Thursday, 10 September 2015

What's a Learning Pit?

Well - we unpacked that as a class last week resulting in the language being used in our target planning and daily reflections. The joy comes in hearing learners unpack the concept in a blog post or in their weekly iReflect.




We are beginning to celebrate learners struggling. Students are happy to share their struggle and how they got out of the pit. This is seen to be a 'real' learning experience. Anyone who dos not go into the pit is not doing 'real' learning in our class!

My perfect example this last week was of a G & T student who just opted out of a Gloss question as he 'couldn't do it'. As we had our display on the wall, I could walk him up to it and point out where he was in the 'Learning Pit'. We looked at the strategy took kit and I told him, 'no giving up but use a strategy please'. Guess what happened then? He proceeded to, with some effort, complete two more questions. For me this was such a clear example of a 'clever kid' not wanting to be seen to struggle.

Even today, another student was evaluating the 'depth' of the learning pit she was in. It was applying previous knowledge to the tricky new context of weaving a flax 'pop-up' kete (a skill that took me weeks to learn). Because she was enjoying the challenge, even though it was hard, she didn't see it as a deep pit, only a small pit! You might hear about that in this week's reflection!

Check out some reflection on what the 'Learning Pit' looks like in our class learning.



Next Steps:
Introduce the concept of 'What did you struggle with today?
Keep promoting the language and value of 'The Learning Pit' and how it relates to a Positive Mindset.
Take photos of students in "the Learning Pit' so we can write about, acknowledge and celebrate their challenges.
Look for more evidence of a negative mindset amongst the G & T and other students in my class so we can act on it.

We still need to..
Introduce a conceptual dilemma and see how we respond. Can we relate it to the Learning Pit?