The Pupil Passport

This year we are launching our Pupil Passport.   It is based on the work of Guy Claxton and Chris Quigley, who put together a set of ‘Learning to Learn‘ skills in his booklet ‘Planning a Skills Based Curriculum’.   From Guy’s original work on the four Rs (itself a response to the traditional 3Rs) Chris developed the 5Rs of learning (reflective, resilient, risk taking, resourceful and relationships) and carefully put together a pupil friendly set of standards for the children to meet.   I have used the 5Rs for a few years now and the children have come up with some great ways of developing these learner qualities however, in the past the impact has been limited to small groups and classes.   I hope the passport will impact on all learners across the school.

Each pupil will have their own passport which contains bronze, silver and gold standards for each learning to learn skill.   As a school we are going to focus on a different one each half term.   The teaching and learning group will introduce the skill in assemblies and staff will talk with the children about them and sign their passports as they achieve each descriptor.   We have a STAR week at the end of each half term when longer pupil conferences are held to talk with the children about their learning and we are going to incorporate discussion around the passports here as well.

We hope that using the pupil passports will give the children a real understanding of how they are developing as learners, what they need to do to become more resilient, reflective, risk taking and collaborative and how such qualities will help them in all they do.   Rather than looking at these skills discretely we feel this approach will permeate all the children’s learning, in the many different areas of study.  We are currently finalising the passports, ensuring the wording and progression make sense for the children.   We are launching them next week when our new teaching and learning group give an assembly on what it means to be a reflective learner.   I would love to hear from any colleagues who have come up with different ways to develop learning to learn skills across their schools.   It is early days for us but we are excited about the possibilities of this approach.

Primary Curriculum-Models and Design

In my last post I talked about the need for a curriculum that helps prepare children for the future.   There are some key qualities I believe should be at the heart of a new curriculum rather than left to chance outside of it.   These qualities are not easy to measure in any tangible form and this may go some way to explaining their absence from many classrooms.  In his book ‘Building Learning Power‘ Guy Claxton explores some different reform models from around the world that are helping children develop their ‘learning power’.

The Golden Key Schools in Russia operate along the lines of extended families.   They follow Vygotsky‘s philosophy and an understanding of the process of interaction is implemented within the Zone of Proximal Development by placing children from 3 – 10 years in family units of 15 – 25 rather than traditional, age grouped, classes. Staff attend training to develop a ‘community of learning’ and parents are also active in school events with the emphasis placed on learning as a community.   Amongst the other examples Claxton looks at as models for developing collaboration and communication are Ann Brown‘s Communities of Inquiry in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the PEEL project in Victoria, Australia.  Bellaire Primary School in Victoria allows older pupils to take a more active role in planning their learning by running skills workshops which the children attend before taking part in application classes where they put the skills they have learned to practical use.  The children very quickly learn to plan their own timetable and learning, making it relevant to their own interests.  This brave approach develops independence and lifelong learning skills that can only help the children as they move into secondary education and beyond.

Others, such as Ralph Pirozzo and Lane Clarke have explored curriculum design and come up with practical ways of using Bloom’s Taxonomy and Gardner’s Mutiple Intelligences to create active learning experiences.   INSET training with both these educators and  research into other curriculum models such as the International Primary Curriculum and the International Primary Baccalaureate informed our own work on curriculum development.  Our own design has also been influenced by the work of Chris Quigley who has developed a progressive skills based approach that puts key learner qualities centre stage.  Chris takes his lead from the work of Claxton but he breaks down ‘Learning to Learn‘ skills into Bronze, Silver and Gold stages to help plan for progression.   The children easily understand the breakdown of Learning to Learn skills and Chris goes into detail, creating ‘I can’ statements for each of the following key learner qualities:

Reflective – planing, revising, reviewing

Relationships – collaboration, empathy, listening

Resilient – managing distractions, ‘stickability’

Resourceful – questioning, imagining, making links

Risk Taking – have a go, not scared of being wrong

The Skills Based Curriculum developed by Chris Quiqley not only gives pupils more ownership over their own learning but helps with planning for progression.  It would be great to see the work of these and other educators such as Sir Ken Robinson and Mick Waters, being considered by government as they look at the Primary Curriculum.

Related Articles

• Free national curriculum from ministerial meddling (guardian.co.uk)
• Curriculum in a Coma (smichael920.wordpress.com)
• Searching for the Now (myedthoughts.wordpress.com)

The new currency

‘The principle goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done – people who are creative, inventive and discoverers’

Piaget

 

The use of new technologies in education enables us to move beyond traditional boundaries, to do things we’ve never done before and to do things we have,  in a faster, more convenient way.  It has helped us blur the distinction between home and school, between formal and informal learning and to empower learners, using their preferred tools for learning rather than those dictated by tradition.    In a short few years ICT has moved centre stage.   From a discrete subject, taught in IT suites – much like science in science labs – to something that permeates every aspect of the curriculum.  Children see technology as an essential, natural tool for learning.   Indeed they are learning constantly, testing the capabilities of any device they use, not necessarily in our presence but learning all the same.   In certain areas of new technology many of us have to accept that our linear approach to learning might be at odds with children’s more experimental approach.  I often share a story from a few years ago (pre iphone!) when I was with a group of Y5 childen at a dance festival.   One of the pupils asked if she could have a look at my phone.   I gave it to her and within minutes she had returned it to me with a stangely morphing animation playing across the screen.   ‘That’s amazing Chelsea,’ I exclaimed.   ‘Have you got a phone like this?’  ’No’. she replied!

Prakash Nair states ‘creativity is the new currency’ and its up to us to develop this key quality in learners.   As Piaget stated ‘the principle goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things’ our job is to bring out the creativity, to encourage children to take risks, to explore, discover and get excitied by where their learning might take them.   They start out in life with such an inquisitive nature, its up to us to make sure it isn’t knocked out of them by the system.

Standing still is not an option – Reflections on the 18th SSAT Conference.

Last week the SSAT hosted their 18th annual conference – Excellence for All,  in Birmingham UK.   The conference asked us to consider what children learn, how children learn and how we can remove barriers to learning.   A central tenet was the changing role of the teacher and many of the key notes and workshops I attended challenged the traditional view with persuasive models that are working both locally and globally.   A conference such as this really does give you the chance  not only to hear great speakers expound on new approaches but also enables you to attend workshops to see what that thinking looks like in the classroom, to hear warts and all accounts of how new approaches have been embedded and the difficulties that have had to be overcome.

My highlights

There were some fantastic speakers and practitioner led workshops and I couldn’t do them all justice in this brief post so I will simply share a few of the many highlights over the three days.

Sugata Mitra (@Sugatam) gave a fantastic keynote on Wednesday that showed just what children are capable of given the opportunity, his’hole on the wall’ work in the slums of India is an inspiration.   Both Sugata and John Wood have taken their experience, ideas and enthusiasm to different parts of the world to the benefit of millions of children.   John left Microsoft to set up the charity ‘Room to Read‘ which has provided books, libraries, learning and schools for children across Africa and Asia.

My twitter timeline will have betrayed to anyone reading it, the effect both Dylan William and Andy Hargreaves had on my thinking, and not for the first time.   When I listen to these two voices of academic authority sharing their thinking on education, based on extensive research, I find myself wondering why on earth a group of politicians (with little educational experience other than their own privileged one) would believe they know better.   Dylan’s research into how we move beyond current teaching levels is common sense –  improving teaching practice involves changing habits not simply adding more knowledge, something successive governments seem to have missed.   Dylan shared some startling facts about the national strategies that support his argument that for teachers to get better professional development has to be suited to individual need.   His recipe for a successful school is simple:

1. Become a Catholic school

2. Move your school to a leafy suburb

3. Get rid of all the boys

I’m not sure the academies programme will stretch this far!

Andy Hargreaves shared some of his extensive research from education, business and sport about leadership which forms the basis of his forthcoming publication ‘Beyond Expectations’.   There is something decidedly down to earth about Andy’s presentations, maybe it is his sporadic references to his beloved Burnley!   He made some fantastic points during his keynote and again, you can’t help but think the government would be wise to listen:

• Education measures what is easy to measure, not what we value
• Quick wins don’t reflect authentic improvements
• If you want to be average, prescribe and standardise.  If you want to be excellent, be flexible and creative, innovate and take risks.

Andy’s research into successful business and sporting organisations could be a powerful catalyst for education change.   Let’s hope those in a position to affect such change are listening.

I could go on but many have already written about the conference and shared how passionately Tanya Byron spoke about integrating new technologies into the classroom, how Professor Erica Mc William introduced us to ‘the meddler in the middle’ as a key element of 21st century pedagogy and how Professor Barry Carpenter‘s research will help us meet the needs of children with complex learning difficulties in the future.

My final words go to Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) another inspirational key note speaker who challenged traditional approaches to learning and shared how we can motivate learners to prepare them for the future.   Daniel began his presentation by highlighting the three key elements of a successful speech; brevity, levity and repetition.   The three key conference questions, of how we learn, what we learn and how we remove the barriers to learning were explored repeatedly throughout the three days, sometimes all too briefly, often with levity, ensuring the all who attended the conference left with some possible answers, some further questions and a clear understanding that, as we always knew, standing still in education is not an option.   As Dylan William remarked when discussing teacher development; ask your staff if they think they think they can improve.   If they say yes, give them all the help and support you can.   If they say no, ask them to leave!

For further reading on the 18th National Conference see:

Bob Harrison’s post http://www.agent4change.net/events/event/749-ssat-conference-learning-genie-out-of-the-bottle.html

SSAT Blog http://ow.ly/3ga08

The conference was made all the more enjoyable this year by the growing presence of  the twitteratti!   Among those I had the pleasure to meet and tweet with were:

@chickensaltash @DeputyMitchell @DianneSpencer @andreacarr @LibWithAttitude @tonyparkin to name but a few of the many!