PREPARING TO START WORK ON YOUR LEARNING
Download the blank profile and using your understanding of the 7 dimensions described in the section Learning’s 7 Dimensions complete your profile as you perceive your learning skills to be
A specimen profile to show you how the ELLI Spidergraphic prints
If you have already done your on-line profile and know what your profile is in reality you can still put it to one side and draw your perceived profile. You can compare your perception with the ELLI reality.
NOW … think of either a friend or a member of your family and try to imagine what their profiles might look like. You can use the blank profile for this too. You might even go one stage further and think of someone with a strength, or a weakness, in each of the 7 dimensions.
WE ARE ABOUT TO OFFER YOU SOME WELL-TRIED AND TESTED IDEAS … that have been developed by experienced teachers for those new to ELLI and its ability to change the way learners approach their learning.
First though, a quick way of introducing someone new to ELLI to the way you are approaching your development as a learner. You may need this explanation as you begin to cultivate learning relationships.
ELLI is dynamic and enables teachers to track
student responses to their efforts to change learning habits and behaviours.
How?
ELLI superimposes the results of a second profile taken after a period of intervention(s)
on the original Spidergraphic profile. This enables you, as a teacher, to track the effect of the developmental interventions you have introduced and to demonstrate progress, both to your student and to yourself.
These are the 7 particular characteristics or dimensions that influence how we learn and the first is Changing and Learning but what are the other 6 in a nutshell …
We found out about whether or not you allow what you learn to help you get better at learning by using ELLI’s dimensions to determine whether or not you believe each new piece of knowledge brings about any change. You were asked to say whether …
There are no right or wrong answers so that the important thing is always to be accurate and truthful about yourself … low scores are just as important as high scores.
We are all different in our approach to learning and, added to that, our different roles within our organisations will require different and distinctive but prescriptive profiles. Also, as our roles develop and change, so will the balance of the dimensions that make up our profiles need to develop and change.
There are 72 questions within the questionnaire and there are no right or wrong answers. The most important thing, however, is for the user to be honest and truthful.
When considering reflective conversation you will find the following questions will be helpful in determining that framework:
Planning Conversations that Inspire You to Persist …
By questioning the profile shapes you begin to gain an understanding of what they might imply about you Your interrogation will help you to shape a series of questions that you could profitably pursue with friends and/or family. Remember not just to look at the strengths and weaknesses demonstrated by scores for individual dimensions but at the pattern as a whole. This is important because you will be able to use personal strengths to support the development of appropriate interventions as you work on the weaknesses. Apart from that by thinking through each profile carefully you can learn a great deal more about your approach to learning than perhaps you already knew.
Ask yourself:
Where the dimensions tend to show ‘a bit like me’ or middling scores
Ask yourself:
Ask yourself:
How about using Creativity as a starting point to demonstrate what you have in mind when it comes to action planning?
Learning to see the ‘bigger picture’
Making a start … reflecting on the ‘what’ of learning … that all-important subject-matter!
Giving students a large piece of paper encourages them to write too much. It can be a useful strategy for capturing detail, but doesn’t help when needing to weigh up what is really important.
Get your students to make notes on cards or post-its – large enough for the key points, but too small for unnecessary detail.
Encourage students to discuss what must be on their note, and what can be safely considered ‘detail’.
2. Conversions
If information is currently framed in one of the following, for example, challenge students to change it into another format of their choosing: text; mind map; flow
diagram; storyboard; graph; Venn diagram; ranked bullet points/list; video; teacher explanation; revision notes.
Consider limiting the number of words that can be used – forcing students either to limit words and/or employ images instead, encouraging them to distil what is really important and salient.
Converting information from one medium to another requires students to identify the key features. It can only be converted if it is understood, so that this technique promotes deeper learning. Where students are struggling, it can reveal misconceptions. It helps students to create revision notes for themselves, and in their preferred learning style.
Moving on to the ‘how’ of learning … a couple of well-tried and tested techniques …
1.Going for Three
Begin each lesson with ‘Tell me Three . . things we learned last lesson; ways we learned last lesson; things we still need to find out; things you hope to achieve today’.
End each lesson with ‘Tell me Three . . things we learned today; learning skills we used today; things we need to do next lesson; ways you could become a more effective learner’.
The 3 phrases in italics lift this from reflecting on content and introduces reflection on how the content was acquired.
Ensure that they tell you three. Do not lapse into doing it for them !
3. Headlines: A useful routine for capturing the key message
This routine draws on the idea of newspaper-type headlines as a vehicle for summing up and capturing the key message of an event, idea, concept, topic, etc. The routine asks one core question:
Consider following it up with the challenge of writing the first paragraph only of the newspaper article, the one that lays out all of the key information related to the headline.
This routine works especially well at the end of a class discussion or session in which students have explored a topic and gathered a fair amount of new information or opinions about it.