Lessons in Learning to Learn

Jackie Beere, OBE, has led learning initiatives at Campion School for the past 3 years as an AST. During that time she has devised and delivered a learning to learn course for Key Stage 3 and attempted to transform learning across the curriculum at Campion School.

This case study reflects on the experiences of a large rural comprehensive school attempting radical change. Classical music echoes softly through the corridor, children sit, stand and perch in working groups in intense discussion and animated decision making. On their desks are colourful mind maps on large whiteboards and in their planners are detailed learning profiles that can be shared with parents. All around the room there are empowering posters with significant messages like ‘Every mistake is a learning experience’ and ‘If you can dream it you can do it’. Students have models of the brain drawn in their exercise books and an emotional intelligence card stuck in the back. An unspoken instruction marshals them to begin a brain gym exercise, challenging their hands and fingers to move in opposite directions to ‘refresh’ the brain.

Although this is rather a optimistic view of a learning to learn lesson for year 7, we have made serious attempts to create a different sort of lesson that helps children investigate how they learn so that they can discover the secret pleasure of truly independent learning. An important part of each lesson is the first few moments when children are asked to complete their ‘learning log’ with three things they have learnt in the last two weeks. (This discrete lesson is run fortnightly.)

This task they struggle with, despite prompts from the teacher. ‘Haven’t you learnt anything??’ The student perception that nothing is learnt at school is a telling indictment of our content-driven curriculum which turns a budding 11 year old learner into a passive, spoon-fed test taker by 16. Little wonder that we despair of our post-16 student’s ability to think for themselves at AS level.

The idea for the ‘learning to learn’ lessons developed from early work with raising standards groups in Year 11 where accelerated learning techniques and learning style strategies seemed to improve confidence and performance. My theory was why don’t we catch them before the rot sets in?

Trying to create a ‘learning’ school at a successful well-established comprehensive with a stable staff profile has been fascinating and a truly ‘learning’ experience. We have made some progress, we have had some resistance from staff but, most importantly, the students have really enjoyed the experience.

The content of the learning to learn course includes areas such as:

• All about the brain.
• How emotions affect the brain and how to control your temper.
• We investigate the nature of intelligence. T
• he multiple intelligence model and how to use it to break down barriers to learning.
• Learning styles.
• We assess left and right brain preferences as well as visual auditory and kinaesthetic styles of learning.

The focus here is on how to use your whole brain for smarter working. Emotional Intelligence. We look at what other qualities are needed in life to be a success, as defined by Daniel Goleman - persistence, optimism, empathy, mood control, self awareness and deferred gratification. We attempt to teach these qualities explicitly and suggest that students can develop these qualities – and must if they want to succeed. We also work on thinking skills and research skills. It is taught by specialists. That is by teachers who have completed our school-based MBA module on the management of effective teaching and learning which explores the theories of accelerated learning in some depth. Lessons include the use of music (brain-wave friendly of course) and brain gym at 20 minute intervals. They always begin with a note in the learning log. The lessons are underpinned by an encouragement to engage in metacognition - standing back from the way you think and understanding it.

The ethos of the lessons revolves around a belief that children have the most powerful organ in the universe between their ears – but that they also need the manual to get the most out of it.

Comments from the floor: ‘Since I’ve been doing learning to learn I’ve grown in confidence. It’s weird, but it’s good.’ ‘Your brain is so powerful and can do anything. We need to know about our brains.’ ‘Since doing learning to learn I’ve learnt to control my temper and understand why I lose it.’ ‘I am an auditory learner and that fits with being music smart so I use music to help me learn if I get stuck - like make it into a rap.’ ‘Being a kinaesthetic learner means I learn more by doing. I understand now why I find it so hard to sit still.’

Across the curriculum it works much better if all teachers are aware and use multisensory brain friendly techniques. Knowing about how you learn can be dangerous. You may feel that copying from a book or listening to a teacher for too long doesn’t teach you anything. You may ask to create a colourful brain friendly mind map for a topic instead of listing in a linear fashion. You may ask to have a doodle page so that you can listen better to the teacher while keeping you hands busy.

You may be told to stop thinking and listen.

Students challenging teachers about how they are taught is a natural outcome of letting them into the secret of how their brain works. The advantage is that this may prompt staff to welcome training on the subject so that they know as much as the students.

At Campion this is precisely what happened. Training the staff came later. Some ‘champions’ from the MBA course led the way with examples of brain-friendly learning and, following an insight into the theories behind it, staff set themselves targets to use some innovative strategies in their own classroom. This was followed later by departments working on tired topics to reinvigorate them with visual, auditory and kinaesthetic techniques that would bring back the buzz of learning.

We are presently evaluating these experiences with some very positive results. Does it make a difference? Do we only value what is measurable? We have had to evaluate our Learning to Learn project as part of the Campaign for Learning national research publication. The results have been very positive in terms of how much students enjoyed it.

The most popular part of the course were the lessons on emotional intelligence. Tests at the end demonstrated considerable learning about how the brain worked and knowledge of their own personal learning profile.

Yes, but does it raise SATS levels?

We don’t know… and as we only do it in Year 7, we shall never know. But we still think it is worth pursuing. We now try to have learning to learn events/opportunities each year:

• Year 7 - learning to learn lesson every fortnight
• Year 8 - super learning cross curricular day
• Year 9 - learning breakthrough project for 7 days off timetable
• Year 10/11 - a KS4 option in learning to learn

Our most recent innovation has been the Year 9 Breakthrough learning project where students spent 7 school days off timetable in challenging learning projects. For example:

• Creating a website
• An expedition
• Designing and creating a school newspaper
• A drama production
• A dance production
• Animation
• Making a Film
• Environmental challenge
• Creating a yearbook
• The Italian experience

This project has made us think very carefully about the restrictions of secondary school timetabling. In the words of a student… ‘I learnt more this week than I have learnt in three years at school.’

Nuff said.

Jackie Beere

To go to Jackie Beere's profile please click here.