Towards a learning focused curriculum

1. Developing the ‘deep roots’ of learning

Nechells Education Action Zone

Gareth MillsCurriculum Innovation Partner

Compass Learning

Evidence: From more than 100 international research studiesInstitute of Education August 2010

Watkins, C (2010) 'Learning, Performance and Improvement', Institute of Education International Network for School Improvement

Towards a learning-focused school

“it is time for Government to step back and let schools take more responsibility for their own curriculum... We’ve seen that an inspiring and rigorous curriculum can transform schools”

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum;

We want to “restore the National Curriculum to its original purpose – a minimum national entitlement for all our young people organised around subject disciplines."

Learner’s

Bag for Life

Please pack...

What should be in the learner’s bag when

they leave you?

Fit

for the

future?

Positive attitudes - ‘character’•Self-confident•Self-motivated•Adaptable and enterprising•Resilient and resourceful•Act with integrity

Skilful•Literate and numerate•Enquiry skills•Analytical skills•Creative and imaginative•Collaborative skills•Self -management skills

Knowledgeable•Understand main branches of human achievement•About the ‘best’ (and worst) of the past... accrued ‘wisdom’.•Informed about contemporary issues

Resourceful

EnterprisingResilient

CreativeCompassionate

Confident

The branches of knowledgeReflecting major areas of human endeavour and ways of thinking

Thinking skills

Personal skills

L2L skillsLiteracy and numeracy skills

Enquiry skills

Social skills

Developing the deep roots

The ‘deep learning’

goal

The ‘subject or discipline’ goal

Towards a learning focused school

‘Helping to improve students learning by supporting their learning… is not the same thing as expanding their learning capacity’

If there a too few opportunities to develop this autonomy we teach dependency, not the deep roots of learning.

Helping learners to help themselves

• Performance based learningPupils engage in the scoping, development and realisation of a performance or an event e.g. An

exhibition, a sporting event, a community event, a meal, a school production. It involves devising, developing, organising, rehearsing, arranging, collaborating and delivery.

• Design based learningStudents create, evaluate, re-design products through stages of revision. This work involves, research,

creativity, prototyping, testing, review, redevelopment etc. E.g. A community makeover, a new playground, classroom of the future, a class/theme web-site.

• Project based learningStudents explore real world local or global issues and challenges. Eg. Safe cycle routes to school,

Recycling, regeneration

• Problem - enquiry based learningPupils learning through the process of solving a problem and exploring a big question. Identifying key

questions or real problems. Eg. Why causes child labour? Can you believe what you see and read?

Deep learning pedagogiesThe language

of learning

Another National Curriculum Review

“The Government believes that recent changes to the National Curriculum, such as the inclusion of skills development and the promotion of generic dispositions, have distorted the core function of the National Curriculum and diluted the importance of subject knowledge.”

orKnowledge

Subjects

Instruction

Best of the Past

Standards

Teacher led

Skills

Interdisciplinary

Facilitation

Future orientated

Creativity

Student initiated

and

4.10 The review will look at both the primary and secondary curriculum… and will look in particular at the evidence from the highest performing jurisdictions, to ensure that our curriculum can stand comparison with theirs.

Singapore

New Zealand

• Growth as a person• Cultural Identity and internationalism• Media skills and communication• Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship• Responsibility for the environment, well-being and a sustainable future• Safety and traffic• Technology and the individual

Our draft learning principles…We pledge that your learning will ...• Be rich in first hand experiences• Engage in real and purposeful problems, enquiries,

productions• Let you share your learning with authentic

audiences• Give you time to dig deeper• will include creative, open-ended and playful

projects• make you sweat (in a good way) with exciting

challenges• make you ‘bristle with pride’ as we celebrate your

successes

The staff of St Mary’s Primary School

Design Matters7 features of powerful learning design

1. Significance

2. Understanding quality

3. Active learning and skilled instruction

4. Imaginative use of resources

5. Feedback loops

6. Authenticity

7. Relationships

How will you make the learning matter to pupils?

How will you develop and use rubrics/exemplars of quality?

What approaches will you use for deep understanding and application of learning?

How will you develop a climate where learners are valued and mistakes seen as opportunities for learning?

Are there sufficient opportunities to prototype, modify, reflect and improve?

How will you design purposeful tasks and problems with authentic audiences?

How will you use time, people, space/place to enrich experiences?

Compass LearningGareth Mills

Visible Learning John Hattie

138 strategies – low, medium and high factors (0.40)

LowTeaching to tests (103rd - 0.22)Class size (106th - 0.21)Teacher subject knowledge (125th – 0.09)

HighSelf review and formative evaluation (1st, 3rd – 1.44, 0.90)Micro-teaching (4th – 0.85)Reciprocal teaching (9th – 0.74) (peer teaching)

Relationships (11th – 0.72)Meta-cognitive strategies and thinking tools (13th – 0.69)Self image – not labelling (21nd – 0.61)

InquirasaurInquirasaurs can find out anything. They are always asking questions and finding out answers. They good at identifying what’s needed and following line of enquiry. They have strategies to seek out information… they can locate, search and select information to answer questions. They can sort, classify and synthesise information. Ways to collect, organise and retrieve information. Represent information in a range of waysNote for teachers: Pointers for progression: As pupils progress they will begin to work on more challenging tasks

that are appropriate to their age and stage. The main shift in progression is from the skills of accessing, locating and recording information to those of evaluating, combining, synthesising and communicating with a sense of audience and purpose. As they progress, pupils will plan and work more independently with a greater sense of confidence and fluency.

Making thinking visible

What type of thinking will we be doing today?

Finding out

Observing very closely

and describing accurately

Collaborating

Some classroom questions

1. What are you doing?

2. What are you learning?

3. How are you learning?a) What types of thinking

are you using?

Planning for deep learning

Deep LearningSubject goals:Learning goal:

Name of school

Between Teacher and ChildA quote from Hiam Ginnott

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanised or de-humanised.”