 2 Introduction
Use the Unit Navigation Bar to move from unit to unit.
Recently you used the progression charts and discovered lots of interesting, and previously unknown, details about your students as learners; the warp of learning. You are starting this work on classroom culture from the privileged and unusual position of knowing quite a lot about your students’ starting points.
Armed with this unique information you can now turn your attention to the weft of Learning Power; how best to craft your classroom culture and learning activities to strengthen and grow students’ learning habits.
Enabling classroom cultures
The Teachers’ Palette
If we want our children to become better learners we first need to offer them more opportunities to use and cultivate their learning behaviours. This involves shifting the culture of your classroom so that it systematically cultivates the positive learning habits and attitudes of your students. ‘Culture’ is about all the little habits, routines and practices that implicitly convey ‘what we believe and value round here’; where, hour by hour, day by day, term by term students experience the values and practices that are embodied in the school.
While there are four aspects of the teachers’ palette, this section deals with three; relating, talking and celebrating. These aspects of classroom culture can apply to any classroom. [The fourth aspect of classroom culture, constructing (lesson design) is dealt with in detail in Unit 3.]
Section 2A explores Relating for Learning
Section 2B explores Talking for Learning
Section 2C explores Celebrating Learning
And section 2D, the substantial part of Unit 2, offers a catalogue of teaching ideas to trial in your classroom.
You are now in Unit 2 Introduction
Use the Section Navigation Bar below to find your way around the sections of unit 2.
