More on Independent Learning: PLTS

Following on from last week’s blog, I was moved to receive this message:

“Phil. is still very much missed and it was lovely to read that he is living on at Moorside in the form of the Learning Centre. Thanks to the dedicated staff the students can enjoy a resource that I am sure is a credit to everyone involved. I hope the PLLC goes from strength to strength.”
It’s from Sheila Morrison, Phil Lewis’s sister. It means a great deal to us that Phil’s family are following Moorside’s progress.

So with Phil in mind, I know that he would have loved the weekend conference we’ve just held for staff. You might know that Moorside’s improvement plan is divided into the SHINE priorities: Staff Effectiveness, Healthy Environment, Independent Learning, New Technologies and Extended Services. Anyway, as you’ll recall from last week, Phil rightly saw that our students were too dependent on teachers’ help and needed to learn more independently, especially if they were destined, as at least half of them are, for university. That’s why we devote so much effort to finding ways of making them more self reliant.

Coincidentally, the last government brought in a new national curriculum with a great deal of emphasis on all subjects teaching independent learning generically across the curriculum. So that’s functional skills like literacy but also Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS). These are Independent Enquiry, Teamwork, Effective Participation, Self Management, Reflective Learning and Creative Thinking.

Jeff Allan has been leading us on this and we’ve made good progress with staff targeting PLTS in their planning and students using their learning passports and an on line system to assess themselves.

But it’s still a bit patchy.

To be honest, not all subjects are on board yet, so we need a big push this year to teach these vital skills consistently in all lessons. It’s the sort of challenge we thrive on because of the top priority we give to teaching an learning and our culture of staff willingly sharing their good practice with each other.
After a lot of thought, Jeff and I decided that staff needed an extended period of quality time together to decide on a whole school policy for PLTS and a toolkit for all staff to teach and assess them. So we took a gamble by deciding to invite people to a Friday evening/Saturday morning conference on PLTS.

This would mean working what amounts to a six day week and constraining precious weekend hours with friends and family. And, if you’re a young newly qualified teacher, losing that Saturday morning lie in you need to compensate for the long hours of lesson planning. We invited the Teaching and Learning Focus group first because they’re the powerhouse behind classroom innovation and then threw it open to all classroom based staff. Oh, and we also offered 6 places to Consett Community Sports College as part of both schools’ strategy to bring people together in the run up to the academy. More of that later.

Anyway, we received a great response – every place was taken- and, even though I haven’t seen the evaluations yet, I’m pretty sure that we hit the bullseye. The level of debate was very high and I think the plans we made will have the required impact across all subjects. The opening session seemed to go especially well because Jeff and I volunteered all of the leadership team to teach mini lessons, each one featuring at least one of the PLTS. So this meant that the staff had to pretend to be the students so that they could see learning from their point of view and also decide how the ideas could be transferred to their own subjects. So together we learnt Design Technology, English, Maths, History and Drama and the experience made me think how exciting it must be to be a pupil at Moorside moving from one fascinating lesson to another.

So we moved a long way on PLTS in just a couple of days and by Saturday lunchtime the policy and toolkits were in the bag.

But successful conferences like this also have a huge team building effect because of the rich opportunities to work with friends from other subjects. They also show the commitment of staff (and can I just say that all of our 5 very busy newly qualified staff gave up their time to attend) who are prepared to sacrifice their entitlement to free time for the good of the students.

But back as promised to CCSC.

The presence of six colleagues from Consett added a new dimension to the event and led to very valuable sharing of ideas. And I must say that if their professionalism is indicative of the CCSC ethos, and I hear that it is, then the combined power of the two schools will be truly awesome.

To put it bluntly, if we can’t make the Consett Academy work, nobody can.