2.5 CREATING INTERVENTIONS

Once students have overcome the excitement of seeing their Learning Power profile and whilst their engagement remains, it is important to introduce them to the next stage in their learning journey.

The teacher will already have had conversations with students both to ensure that they have understood the messaging of the dimensions and to ready them for the work that will go into using their strengths to make good their weaknesses. In doing so, teachers will have taken into account the nature, as far as they know it, of the home environment and circumstance as well as the culture they, themselves, have created in the classroom.

Bespoke interventions are created and adopted to improve student awareness of the habits and behaviours that underpin their weaker ELLI scores, realise their impact and strive to improve them. Nonetheless, the teacher should bear in mind that learning is a continuum and that no one dimension should be viewed in isolation. Each is part of a ‘pattern of proficiency’ that has formed through the development of habits and practices adopted over time.

It does, of course, take as much time to undo bad habits and detrimental behaviours as it does to create them so that keeping the student(s) engaged and excited about making changes is critical to success. The setting of milestones and the promise of a second ELLI profile to track and record progress is found to be a vital instrument in retaining student attention.

We are using Critical Curiosity, ‘turning detective’, as the example dimension with which to share an approach to cultivating changed learning habits …

A TEACHER’S AIDE MEMOIRE …

Cultivating learning habits requires teachers to keep them ‘top of mind’ in helping students form, replace, re-form and strengthen them:

Remembering that learning habits are often copied from teachers themselves
Creative and engaging ideas for exercising learning habits make them more memorable
Infusion into lessons will help improve understanding of subject content;
Regular celebration of changes in learning habit use and student growth in application and understanding
Students to recognise when and how to use their changed learning habits
Students to take personal ownership and responsibility
Exploration of the development of learning habits with students.

MODELLING Critical Curiosity means creating a balance between expecting students to believe everything their teacher tells them without question, and challenging students to ask questions and/or find out things for themselves.

ZONING and ICONOGRAPHY

Some well-trodden ideas for bringing Learning Power to life:

ZONES because each of ELLI’s 7 dimensions is distilled into a number of learning habits and behaviours that will create social, economic, cognitive or strategic responses to situations. Collectively, they form the ‘pattern of proficiency’ that is Learning Power.

ICONOGRAPHY because icons or representative images make ELLI’s dimensions more memorable. Some teachers may find this a distraction but students often have really good ideas for suitable icons themselves. Student creativity is found to fuel a willingness to talk about learning.

LET YOUR STUDENTS TURN DETECTIVE

A number of short resources aiming to help students help themselves … to explore, experiment with and build their Critical Curiosity;

INVESTIGATE … finding out more about the meaning of Critical Curiosity
ASSEMBLE THE EVIDENCE … picking out the aspects the student needs to strengthen
INTERROGATE THE EVIDENCE… selecting ways of making the evidence admissible or creating marked improvement
BUILD THE CASE … planning action and watching personal improvement

RESILIENCE: The ‘Persistence’ Zone

Perhaps the most challenging of ELLI’s dimensions to master because it can have a major influence on Learning Power’s overall ‘pattern of learning proficiency’ …

When to persevere and when to ask for help
When to fight the fight, believing intuitively that it can be won
When an apparent threat is disguising opportunity
Understanding that making mistakes is all part of learning’s process provided that they are learned from;
Making use of Critical Curiosity, Meaning Making, Creativity, Strategic Awareness and Learning Relationships to resolve a problem.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Learning becomes a way of life