Guided by best practice thinking in professional development this modular on-line programme organises a consistent school wide approach to developing pupils’ learning behaviours and;
shifts the culture of the school to learning positive
focuses learning teams on a gradual change process
builds expertise across the school
ensures the school STARTS and STAYS on a proven right track
ensures you build better learners RIGHT not LITE
The first year of this distance learning programme – Stepping Stones – consists of nine sessions, each expected to take about month to complete.
Help your pupils move
From
- Sure-footed beginnings
To
- Deeper solid progression
- Discovering their learning behaviours
- Exploring how learning behaviours progress
- Developing a basic learning vocabulary
- Expanding and deepening their learning vocabulary
- Trying out learning behaviour targets
- Designing their own ‘instant habit-forming’ targets
- Being aware of using learning behaviours
- Purposefully using learning behaviours to understand content
- Beginning to believe in themselves as learners
- Having the strategies of powerful learners
How it works
The Stepping Stones Phase 1 consists of nine online sessions, each expected to take about a month to work through. Sessions can be drip-fed monthly. The sessions are:
The sessions are designed to be taken in this sequence.
Each session is divided into four sections:
Three individual teacher sections
Teachers work their way through the materials at a time and place to suit them. The materials will usually take about 30-45 minutes to work through. They introduce new thinking and practical ideas for staff to get their heads around prior to the team session.
A Professional Learning Team meeting section
This brings staff together as a learning team (typically six to eight staff per team, meeting at monthly intervals). The meeting is convened and led by a learning champion from your school. During each meeting staff share and discuss how they have moved their practice to incorporate learning power, consider new material introduced in sections 1-3, and plan their learning enquiries ahead of the next Team meeting.
The nine online sessions are drip-fed to teachers at monthly intervals thus ensuring gradual, well founded change
The Sessions explained
Session 1. A culture for building Learning Power
This first session is designed to guide you through a process of understanding, assessing and improving your classroom learning culture.
Learn individually online.
1. About cultures and learning. Unpick the meaning of classroom cultures, what they might consist of and how they develop to better nurture learning.
2. Going deeper into a learning culture. Using a learning power culture instrument to assess where your classroom culture is now.
3. Readying your culture for learning; Initial activities, routines and talk. Look for ideas to strengthen your learner/learning classroom culture.
Learn as a team
4. Team reflection and planning. Share the results of your culture analysis with colleagues and plan what you all need to do first.
Session 2. Understanding Perseverance
Online learning
1. Perseverance and how it develops. Unpick the meaning of perseverance and how it develops over time. Using the Perseverance grid, teachers analyse what stage their pupils have reached in the progression of perseverance and then consider ways they could work in the classroom to improve and develop it.
2. Taking Perseverance into classroom culture. An introduction to the classroom culture of Building Learning Power with particular reference to nurturing perseverance.
3. Introducing activities and routines. Look for ways to build Perseverance into learning activities/tasks.The section consists of a substantial range of practical ‘how to’ activities for immediate classroom use. These cover the stages of behaviours for perseverance….from bringing it to life in pupils where it is missing to it being part of a pupil’s learning character.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: reflection and planning.
Session 3. Using the Language of Perseverance
Online learning
1. Big shifts in the language of learning. This section invites you to consider some rich shifts in the language of perseverance; how it builds and shifts as the behaviour grows.Three big shifts in the language of learning that will have an effect on your classroom culture.
2. Learning talk to support perseverance. This session includes how to nudge progression in the behaviour by what you say, and how to reinforce this through written comments.
3. Generating pupils’ self talk. Helping pupils generate more productive self talk for perseverance including practical ‘if-then’ plans to move pupils on.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: review, reflection and planning.
Session 4. Understanding Collaboration
Online learning
1. Collaboration and how it develops. Unpick the meaning of Collaboration, how it develops over time and use the Collaboration grid to plot where your pupils are now.
2. Taking Collaboration into classroom culture. An introduction to the classroom culture of Building Learning Power with particular reference to nurturing Collaboration. Check what you do now.
3. Activities and routines for introducing and building Collaboration into learning.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: review, reflection and planning.
Session 5. Using the Language of Collaboration
Online learning
1. Big shifts in the language of learning. Three big shifts in the language of learning that will have an effect on your classroom culture.
2. Learning talk to support collaboration. The kind of detailed language that will nudge collaboration.
3. Generating pupils’ self talk. An interesting way of helping pupils generate more productive self talk for Collaboration.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: review, reflection and planning.
Session 6. Understanding Questioning
Online learning
1. Questioning and how it develops. Unpick the meaning of Questioning, how it develops over time and use the Questioning grid to plot where your pupils are now.
2. Taking Questioning into classroom culture. An introduction to the classroom culture of Building Learning Power with particular reference to nurturing Questioning. Check what you do now.
3. Introducing activities and routines. Look for ways to build Questioning into learning activities/tasks.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: review, reflection and planning.
Session 7. Using the Language of Questioning
Online learning
1. Big shifts in the language of learning. Three big shifts in the language of learning that will have an effect on your classroom culture.
2. Learning talk to support questioning. The kind of detailed language that will nudge pupils’ Questioning.
3. Generating pupils’ self talk. An interesting way of helping pupils generate more productive self talk for Questioning.
Team learning
4. Professional Learning Team: review, reflection and planning.
Session 8. Reviewing Our Progress
This module includes tools to help you review your progress in shifting your classroom practice and estimating the progress pupils’ have made in developing their learning behaviours.
Session 9. Putting Revising into Learning
This session accelerates the pace and is a precursor to Phase 2 which ranges more broadly over the range of capacities. By this stage teachers’ confidence and skills in being a learning coach, using the language and classroom approaches will enable them to assimilate the ideas about Revising in a single session.
Start-up days
The on-line programme can be packaged with different types of start-up days depending on needs
1a. For schools new to BLP: Stepping up
- a half-day training workshop for all staff introducing the basic elements of learning power and on the same day: an induction session for senior leaders and staff who will be responsible for organising the Professional Learning Team sessions and use of the on-line courses.
This format requires an In-service training day, enabling all staff to gain a good initial understanding of BLP
1b. For schools new to BLP: Stepping out.
- a half-day session for senior leaders offering a strategic introduction to learning power and how it develops through learning communities.
- a half-day session for learning champions or coaches (selected by the schools) An introduction to BLP and how to organise use of the on-line courses & Professional Learning Teams sessions for best effect.
- a twilight session for staff focused on the essentials of learning power and how the on-line programme will work.
This format does not require an in-service training day.
1c. For schools that have started BLP for themselves and want to go deeper: Stepping on.
- a half-day session with the senior leadership team to discuss what the school has done thus far. Includes a learning walk around the school and a feedback session on progress.
- a half-day session with key practitioners who will take learning forward in the school. This session will focus on how the on-line courses and Professional Learning Team sessions will work.
- a twilight session for staff focused on the content and organisation of the forthcoming on-line sessions.
This format does not require an in-service training day.