Learning Commission Newsletter Issue 5
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Transcript of Learning Commission Newsletter Issue 5
INTRODUCTION The focus for this issue is on Building Learning Power and launching the Learning Commission at the school. Building
Learning Power is not about increasing the amount of knowledge that pupils take away from lessons, but about in-
creasing their appetite to know and their capacity to learn. We as teachers should be actively helping them to achieve this. Research shows that students’ results improve most when ‘teachers become learners about their own
teaching, and when students become their own teachers.’ (John Hattie). The classroom becomes a ‘mind gym’ that systematically develop useful, transferable habits of mind (Guy Claxton). Should we not be continuing to strive to get
excellent results by cultivating these habits of mind, not by spoon-feeding or ‘teaching to the test’ ?
TEACHING AND LEARNING
NEWSLETTER
5TH SEPTEMBER 2011 VOLUME 1 , I SSUE 5
THE LEARNING COMMISSION
The learning commission has been set up to focus on building the habits of mind and developing our students as life
-long learners. It is not another new initiative but an opportunity for us as teachers and students to work in partnership with each to build learning power. The word commission was decided on after researching work that has
been pioneered by the Harris Federation in London. The word commission seemed effective as it depicts the fact
that there are a group of people keen to promote and drive forward the quality of learning through a range of opportunities. The word allows it to be open ended and enables the focus to grow as it gathers momentum.
The students involved will be known as Student Commissioners
and initially their will be a pilot group comprising of Year 9 and 11 students who have been selected by a panel of staff who have
volunteered to be part of the Learning Commission. The list of staff and student commissioners are attached to this newsletter. The
groups at present are linked to students as teachers, mentors and
researchers. Each group have been selected, selection letters sent home, consent slips returned and the initial launch meeting
completed. All groups have been set independent research type work to complete linked to a focus area to start the discussion pro-
cess. There will be an ongoing dialogue between the students and teachers and an opportunity for the students to lead and develop
aspects of their own and their peers learning.
The overall picture can be seen. It is about cre-
ating a partnership between students and teachers and to link all the aspects of school life
to building our students learning power. To create learners of the 21st century. To develop
students who when they leave King’s can deal
with the challenges that they may face and not struggle and falter when learning becomes too
tough. You will see that we already create many opportunities, but do we link this to the
transferable skills of learning? We should be willing to share our teaching experiences,
through mentoring and coaching opportunities,
peer observations, learning walks and our twilight programme. Students should be able to
feed into this culture of learning and by doing so improve their own learning. Learning is a two
way process that replaces co-existence with one
of collaboration and partnership.
Involvement
Do we provide our students with a great enough role in helping to
design and bring about a desired cultural change?
Do we ask our students questions
that make them aware of the learn-ing muscles and how they can be
transferred in a variety of subjects?
Questions such as - Where else could you use that? Do we display
the practical seeds that might help to change the learning culture of
the school? Do we use the staff in
Social learning habits
Can our students talk about when it is best to work alone or with
others?
Are they able to use a range of roles in collaborative group work?
Do our students listen to others and
understand how they are thinking?
Do they share and adopt useful learning habits from each other?
Do they give and take feedback well
from each other?.
the school to encourage a dialogue
about the challenges of learning. Do we make it easy for our
students to understand the some-times rocky learning journey?
Ultimately for the students to
become more powerful learners, young people have to be willing to
be stretched and challenged. Is it
our responsibility to provide them with the opportunity to gain the
skills to cope with this? Should we be asking the question— How can I
make the lesson more difficult?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
subject knowledge which enables them to achieve
good GCSE and A-level
results. However it is important that students
are able to stay calm, focused and engaged
when they don’t know what to do. A capable
learner is very different
to being a successful stu-dent. Should we merely
be satisfied with the results that we get? So
what can we do? Develop
the language of learning that talks about the process
of learning. The how of learning. How did you do
that? Who did that different-ly? How could you help
someone else do that? How
could you have made that harder for yourself? Expand-
ing learning through a range of activities that provides
students with an environ-
ment that is challenging and one that makes them
accept that everyone gets confused, frustrated and
stuck.
OUR SCHOOL IS HIGH ACHIEVING SO WHY CHANGE?
Research has shown that often it is the successful
students like ours who
are most likely to go to pieces when confronted
by something they do not know how to do. Their
learning resilience can be wafer thin. (Carol Dweck
research showed this to
be especially so among high achieving girls).
Our students have been spoon-fed and there is no
doubt that they have
Being stuck is not a problem, staying stuck
is”
“Failure is the opportunity to begin
again more intelligently”
Page 2
TEACHING AND LEARNING NEWSLETTER
For most of us we are confident that
we routinely teach our subject material well but it does raise real questions
about who is teaching the broader skills (e.g. how to work effectively in groups,
how to develop strategies if
stuck)......... If nobody is teaching students what to do if they get stuck in
class, why are we surprised they want to be spoon-fed?
One approach to try and formalise the-se ideas has been taken by ‘Learning
Power’ supported by people such as
Guy Claxton (who wrote the book – “what’s the point of school?”). He sug-
gests that there are 4 key learning dis-positions – Resilience, Resourceful-
ness, Reflectiveness, and Reci-
procity.
Building the habits of learning has to be devel-
oped according to the
needs of the students within the school. It is
therefore going to be unique . The overall aim
will be the same - to develop life-long learn-
ers, effective learners
and continue to build on the successes of the
school in terms of academic results. The
Learning to Learn pro-
gramme is not a stand alone programme but will
help to enhance the lan-
guage and dispositions of learning. What is exciting
about this is that it has
been developed by the pastoral prefects, who
themselves have been inspired by the idea of
what learning is about. They have almost taken
a step back from the aca-
demic rigors of their sub-ject and really begun to
see how understanding learning would help them
to be more successful
learners. The feedback from the A-level students
really reiterated the need for the programme. They
commented on the fact
that they struggled with the step up from KS3 to
GCSE and then with the even greater step into A-
Level. They indicated that they struggled most with
aspects of independent
learning as they have been spoon-fed, yet at
times expected to have the study skills to discover
information for them-
selves. So confidence to learn is compromised and
often they are inclined to give up.
THE LEARNING TO LEARN PROGRAMME
R e s o u r c e f u l n e s s , Responsibility, Rea-
soning and Resilience.
The hand has been designed to show the
5R’s. It is eye-catching, easy to display and sym-
bolises the hand that writes a signature. When
a year 7 student is asked
to write their signature, they haven’t really got
one, yet it will become more familiar and less
susceptible to change as time goes on and it is
used over and over again. This symbolises the point
that the language and culture of learning will
become more familiar
over time as it is used more and more. At the
workshop held for the prefects at Kingsgate in
June they were given the
tools of learning and from this set about creating
the 5 hands.
THE 5R’S
Building Learning Power (Guy Claxton) develops
the 4R’s, however devel-
oping the habits of learn-ing requires designing a
programme that suits the needs of the school. It
was felt that by extend-ing it to the 5R’s used in
the learning to learn in
practice scheme. It would enable a greater
development of the learning dispositions. The
5R’s are Reflection,
“To teach is to learn twice”
Page 3
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 5
Pastoral Prefects de-
signing the Learning to Learn programme.
Each hand was designed by the students to highlight 5
important qualities that a learner would display for each of the 5Rs. It was written in pupil speak and each
quality was written down each of the fingers. For example a reflective learner would display the following
qualities;
I am curious I can describe my progress
I listen to and learn from feedback I learn from experience
I am good at asking questions. The 5 R’s will be displayed in each of the year 7 & 8
form rooms and the students have designed in
collaboration with teachers a series of short activities to be completed in form time, to start to introduce the
ideas and attributes of learning. This will be lead by the learning to learn prefects.
A few examples from the Learning to Learn programme. (first term activities– see attached time table)
This activity has been used to start to develop the idea of what
teamwork is. We often ask our students to work as a team or in a group, without them fully understanding the attributes that are
required. From this discussion, key aspects can start to be
worked on, such as listening to others, and learning from your mistakes. It is also linked to the willingness to take risks and to
not giving up when the tasks become difficult and challenging. This theme will be visited throughout the learning to learn
programme and will hopefully build the students learning power. It is important however that this doesn’t just happen once a
week, but that these habits of mind are translated and used
within their learning in all subjects. It is about creating a culture of learning within our school.
TEACHING AND LEARNING
NEWSLETTER
The King’s (The Cathedral)
School
There is a widespread feeling that twenty-first century life presents many challenges to young people as they
are growing up, with a high level of challenge, complexity and individual responsibility. It is commonly said that we are in a century of choice, problem-solving and learning. It is the job of education to strengthen their ability
to be good choosers, skilful problem-solvers and powerful learners. The generic ability to learn has no use-by date. (Guy Claxton)
The Learning to Learn prefects
designing and experiencing the activities. (Using the language
of learning).
The idea of this activity is for the
students to experience different ways of learning and to link to the 5R’s. Also
to try to develop strategies to get themselves unstuck, other than asking
the teacher. This was felt to be very
important if we are not to continually spoon-feed them the answers. All the
activities have been designed to make the students more aware of the pro-
cesses of learning not merely the out-come. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get
it right first time, but can you learn
from it and find ways to get it right next time?