How can I prepare children to be successful in life?” has often been a question that has kept me awake at night. What does and should “success” mean for a primary school child at the age of 11, especially when they are about to transfer to secondary?
Identifying the issue I faced at my previous school – a 250-pupil junior school in south London – was simple. Many of our children found it very difficult to talk about their learning. They seemed to lack the skills needed to identify what success means and what was required of them to move their work on – what we ended up calling “The Learning Habit”.
As a year 6 teacher, that issue became even more significant for me when our children who had moved on to year 7 later came back telling us how secondary school life came to them as a shock and that, quite frankly, we hadn’t prepared them for the change of “culture”.
It was difficult for me to hear that we too had ignored that traumatic key stage 3 dip that so many talk and write about, but rarely have a plan to address.
I have always been determined to do what I can to develop children’s self-leadership skills. Since moving to the UK from France in 2001 and completing my PhD in this area, I have focused my attention on teaching as facilitation of learning, seeing it as coming from within the child rather than from the teacher.
When I joined the Future Leaders programme just over a year ago, one of my leadership initiatives focused on children becoming leaders of their own learning. We developed a plan to support the transfer over to secondary and shared this with the children, making it clear that we would support them to talk more about their work and their targets.
Our first approach was to introduce a much clearer “assessment” focus strategy both at the beginning and end of teaching cycles. Whether it was maths, writing or art, when beginning a topic the children would be required to produce mind-maps/learning clouds, following a four-step approach.
After individually producing a mind-map of their own understanding and knowledge of a particular topic (step one), children then complemented their mind-maps by talking to their peer next to them, sharing and discussing ideas with one another (step two).
Step three took this discussion wider, with children discussing among their tables, before finally a teacher guided students to work together as a class to produce a “class mind-map” (step four).
Alongside this, we used the resources provided on the free Khan Academy website (www.khanacademy.org) to further develop pupils’ self-directed and collaborative work in maths lessons. The interactive nature of the platform allows children to work on activities relevant to their learning gaps, really driving progress from every child.
At times, children with a sound knowledge of certain maths concepts would sit next to those needing support and “coach” them through the Khan Academy activities, therefore enabling me to support others in smaller “targeted” groups.
As a result, we were really able to focus on progress in every lesson. The resources also led to a greater sense of motivation in all my pupils who, as they could access the website at home, would often spend triple the amount of time they normally would doing maths homework per week. Unsurprisingly, this extra work by the children contributed to the acceleration of progress for most.
As a result of our strategies, all children were able to start identifying gaps in their learning. One case that particularly stands out is a pupil who found it very hard to talk about her learning, and who would often make only very general statements about her work – “I could make my work more interesting” is something she would often say to me.
She found it very hard to come to school motivated, and when I asked her what she wanted her work to look like, she would often respond by just saying “I’m not sure”.
However, by using the mind-map approach, she was able to jot down key-words, ideas, concepts and examples at the beginning of every topic and clearly answer the question: “What do I know?” With the continued support from her teacher, she was then able to identify the key areas she had to focus on in order to move on her own learning.
Her progress was immediately noticeable. She regularly referred to her mind-map, checking to see what areas she had to concentrate on and adding to it as new learning took place. As a result, she soon became very articulate about what “success” meant or could mean. She knew that she had to “push herself” in places that she had identified as her own areas for development.
In writing, it meant concentrating on her use of ambitious sentence openers and attention-grabbing descriptions. “This is pupil-led learning” is what you would often hear me say to her. “And this is what you will get when you move to secondary. You won’t have a teacher always telling you what to do.”
She began to comment that she knew where she was going – and wanted to go – and what she needed to work on to get there. As a teacher, I felt I could step back and watch her grow in confidence.
When looking back to where we started, it was really rewarding to see children begin to talk openly about their learning and development. Whole-school displays throughout the corridors kept at the forefront what “progression” means in different areas of learning, and gradually the idea of self-leadership became ingrained into our school culture.
These processes, along with asking children to grade themselves under 20 headings of “What makes good learning” helped them to really focus on their learning habits and, as far as our older pupils were concerned, consciously prepare themselves for secondary. We began to say goodbye to our year 6 pupils, confident that they were ready for the challenges that awaited them.
And for teachers, as well as making their experience much more enjoyable at times, the above techniques enabled our staff to focus on what is the main priority of their job: teaching. Mind-map sessions gave teachers the opportunity to listen in on the discussions taking place between children, and spot areas of need that they had to work on, both with individual students and for the class as a whole. As a result, our staff became better facilitators of learning, and Assessment for Learning tightened across all subjects.
Ultimately, these techniques have taught me that learning is a two-way process. You can bring “success” to children, but you can’t give it to them. They have to be prepared to grab it with their own hands. They have to be encouraged to take charge of their learning, and that’s where we as teachers can make all the difference.
- Sebastien Chapleau, a graduate of the Future Leaders programme, has just been appointed headteacher of Bromley Bilingual School in south London. He carried out this work in his previous position as a senior leader at another primary school in south London.
Future Leaders
The Future Leaders programme is a leadership development programme for aspiring headteachers of challenging schools across England. It offers a residency year in a challenging school, personalised coaching and peer-support. For more information, visit www.future-leaders.org.uk