Learning and Teaching @ SCC The Learning Box

At Sedgefield Community College, striving for the highest possible standards in Learning and Teaching are central to everything that we do.  It is only by ensuring high quality learning that we can enable our students to ACHIEVE their full potential and ensure their enjoyment of their lessons each day.
We believe that we need to ensure our students do not simply know information, but they fully understand it.  This desire to ensure ‘Deep Learning’ means we want to support our students in having the skills to be successful learners.  We want to ensure our students are:
·     Excited by learning.
·     Able to learn independently.
·     Able to learn when working in groups.
·     Able to learn throughout their lives.

In order to enable us to ACHIEVE these aims, we have developed something termed ‘The Sedgefield Learning Box’.  Into this ‘Box’ we have placed a series of learning strategies for students and teachers to use whenever appropriate in all of their lessons, whatever the subject.  By using these subjects across different curriculum areas, students become highly skilled in applying them. 

‘The Sedgefield Learning Box’ is organised into four distinct sections with a range of different learning tools in each.  The four compartments in our Learning Box are as follows:
·     Learning to Think.
·     Communicating Learning.
·     Learning Habits.
·     Learning Together.

Learning to think

•  

  
  Learning to Think as the name suggests, this compartment focuses on providing students with a series of strategies that will help them to become more accomplished ‘thinkers’.  Students are provided with strategies that enable them to think more deeply about issues and to do so with increasing independence..

• Thinking Hats

• 
  Students develop the strategy of using the six Thinking Hats (based on the research of Edward De Bono).  By using the six hats, students are encouraged to think about different aspects of the issue as each hat relates to a different kind of thinking:
  ·     Blue Hat – Planning and organising ideas.
  ·     Red Hat – Emotions and how you feel.
  ·     White Hat – Facts and the information that you know.
  ·     Yellow Hat – Benefits relating to the issue being considered.
  ·     Black Hat – Problems relating to the issue being considered.
  ·     Green Hat – New ideas and creative thinking.

• Question Matrix

• 
  The purpose of the Question Matrix is to help our students and teachers to think more about the questions that are asked in lessons.  We encourage teachers to pose more higher order (open) questions and these are the types of question that extend thinking as they don’t have one simple answer.  As well as this, we want our students to pose their own questions and our Question Matrix provides them with a structure to do this.

Thinking Maps

•  

  Having observed excellent learning in several different schools, we have chosen to train our staff and students in using the eight Thinking Maps developed by the Kestrel Education Company.  These Thinking Maps act us ‘visual organisers’ and are a consistent and effective way of students organising their thinking about any issue, in any curriculum area. 
• Each of the eight maps relates to a different thinking process as outlined below:
  
  ·     Circle Map – Defining in Context – Putting down on the page the information that you already know
  • (or think you know) about the subject.
    
    ·     Bubble Map – Describing with Adjectives – Identifying the adjectives that best describe the different aspects of the subject you are thinking about.
    
    ·     Double Bubble Map – Comparing and Contrasting – Considering the similarities and differences between two people, places, events, etc that you wish to compare.
    
    ·     Flow Map – Sequencing and Ordering – Organising a series of ideas into the right or best sequence and understanding how they link together.
    
    ·     Multi Flow Map – Causes and Effects – Used to identify the different factors that might cause something to happen and the range of possible effects of this.
    
    ·     Tree Map – Classifying and Grouping – A range of people, places, events, etc are organised into different groups depending on the way that they relate to one another.
    
    ·     Brace Map – For Analysing Whole Objects and Parts – One whole object is taken and is broken down into the different parts that go together to make it.
    
    ·     Bridge Map – For Seeing Analogies – Used to make a bridge between different ideas and help students make connections between their learning in different areas.
    

Communicating Learning

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  In order to ensure ‘Deep Learning’, we need to develop the ability of our students and teachers to have effective conversations about the learning processes that take place in our school.  All of our learning strategies lend themselves to effective conversations, but those in this compartment help to provide a common ‘language of learning’.

Three Storey Intellect



• 
  The Three Storey Intellect is represented by a diagram of a building that is organised into three storeys.  Within each storey, ‘learning words’ are provided that relate to the different learning processes that take place in the classroom.  Across all subject areas, these are the words that we use to talk about learning and this helps our students to make connections between their learning in each different subject. 
  The Three Storey Intellect breaks down into the following:
  
  ·     1st Storey  - Gathering – These words relate to more straightforward learning tasks where students are ‘gathering’ together the key information.
  
  ·     2nd Storey – Processing – These words relate to learning tasks where students are undertaking task to make sense of the information already ‘gathered’.
  
  ·     3rd Storey – Applying – These words relate to learning tasks where students need to take the information ‘gathered’ and ‘processed’, ‘applying’ it in new situations.
  
  Using the Three Storey Intellect to help us, we aim to move students to the more challenging learning associated with the 2nd and 3rd Storeys whenever we can.

 

Functional Skills

In order to support excellent learning, students need to make connections between their learning in different curriculum areas.  Functional Skills refer to skills in English, Maths and ICT that are relevant to students in many other curriculum areas and crucial to their success in their later life.
Crucial to the development of Functional Skills is the ability to transfer learning from one subject to others and by explicitly drawing attention to occasions when one of these Functional Skills is being developed, we support our students to do this.

Learning Habits


If we are to be successful in our aim of developing students who are able to become successful lifelong learners, we need to help them to instil the personal qualities that will result in them being successful.  We recognise as a school that it is difficult to develop ‘learning habits’, but this does not mean that it is something we should avoid!
An American educationalist called Art Costa carried out a great deal of research into the reasons why some people were particularly successful.  He identified 16 key ‘Habits of Mind’ that the most successful people were able to use when necessary.  It is this concept of ‘Habits of Mind’ that we are using to help us to develop the ‘learning habits’ that our students need to achieve success.

Initially, we are focusing on the Habit of Persistence which has been identified as a priority to support our students to develop.  In order to develop the ability to persist, we do the following:

·     Explicitly talk about Persistence and occasions when being able to perist is vital.
·     Plan learning activities that require persistence in order to achieve.
·     Provide students with the learning tools that will enable them to persist when they find a task to be challenging.

Ultimately, we will be able to address more and more of these ‘learning habits’ through our ongoing development, enabling us to achieve the four key aims that we have identified for Learning and Teaching at Sedgefield Community College.



Learning Together

The habit of being able to work and learn together effectively is such an important one that a whole compartment of our Learning Box is devoted to it.  We recognise that whilst students need to be able to work alone, some of the richest and deepest learning experiences come through activities where students can work and discuss together.
In order to support our students in developing the skills that will enable them to achieve when learning together, a bank of seven initial group-work strategies have been identified.  From May 2011 onwards, these will be launched across the school in all subject areas.  A short summary of the seven strategies is provided below:

Card Games
A series of strategies that would involve students working in small groups answering questions on quiz cards or organising cards into different sequences, order, etc.

One Stray
A strategy that involves students discussing an issue in groups.  At the end of a specified period of time, we would then ask one student to ‘stray’ from their original group and move to work with a new group in the class.

Round Robin
Students work on their own answer initially working in a small group.  After a specified period of time, the work would move to the next group and the new group would continue with the answer now in front of them.

Jobs for All
Students are discussing an issue in groups, but each student has a specific role.  For example, one will be the chairperson, one the scribe, one the spokesperson, etc

Showdown
All students in a group will complete a task individually.  When the teacher calls ‘Showdown’ each student will share their response with the others in their group who will then decide which is their favourite response.

Ranking Exercises
These tasks will all involve students working in groups in order to take a series of ideas and then ranking them in order of importance, relevance, etc

Talking Chips
All students in a group will have a set number of chips / tokens.  In order to speak in a discussion, students need to spend one of their talking chips to get permission to contribute.

As well as these specific strategies, we will also further develop an ethos in the school of students learning to collaborate together effectively as this is such a crucial ability for their future success.



Sedgefield Community College is committed to ensuring that the Learning and Teaching experience of our students is of the highest possible standard. In order to enable us to achieve this aim, we have created 'The Sedgefield Learning Box'. Inside our 'Learning Box' we have a wide range of learning tools that our students are supported to use within and beyond lessons and which enable them to think deeply and with great independence. As the Headteacher of SCC, I firmly believe that the development of these approaches to learning supports our students to ACHIEVE success.

Dave Davies