Creating a Learning School - The Way Forward?

What are the Core Aims?

To shift the culture to one of ambition and independence.

To develop students as autonomous learners.

To develop the language and literacy skills of learners to equip them with more precise writing and communication skills.

To encourage staff and students to explore learning beyond the boundaries of examination specifications and to be adventurous in their teaching and learning.

Ø       Developing independent learners.

Ø       High quality teaching and learning is our number one priority.

Ø       Distributed leadership.

Ø       Using research to inform practice.

Ø       Sharing good practice.

Ø       Partnership with parents and students.

Ø       Importance of ‘how’ rather than ‘what’ we learn.

Targets and opportunities already identified to make student research and independence integral to learning at Lytchett:

Ø       Developing the use of the VLE.

Ø       Developing a culture of revision and exam preparation.

Ø       Staff buy-in to the need for change.

Ø       Homework – focus and nature (Independent Learning Tasks).

Ø       Student (and parent) understanding of subject attributes.

Ø       Finding exciting learning opportunities to develop a love of a subject.

Ø       Student (and parent) perceptions of learning, achievement and ambition.

Ø       Single subject days.

Ø       Maximising learning resources – ICT/learning opportunities/library and study facilities.

The training day gave the 'Creating a Learning School’ (CaLS) group an opportunity to launch its initiative to the staff. The inception date of the group goes back to June 2007 when we began to embrace the notion of 'Personalised Education,' a central part of the government 2004 Five Year Strategy. The key theme of the white paper involved the production of a world class education system where the 'system fits the individual' rather than the other way round. Many schools, including us, have already started to embrace this approach through the introduction of Assessment for Learning, Workforce Remodelling and reviews of curriculum provision.

In consultation with the Head, a CaLS group was formed to 'smash the culture of learning at Lytchett!'  We genuinely want our organisation to enable each individual to fulfil their potential whether their intelligence is    musical, creative, linguistic, scientific, kinaesthetic and so on. We are aware that Lytchett students can be less ambitious for themselves than we are for them! The CaLS work is therefore possibly the most exciting opportunity we have ever had in  education to carry our a wholesale rethink of what we do as educational practitioners and as an organisation.

So what has happened so far and where are we now? Initially a CaLS group (senior managers) was formed to discuss best practice both at Lytchett and in other schools. We defined a remit and established that most importantly we wanted staff to have an opportunity to be involved in a complete review of what we do and how we do it - not change for change sake, but change that positively impacted upon teaching and learning. We have reviewed how we  create Learning Classrooms (design, resources, teaching) at how we create a Learning Curriculum (innovation, timetabling, subject choice, cross curricular work) and how we create a Learning School (policies, practices and systems).

The training day gave us all taste of this innovative thinking out of which came a multitude of ideas and suggestions. We have focused carefully on how we move forward with these such that we don't suffer from initiative overload - one comment from a school was that they had more pilots than British Airways!

Excellent thanks 'team'.

 

Inspirational and energising on a Friday!!

 

Well done.

 

Simon

I really enjoyed today!

 

I hope some of these ideas will be taken on now!

 

Thanks

 

Rich

Resources from the Initial Training Day

End of Day Reflection