As we saw in section 3.1 Celebrating learning is about making learning the object of attention. Here 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 applying effort have been re-framed so that learners come to view these old adversaries as valuable, interesting and essential. Furthermore the other major shift here is that the development and growth in learning behaviours themselves are given attention, praise and recognition. In the early stages re-defining the quest-like values of learning might simply include:

1. ensuring students (and parents) understand ‘being stuck’ as an interesting not shameful position, with tactics to get unstuck (see 3.2);
2. ensuring students (and yourself and parents) understand what is meant by effort;
3. ensuring students (and parents) understand the value of mistakes;
4. celebrating students’ progress in learning behaviours.

The success of this shift will depend on consistency and strong emphasis. You have to make these ideas/values obvious, big and overblown. Whispering them quietly won’t work. They have to be shouted about and put ‘in-your-face’ if they are to stick, be believed, be understood and capitalised on.

Below is part of a Learning Quality Framework report on Bedford High that had developed its own learning lines as detailed in the previous section ‘Attending to growing learning behaviours’

“The school is considering a variety of formative methods of assessing, recording and reporting progression in learning habits. Senior leaders have already detected students becoming better able to self-evaluate and use the language to describe their learning. The planned Year 7 Assessment and Progress document will deepen students’ ability to track and record their own learning development.

The school’s progression map as expressed by the learning lines, is in its infancy. Thus far, 8 learning lines have been developed by teachers in consultation with students, and the school is aware of the need to complete the remainder. Given that these lines were only developed in the summer term, it is not surprising that they have yet to back-wash into the school’s learning language or teacher planning. However there are encouraging signs – already many students have noticed the displays and some are being engaged in them by form tutors.

Students say:

“You can use the learning lines to create targets for yourself”;

“They help you to reflect personally”;

“The lines motivate you to get better”;

“The lines have helped me to appreciate that I am not as good as I thought I was”.

Teachers say:

“It was fantastic to be part of the learning line creative team”

“The lines have helped to improve my teaching – ten fold”.

There is already evidence of students recording and reflecting on their progress as learners within the y7/8 BLP course, and the presence of learning lines will inevitably make this more precise and effective. Senior leaders consider this to be an important factor in narrowing the performance gap between boys and girls.”

As we saw in section 3.1 Celebrating learning is about making learning the object of attention. Here 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 applying effort have been re-framed so that learners come to view these old adversaries as valuable, interesting and essential. Furthermore the other major shift here is that the development and growth in learning behaviours themselves are given attention, praise and recognition. In the early stages re-defining the quest-like values of learning might simply include;

• ensuring pupils (and parents) understand ‘being stuck’ as an interesting not shameful position, with tactics to get unstuck (see 3.2)
• ensuring pupils (and yourself and parents) understand what is meant by effort
• ensuring pupils (and parents) understand the value of mistakes
• celebrating pupils’ progress in learning behaviours

The success of this shift will depend on consistency and strong emphasis. You have to make these ideas/values obvious, big and overblown. Whispering them quietly won’t work. They have to be shouted about and put ‘in-your-face’ if they are to stick, be believed, be understood and capitalised on.

At Briar Hill Infant School near Leamington Spa you can see this process in action. As soon as a learning behaviour has been introduced the children are encouraged to notice when they use it, and to briefly record what they have done—imagined something, used a good question, managed a distraction and so on —on a sticky note which they stick on a Learning Tree wall display. Teachers are on a constant look-out for the behaviours they have been explaining, encouraging and enabling, which they, too, capture through photographs or on sticky notes and add to the Learning Tree. This ‘looking for learning’ is further enhanced by ‘learning detectives’: two children who are assigned this role each day and who look for good learning behaviours in others and again add them to the Learning Tree. At the end of the day the Learning Tree offers a rich source of information to reflect on, explain, and reinforce through a whole-class learning power discussion.

At the end of the week the sticky notes are carefully saved in a large scrapbook. This gives the teachers a running record of what the children have been doing and noticing about themselves. Although this has only been in operation for a term or so the teachers are using their analysis of the weekly data to plan further development. They are refining their professional view of how their students’ learning power behaviours can be converted into instinctive habits.

As we saw in section 3.1, Constructing learning firstly involves integrating reflection and review into the way learning is organised; where activities are designed to stretch and challenge not just in outcome terms but in the very nature of ‘doing’ the task (dual focus of content and process). students’ emotional engagement is a pre-requisite when learning is organised in these ways, and the value of learning is in pushing yourself so that your capacities are stretched and strengthened. The early stages of making a shift in this aspect of the learning friendly classroom might simply include;

• plan lessons to explicitly include reflection and review purposefully
• making challenge fun and available in forms other than activities
• introducing a couple of Visible Thinking Routines
• beginning to dabble with split screen learning

The classroom becomes a place where young people learn that to struggle with a problem is ultimately satisfying and brings its own rewards.

As we saw in section 3.1, Constructing learning firstly involves integrating reflection and review into the way learning is organised; where activities are designed to stretch and challenge not just in outcome terms but in the very nature of ‘doing’ the task (dual focus of content and process). Pupils’ emotional engagement is a pre-requisite when learning is organised in these ways, and the value of learning is in pushing yourself so that your capacities are stretched and strengthened. The early stages of making a shift in this aspect of the learning friendly classroom might simply include;

• plan lessons to explicitly include reflection and review purposefully
• making challenge fun and available in forms other than activities
• introducing a couple of Visible Thinking Routines
• beginning to dabble with split screen learning

The classroom becomes a place where young people learn that to struggle with a problem is ultimately satisfying and brings its own rewards.

As we saw in Section 3.1, talk for learning is about the gradual introduction of a learning language that helps students to become conscious of using their learning behaviours and so build the confident self-talk of improving learners. Start by trying to use the word ‘learning’ at least as often as you use the word ‘work’ – it will be harder than you think !

The early stages of introducing a learning language might simply include:

• making students aware of the school’s language for learning;
• mention use of learning behaviours in your written feedback;
• foster learning dialogue in groups;
• have students relate their learning stories;

The more richly children come to talk about their own learning the more they see and take hold of their own role in it.

Secondary schools should, in an ideal world, be receiving kids from their feeder schools who arrive as learning powered students, ready for the next phase of their learning journey. The reality is frequently different, with students arriving in key stage 3 with no clear idea of themselves as learners.

The secondary school then faces a dilemma. It needs to introduce year 7 students to the school’s chosen learning language, but how to do this ? Two options, each with advantages and drawbacks, immediately present themselves – either design a stand-alone Learn to Learn course, or introduce the skills/concepts through the subject curriculum.

Let’s consider each in turn:

Firstly: The stand-alone L2L course. Advantages include ease of planning, few teachers involved in delivery, all kids get the same message at broadly the same time. Disadvantages include few teachers involved in delivery, it requires dedicated curriculum / tutor  time, learning is in danger of being seen as ‘something we do on Tuesday afternoon’ and is unrelated to the rest of the week.

Secondly: The integrated approach. Advantages include everyone involved in delivery, learning is better integrated into the curriculum, responsibility is shared, and nobody can opt out. Disadvantages include the nightmare of mapping learning behaviours across the curriculum, everyone is involved in delivery, shared responsibility can sometimes become ‘if everyone else is doing this, it won’t matter if I don’t’.

We have yet to find a school that has been able to jump straight to the integrated approach without first passing through the stand-alone phase.

How will your school tackle this problem ?

How would you like to be involved in helping your students to understand and discuss the learning process in greater depth and with greater precision ?

As we saw in Section 3.1, talk for learning is about the gradual introduction of a learning language that helps pupils to become conscious of using their learning behaviours and so build the confident self-talk of improving learners. The early stages of introducing a learning language might simply include:

• using a range of physical hooks on which to hang learning talk
• mention use of learning behaviours in your written feedback
• start using the word ‘learning’ rather than ‘work’
• foster learning dialogue in groups
• have pupils relate their learning stories

The more richly children come to talk about their own learning the more they see and take hold of their own role in it.

An early years teacher from Oldham relates how she introduces pupils to understanding the purpose of questions.

As we saw in section 3.1, Relating for learning is about making learning a shared responsibility to avoid learners becoming over dependent on teachers and building their skills as independent learners. In the early stages, devolving more responsibility to learners might simply include:

• creating opportunities for students to ask more questions
• offering students ways of getting themselves unstuck
• giving students more responsibility for monitoring their own learning

Despite giving more responsibility to learners it still leaves you with plenty to do! Your role becomes one of modelling learning processes and styling your teaching as a learning coach.

Of course there are numerous ways of unhooking a dependency relationship between teacher and students. Further ideas are the subject of the Building Better Learners online programme (described in Section 4.4).

As we saw in section 3.1, Relating for learning is about making learning a shared responsibility to avoid learners becoming over dependent on teachers and building their skills as independent learners. In the early stages, devolving more responsibility to learners might simply include:

• creating opportunities for pupils to ask more questions
• offering pupils ways of getting themselves unstuck
• giving pupils responsibility for monitoring their learning

Despite giving more responsibility to learners it still leaves you with plenty to do! Your role becomes one of modelling learning processes and styling your teaching as a learning coach.

Of course there are numerous ways of unhooking a dependency relationship between teacher and pupils. Further ideas are the subject of the Building Better Learners online programme (described in Section 4.4).

Elaine Wade is a Year 2 teacher. She wants her pupils to understand the meaning and importance of being a good planner.

As part of their work in DT pupils have to make a vehicle using several parts. Elaine keeps the components safe and pupils have to ‘order’ the parts they need. They are given a shopping list which itemises the vehicle parts, and have to indicate what and how many of each they require. The ordered items are carefully counted out by Elaine and put into a special shopping bag. So far so good. However, on unpacking their shopping bag, many of the pupils realise that they do not have enough or, in some cases, the right parts. This provides a strongly-motivated opportunity for the children to discuss the need to plan carefully, after which the pupils thankfully accept missing parts. When the activity is used again in another context later in the year, missing parts of their order are not restored and the pupils are expected to make the best they can with what they have ordered.

So here Elaine is encouraging her pupils to think for themselves, to, anticipate what they need, to plan in advance of action. She very rarely gives her pupils the equipment they need for whatever activity. She expects them to be able to find it themselves in the classroom. She’s making sure these children don’t get too reliant on her.

Once schools have begun to develop their approach to implementing these learning frameworks to build better learners, it doesn’t take very long before they realise that there could be major implications for the way they interact with parents and carers. An overarching issue reported by all schools adopting these approaches is the need to develop effective ways of communicating and engaging with parents to ensure that:

• parents understand what the school is trying to do and
• what goes on at home and in the wider community complements the approaches being adopted at school.

For more than a generation now, schools have been committed to actively involve parents. This involvement is often associated with school-generated requirements like school trips or parents’ evenings or school photographs or social events. But BLP schools are looking beyond ‘involvement’ to ‘engagement’, which implies a more active and personal level of participation in their child’s learning. Schools are interested in engagement because in recent years, research has made it clear that parental engagement with their child’s learning makes a significant contribution to the child’s achievement, and that parental engagement is a much bigger factor than school in shaping achievement. Obviously, parents also have a powerful influence in shaping their children’s character, and these aspects of character are especially useful for successful learning. They are:

• self-regulation—the ability to regulate emotions; not to be subject to temper tantrums and to be able to survive reasonable setbacks;
• empathy—being able to imagine things from another person’s perspective; to understand where they are coming from;
• persistence—being able to stick at things even when they are difficult.

Learning power approaches have much to offer on each of these three vital aspects of what it is to be a successful learner. Carol Dweck beautifully sums up the contribution of a parent intent on growing children who are powerful learners:

‘If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning. That way they will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.’

The most basic thing for schools to do is communicate with parents about what they are up to—not just practical arrangements, but their vision: what it is they are trying to help their students become, and how they are going about it. In this case it means explaining to them what ‘learning power’ is, what it consists of, and why it is so important. Some schools have included parents right from the beginning, but we would recommend waiting until after trialling the approach for a term or so, when staff feel more confident about its merits and potential impact.

Information sessions
The most popular way of introducing the approach to parents has been through information sessions backed up by leaflets, newsletters, and the school website. The need to make the purpose and language of BLP accessible has proved challenging for some schools. Simply explaining the 17 learning habits doesn’t seem to engage parents’ interest reliably. Schools have found it important to highlight that:

• the approach is about helping children to become better learners, in school as well as out; enabling them to understand, use, and become more skilled in using a wide range of learning behaviours; making the children more responsible and independent as learners with outstanding employability skills;
• the approach will take some time to really embed into the culture of the school, and that it means teachers teaching a bit differently using the language of learning;
• the approach will have (or is already having) positive effects on children’s behaviour, motivation, and stickability, which feeds through to their levels of achievement;
• parents too can help their children to become better learners and that the school would value their important assistance.

If you would like a more detailed agenda for such an information evening…

Questions parents need answers to

The most successful sessions have sought to answer the following questions for parents:

• What is the approach (Building Learning Power) all about?
• What difference might I expect to see in my child’s learning habits and language?
• What will the school be doing differently?
• What will the children be doing differently?
• What can I do as a parent?
• What habits am I nurturing by the way I behave with my children?
• Which of these habits might help and which might hinder the growth of learning habits?
• Why is this something I should value?
• What place does the approach have in my child’s future?
• So what impact is it having or expected to have?

One information evening may be sufficient to raise awareness, but maintaining interest subsequently requires a range of ongoing strategies.

In the past

A typical end of term report of the past would usually have concentrated on a student’s progress in each subject area, and their likelihood of success in forthcoming examinations. Reports often revolved around four overworked concepts that we have come to call The Dull Quartet: Effort, Ability, Achievement and Conduct (or Behaviour). Student’s learning was often boiled down to their level of attainment, and accompanied by cryptic comments such as ‘Tom needs to improve on his connectives.’ What, we wonder, is a parent to make of such statements? What could they do to help with Tom’s connectives? Alternatively some reports do mention learning behaviours, often with ill-targeted advice like ‘Tilly needs to ask more questions in class’. How many more? When? Why? What type of questions? Sometimes it seemed as if there was little parents could do other than endorse the report and praise their children for having done well, or exhort them to do better.

The future

Learning focused reports for parents are beginning to take a different approach. They offer parents an insight into their child’s use of and progression in learning habits. This is information is written in ways that parents can readily understand and, more importantly, do something with. It offers a talking point about what the child does at school and furthermore suggests how the parent might pick up on the points and support their child to develop further. These reports support parents to become partners in building their child’s learning behaviours.

Schools using learning focused approaches are likely to want to focus on exactly what it is that parents can do to help their children become more powerful learners. Given that we know that what parents do at home has most impact on their children’s learning, it is not surprising that schools tend to focus next on offering ideas for parents to build their children’s learning power.
Just as learning focused approaches changes the way teachers teach, so it can influence the way parents parent. For example, if parents want to help their children see the value of effort and to develop self-belief in their talents, then they may choose to praise their child specifically for those efforts which show them ‘going the extra mile’ rather than simply for ‘getting a good mark’. Or if they want them to become more resourceful, they will create situations in which children have to work things out by themselves and hold back from helping them too soon.
Some schools are beginning to offer snappy hour-long sessions on specific aspects of the approach such as:

• ‘How to praise your child’
• ‘How to help your child when they are stuck’
• ‘Helping your child to set goals’
• ‘Recognising signs of distress’
• ’10 things to do/say with/to your child’

Obviously care needs to be taken when you begin to advise parents about parenting, but we know too well that the unguarded word from a parent at night can unintentionally undo all of the good we have done during the day. For this reason alone, finding ways to help parents to help you build better learners is important.

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.