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Indicator thread 6.1 is about:
Adapting the taught curriculum.
This progression of indicators considers how the taught curriculum is being adapted to cultivate and build progress in the development of learning habits.
Indicator 6.1(bronze) says:
6.1b. The school is exploring adapting its curriculum to accommodate the systematic development of students’ learning habits
The key words are ‘exploring adapting its curriculum’.
This section explores what this means in practice.
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Prelude – Questions about lesson design
In conventional lessons where the teacher remains the focus of attention and the initiator of all activity, and where the epistemic dimension (the conditions for acquiring knowledge) is not acknowledged, pupils gain habits of compliance and dependence, rather than curiosity and self-reliance.
In developing learning power, teachers are making conscious choices about which habits to introduce and stretch and how best to couple these with content so that lessons become more interesting and challenging. Through such overt coupling of content and specific types of process, pupils come to know, understand and take control of their learning behaviours – they knowingly use and develop the whole range of learning behaviours.
All lessons function on two levels, they have twin intentions. On the one hand there is content to be acquired, and on the other there are learning behaviours to be exercised in pursuit of this content. The factor that differentiates a standard lesson that effectively ‘delivers the content’ from a learning powered lesson is that the teacher has to think, in advance, about:
- the learning behaviours that are necessary for successful content acquisition;
- the design of activities /tasks that will stimulate these behaviours;
- how learners could reflect on and evaluate their use of these behaviours.
In designing such lessons you have to dare to think differently and flip round your usual lesson design thinking.
[twocol_one]A turn-around in lesson design
Think in two dimensions at once – the content dimension and the learning behaviour dimension. It means turning your thinking around – from teaching to learning.
[/twocol_one_last] [twocol_one]Or put another way
Think to yourself;
- what content?
- using which learning behaviour(s)?
- via an activity to stretch both?
What this means in practice
In time, all curriculum / lesson plans will be adapted to ensure that both the content and the required learning behaviours are made visible to the learners.
At this exploratory stage, it means that a few (lead) teachers are starting to identify, in advance of the lesson, which learning behaviours are going to be required and are alerting learners to both the content of the lesson and the requisite learning behaviours.
These (lead) teachers are asking themselves:
- what content?
- using which learning behaviour(s)?
They are experimenting with learning intentions that link both content and learning behaviours.
At this stage, it may be as simple as changing a learning intention from:
- To understand XXXXX
to
- Use your Reasoning skills to understand XXXX
(where Reasoning is the learning behaviour required for successful understanding)