from ES4S

This months focus is ..........

Questions for consideration: Which aspects of your curriculum offer most opportunities for rigorous learning and why? Which aspects offer the least opportunities and what can be done to change this? How are we, as a team of professionals, tracking the purpose of learning activities against the 3 types .... Input, process and output learning? What do we need to do, as a school, to increase rigorous learning for all pupils
Professional development for next year Can ES4S support you in promoting and developing rigorous learning across the curriculum? If you have been interested in the article on rigour in learning, you might like to consider the CPD session .....

It has to be rigorous (Part 2)

In last month's e-article, we began to consider the components of rigorous learning. Not every learning experience will be, or should be, rigorous in nature, but it is essential that a school operates with an understanding of rigorous learning and that staff are regularly planning and offering learning processes that go towards building a rigorous curriculum. Rigour in learning comes about as a combination of 3 essential components .... The depth of thinking promoted within an experience, the degree of application required within the experience and the level of affectiveness, or engagement, that the experience promotes within the learner. A simple audit will begin to show what types of learning experiences and activities are being offered to young learners. Staff can begin to track the level of rigorous learning experiences across the curriculum and whether some subject areas, by nature, lend themselves to more rigorous learning than others. In any classroom, and at any age, the pupils will be offered one of three types of learning experience or activity: 1. Input learning ...... Activities that are very much about revisiting and practicing the gain of knowledge in a specic curriculum area. This can be referred to as acquisition. 2. Process learning ..... Experiences that require the pupils to use a wider range of thinking skills, including comparing, contrasting, analysing, synthesising and reasoning, within a specic curriculum area. This can be referred to as assimilation. 3. Output learning .... Learning activities that involve the higher-order skills of evaluation, judgement, creative thinking, imagining and prediction in real-life, problemsolving situations. This can be referred to as adaption. So, what percentage of the learning activities offered in literacy are output learning as opposed to input learning? Do you have a balance? Rigorous learning is meaning-based, focuses on the thinking process, poses big questions and is authentic in nature. It is real and relevant to the young learners and increases levels of affectiveness because it is something that is worthwhile. Finally, if we are genuine about our desire to offer rigorous learning, it should start with adult learning and professional development. There is a need to ensure that whoever is responsible for planning and developing CPD experiences should be considering the elements of rigour and how they will offer this to a fellow group of professionals.

Making it rigorous
If ES4S can support you with this or any other future developments, please contact us. Alternatively, you can view our new CPD ebrochure at www.es4s.co.uk

A quote for your staffroom/ learning lounge .....

'The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.' Harry S Truman
Recommended website ....... A really popular and excellent place for le sharing and storage of those large documents. No need to e-mail the document, just place it in .... www.dropbox.com

Recommended book ...... A really good book that explores how teachers can support pupils in asking their own, worthwhile questions. Make just one change (Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana) ISBN - 978-1-61250-099-7

ES4S
e-mail : ofce@es4s.co.uk. Call us : 01202 267066. Web : www.es4s.co.uk
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April 2012

E-Article