Building Learning Power

What is Building Learning Power?

Life long learning is our birth right. We can continually develop our capacity to learn in new and challenging circumstances throughout our life. We recognise that learning is not fixed and everyone can learn.

Building Learning Power is designed to help children learn how to learn.

Learning power involves building and developing particular habits of mind to enable young people to face difficulties calmly, confidently, and creatively and so be better prepared as lifelong learners.

Learning about learning has an impact on children’s achievements.

In the developing field of learning to learn, research suggests that there are several characteristics that we need to develop in order to become successful learners.

There are six key learning characteristics to help us become lifelong learners.

We call these the learning muscles.

We have adapted these to use at our school and practice them in our learning every day.

These characteristics are in all of us.  They are not fixed at birth, or when we leave school. They can be developed in everyone, regardless of current age or ability.

There are no limits to extending our power to learn.

We have introduced these characteristics to the children as groups of learning muscles.  Just as we can build our physical muscles by the right kind of exercise, we can also exercise our learning muscles to develop strength and stamina.

Developing the characteristics that make for success as a lifelong learner equates to achieving a good level of all-round learning fitness.

Each of the learning muscles is made up of a number of learning behaviours, which we call learning skills.

 

 

  

What do good learners do? They:
  • Question
  • Show enthusiasm
  • Embrace the task
  • Explore alternatives
  • Take Risks
  • Have Confidence
  • Have different strategies to tackle tasks
 
Learning Characters
 
We are using characters to illustrate the learning muscles and the qualities of each.  There is a display in each class showing your child's characteristics, please have a look and as your children about them.  Learning skills are specific in nature, so they can be individually trained, nurtured and exercised. 
All staff model these skills in lessons and in assemblies.