Our staff training this month looked at ways in which we could make our classrooms more learning focused, where the focus is on what the children learn, not on what the teacher teaches.
We began by asking ourselves 4 key questions:
We then chose three strategies, drawn from research into effective schooling, to use in our classrooms.
First we collaboratively developed 6 key questions about learning that we could use in the classroom to get the children thinking more about their own learning. We brainstormed times and ways we could integrate these questions into daily classroom practice, such as plenary balls, picking questions from a hat, issuing questions at the door as student left the class, etc.
Next, we thought about how we could make our displays more learning-focused. While our school has developed the quality and quantity of displays over the last year, there is often little reflection of how the displays link to children’s learning. We agreed we could remedy this by adding descriptions/ captions to the displays that highlighted the learning that had taken place; using questions to engage children in the displays and continue their learning and we even discussed where we should place the displays so that they engaged the children at the right times without distracting them at others.
Finally, we planned the introduction of learning journals, which we will use to help children engage with and reflect on their learning.
At our next training in a month, we will discuss how each of these is going and if there need to be any changes made.
We began by asking ourselves 4 key questions:
- What is learning?
- What does it mean to be a learning-focused school?
- How can we identify the learning that is taking place?
- How can we help children understand what is meant by learning?
We then chose three strategies, drawn from research into effective schooling, to use in our classrooms.
First we collaboratively developed 6 key questions about learning that we could use in the classroom to get the children thinking more about their own learning. We brainstormed times and ways we could integrate these questions into daily classroom practice, such as plenary balls, picking questions from a hat, issuing questions at the door as student left the class, etc.
Next, we thought about how we could make our displays more learning-focused. While our school has developed the quality and quantity of displays over the last year, there is often little reflection of how the displays link to children’s learning. We agreed we could remedy this by adding descriptions/ captions to the displays that highlighted the learning that had taken place; using questions to engage children in the displays and continue their learning and we even discussed where we should place the displays so that they engaged the children at the right times without distracting them at others.
Finally, we planned the introduction of learning journals, which we will use to help children engage with and reflect on their learning.
At our next training in a month, we will discuss how each of these is going and if there need to be any changes made.