A simple idea

Thursday 31 January 2019

I visited a primary school today that was trying to teach their children metacognitive skills - skills central to the IB approaches to learning.

In every classroom there was a visual of 'The Learning Dip' on a wall and children were encouraged to place post-its on it to say where they were in their learning.

This simple visual was one way of visualizing the affective side of learning, and is appropriate whether a student is in MYP or DP | CP.

All learning involves change and having to do things in new ways. It is important that students recognise that success comes with practice over time. It requires persistence and resilience.

As I said it is a simple idea - but visualising it within each classroom provided the learning environmental prompts to understand why learning does take time but it is worth the effort.

Dig deeper

The Learning Challenge - Guiding students through the learning pit is a book by James Nottingham. Check out his website where he describes the challenge in the following way:

“The Learning Challenge is for the teachers, leaders and support staff who wish to guide their students in the development of critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking. It is a model that provides learners with a language to think and talk about learning. It helps build participants’ resilience, wisdom and self-efficacy. And when it is used as a structure for learning, it can also improve teacher clarity and raise expectations of success.”

The concept of the learning challenge sits well with John Hattie's Visible Learning (see HERE) and Carol Dweck's concept of growth mindset (see Fixed or Growth Mind Set?).

The Learning Challenge builds on the SOLO Taxonomy by Biggs and Collis which helps plan progression in learning.Click HERE for Learning Challenge's explanation of the learning pit.

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