Bitesize 5.3 How does the school’s learning focus become reflected in policy? OMIT

The school’s Learning and Teaching (or Teaching and Learning) Policy should give detail on how an emphasis on learning and the school’s chosen language for learning are to be woven into everyday practice. It is this policy that will drive the school’s core activity of developing effective learners.

Which other policies might need to reflect the school’s commitment to Building Better Learners? The list will certainly include:

• Assessment Recording and Reporting Policy(s) will need to be consistent;
• Marking Policy if this is a separate policy;
• Continuing Professional Development;
• Appraisal / Performance Management;
• classroom observation protocols.

And might also include:

• Capability;
• Behaviour Management;
• Rewards and Sanctions;
• Display;
• the home/school agreement etc.

This list is indicative of the extensive impact of Building Better Learners where so many areas of school life are affected by it. Schools that have not attended to this diversity of effect have failed to appreciate the value, power and potential impact of learning power and quickly witnessed its demise.

Understanding how approaches fit together

The beauty of the learning framework you have decided to use (Building Learning Power) is that it covers all the domains of learning because its intent is to make learning a bigger game. This means that any of the other positive frameworks or ideas or approaches for learning that your school may be using will sit well under this umbrella framework, often known simply as BLP. So approaches such as Assessment for Learning, or Growth Mindset, or Philosophy for Children, or Cooperative Learning and so on, knit together with the general thrust of learning power to strengthen parts of the overall intent. How you blend, support, give attention to these influences is what will make your school unique, defining your school and its approach to its core activity of learning and teaching.

Explain the approaches you use to yourselves

Schools that burrow deeply into Building Better Learners have found that it is important to explain, to themselves, how these influences interweave, and then distil this into what might be termed the school’s Learning Framework. As a document it’s usually less detailed than the Learning and Teaching Policy, but more detailed than a vision/ mission statement. It effectively sets out the school’s values for learning and how these translate into practice. It’s an essential document for any new member of staff to understand since how they plan, deliver or assess learning will be guided by this document. It is an accessible expansion of the school’s vision for learning and, once written, should help to steer the school over the coming years.

Naturally, given the importance of the Learning Framework document, it is critical that all stakeholders are party to its development.

Curriculum Plans, Medium Term Plans, call them what you will, describe in broad terms what will be taught, to whom, when etc etc. They are the overarching documents that inform teachers’ day to day planning. Such plans have always identified what is to be taught and, on occasion, how it is to be taught. Less frequently do such plans identify the learning behaviours that will support and enhance the content acquisition, the learning behaviours that will necessarily be exercised if the content is to be accessed.

It is not difficult to look at a Medium Term Plan and identify key learning behaviours that will be required for success. Often subjects appear to have a set of ‘go to’ behaviours that gain regular exposure – Reasoning and Making Links in Numeracy/Maths, Planning and Refining in D&T/Creative Arts, Listening and Making Links in Languages, Collaboration in P/E and Drama etc etc. Nonetheless, some modules will require students to learn in ways beyond the usual ones.

The ‘how’ of learning, if we really regard it as important, should be flagged in our curriculum plans.

Lesson planning takes many forms, from the NQT who writes extensive plans that detail minute by minute what will be happening in the lesson, to the experienced teacher who does the same between their ears on the journey to school in the morning. In most cases, the mental model is:

• ‘What have I got to teach ?
• How am I going to teach it ?’.
• (Or, worse still, ‘How did I teach it last time ?’ !!)

Learning hasn’t come into it yet.

Consider for moment adding ‘How are they going to learn it ?’ in between ‘What have I got to Teach’ and ‘How am I going to teach it’.

• What have I got to teach?
• How are they going to learn?
• How am I going to teach it?

The ‘What I teach’ does not change, but the ‘How I teach’ may well do so. Or better still:

• What do the students need to learn?
• How are they going to learn it?
• How am I going to help?

The questions that sit behind ‘How are they going to learn it ?’ are:

• How do I want my students to be learning ?
• Which learning habits do.. I want them to/ could they/do they need to… stretch in this lesson ?
• What sort of learning challenge will extend or expand their learning in ways that will intrigue and challenge them and use the relevant learning habit(s)?
• How competent are my students in using this learning behaviour?
• Might I need to warm up the relevant learning behaviour at some point in the lesson ?
• How can I really stretch this behaviour during the lesson ?
• When will I build in moments to reflect on how effectively they have been learning?

As teachers get used to asking ‘What would this lesson on forces / poetry / negative numbers look like if I coupled it with Collaboration or with Imagining or with Planning ?’, a whole new world of lesson design comes into view. Lessons on the same familiar content can be transformed when viewed as an opportunity to stretch a variety of learning behaviours. Once the unfamiliarity wears off, this way of looking at lesson design captures teachers’ interest and stimulates creativity in both lesson planning and task design.

It leads to the development of engaging, challenging and intriguing lessons that are growing students’ ability to be confident, independent learners – at the same time as helping them to master the content and improve their grades.