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”

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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”

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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?