Putting It Into Practice: Student-Centred Learning

By Holly Youlden

At the start of term, we spoke at length about the importance of learning being student-centred. In this blog post, we are going to explore some of the ways you can put pedagogy into practice by looking at staff reflections, reading, and top tips! 

Staff reflections: 

Having spent a year exploring the topic of “student-centred learning” with their Professional Learning Community (PLC), Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara summarised what this meant in their CPD session during INSET. They summarised what student centred learning means and does not mean in our context in this table: 

What ‘student centred’ does mean in our context

What ‘student centred’ doesn’t mean in our context

Students are given lots of opportunities to talk to each other through pair or group discussion When group work does take place it is well scaffolded and structured Students are given opportunities to reflect on how they might approach a task before doing it Students work on tasks that are appropriate for their ability levels and needs Students have some sense of autonomy over their learning. They feel empowered.

It doesn’t mean there is no teacher talk - direct instruction is extremely valuable when teaching new concepts or modelling It doesn’t mean there is no scaffolding or structure to lessons  It doesn’t mean group work every lesson It doesn’t mean that different groups of students should always be doing something different from each other. It doesn’t mean that students are completely in control of the classroom It doesn’t mean students need to ‘discover’ new learning for themselves. We still need to teach them things.

(From C. Dunn’s “Student-Centred Learning” CPD, 1st September 2022) 

Reflecting on the training, Jenny Scott said her biggest takeaway was “the idea of using choice (which makes a task more student-centred) as a form of differentiation. For example, in the past I have commonly included a gap fill task followed by a stretch question, but what if the more able students could choose to do the more advanced question instead of the gap fill, rather than as an additional task? A consideration that was discussed around this was students choosing an option that wasn't actually the best task for their level, so this is something that I am excited to trial in my lessons in future and see how I can best overcome this hurdle.”. 

Similarly, Jojo Laber from Maths said that this session helped her realise that, “facilitating a student-centred learning environment is more natural than you'd think! Although at first impression it may seem like there's more work involved, it actually becomes a much less energy-demanding lesson when you're sure that the students know what direction to take their learning in for that lesson. It provides the opportunity for students to take ownership of what they're learning and therefore feel more encouraged to engage well throughout the lesson.”

How can I learn more?

Try reading…

• Blog post from Andrew Moore about student-centred scaffolding

• Blog post from Flo Rayner about group work

• CPD slides from Charlotte Dunn and Maya Amara about using choice to make lessons more student-centred

• Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn R. Jackson (Professional Learning Library)

• Teaching Walkthrus by Efrat Furst, Clare Sealy, Dylan Wiliam, and Kate Jones (Professional Learning Library)

• Student-centred page on the Professional Learning Platform

Try speaking to…

• Charlotte Dunn- English

• Maya Amara- Maths

• Georgina Abbott- Expressive Arts

• Dipesh Patel- Science

Please share any great examples of student-centred learning with me at h.youlden@westminsteracademy.org.uk!

Bitesize Research: Effective Peer Assessment

By Jaya Carrier

I hope you’re all having a great week so far. As part of our work around assessment, I was interested to come across a recent Edutopia article about effective peer assessment.

Objectives: To consider the barriers and strategies for effective peer assessment 

Summary: 

• The author argues that effective peer assessment has a large number of benefits including enabling more time for low stakes assessments and independent practice, as well as ensuring greater degrees of accountability from students.

• The author argues that one of the barriers to effective peer assessment is that sometimes adolescents can be sensitive to criticism and that they can worry about critiquing the work of their friends. To combat this, she argues that scaffolding the process of peer assessment and ensuring a safe and secure classroom is essential. 

• The author goes on to make six recommendations for effective peer assessment practice:

1. Focus on reflection on correction - in particular, encourage students to give their peers very clear next steps about how to improve

2. Create feedback partners - which ensures that adolescent social dynamics do not impede impactful feedback

3. Offer choice - this could include different prompts or sentence starters based around common mistakes or areas for development

4. Specificity is important - emphasise the idea that feedback needs to be constructive and precise

5. Model effective feedback - verbally or using sentence starters

6. Harness deeper engagement - consider how you can use starters such as ‘I wish, I like, I wonder’ rather than getting students to focus on spelling, punctuation or grammar errors. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What is important about peer assessment to me? For my subject? For my classes?

• Which of the 6 recommendations am I currently doing well? Which would I like to learn more about and implement further? 

• What opportunities are there for me to use these strategies with my students?

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you

Collaboration & Group Work

 By Flo Rayner

“I hate group work!”

It’s possible that the above statement could be heard coming from both students and teachers alike. Group work and collaboration are often approached with caution and apprehension by both leaders and learners in the classroom. However, it is an essential element of classroom teaching, particularly when considering a student-centered approach.

Why? It seems that lots of students are averse to working in groups during lessons and this could be due to a range of concerns:

1. It is possible that students may worry that they will undertake the majority of the work required and so view it as unfair that other members of their group will benefit from this.
2. There may be a level of anxiety for a young person about who they are working with; are they friends, have they had experience (good or bad) working with this person before, will they feel their voice is being heard?
3. Many students, particularly high achieving and independent learners may simply feel that they would just do better if they worked on their own.

It’s not only students that are opposed to group work. Many teachers feel apprehensive towards group work in the classroom for a number of reasons: Relinquishing control in the classroom could present behavioural challenges, particularly with early career teachers, there is a fear that students will not cover the required material/content if they are not fully focused, as well as teachers feeling out of practice after a long period of teacher-led learning due to Covid restrictions. Why is group work important? Having considered these concerns it is important to discuss why we need to push through these barriers and continue to include collaborative learning and group work opportunities in our lessons.

• Life long learners: By working as a team, children can develop important skills such as listening and leadership whilst also developing their confidence, skills which they will use forever.
• Engagement: When taking an active role in their learning students will be more engaged, which will, in turn, lead to higher attainment.
• Ownership: With this student-centered focus, learners will be able to take more ownership over their learning and take pride in their successes, a feeling of autonomy has been proved to have strong links with increasing the motivation of learners.
• Authenticity: Collaboration will allow students to discuss new ideas in a low-stakes way with their peers, facilitating a more authentic process of production, as well as exposing students to a wider range of ideas and thought processes than just that of the teacher.

What might we consider when setting up group work in our classrooms? Grouping: When selecting groups or pairs, it is important to think carefully about these arrangements in advance of the lesson to both help a smooth setting up of the task, as well as to ensure students can work together. You could think about grouping by ability, keeping ability groups separate, or ensuring mixed ability groups to allow support and stretch for all students. It is important to consider class dynamics; are students likely to work with people they are friends with or is it more important to separate potential behaviour pitfalls? Instructions: Clarity is key. Keep the instructions short and simple. It works well to have 3 or 4 clear instructions, displayed throughout the task to help remind students of the expectations and goals. If they are unsure of what to do next they have something to refer back to. Assigning roles: It could be helpful to have set roles for each member of the group. This helps learners to feel empowered about their particular area of the task and avoids any potential ‘freeloaders’. Leonie Hall also discussed the possibility of allowing students to work independently on their own area of the task, but insisting that each separate part must fit in cohesively with the other members’ work at the end. Accountability: Several theorists argue that the most important part of successful group work is the idea of accountability. If students feel like something is at stake, this will increase their motivation to complete the task. Are they going to have to present their work to the rest of the class? Are they going to be graded on their group work? Is there a prize for the most successful group? It is important, however, to tread the fine balance between providing an element of accountability and removing some anxiety for any students who feel like their overall grade could be brought down through no fault of their own. Timings: Limiting the time of tasks and making this visible to students creates a sense of pace and urgency for the task, which in turn helps keep students engaged and should help avoid students going too far off task. How can we include collaborative opportunities?

• Think, Pair, Share (Short and snappy, students are asked a question, they have time to think, time to share with the person next to them before sharing with the teacher)

• Mini whiteboards (Similar to above, students can write their answer, then compare with the person next to them, then they can present their answer to the teacher)

• Treasure hunt (This is good for recognition or comprehension. Students can be paired or in groups, they are presented with questions or things to find. A number of texts / images are pinned around the room which contain the answers. Only one student is allowed out of their seat at a time, they find the answer around the room and bring it back to their team. Like a relay, another member of the team can then leave and find the next answer. 3 simple rules: 1 student out at a time, no shouting across the classroom, 2 yellow cards and you’re out).

• Running dictation (Similar to above, but they have to retain information from what they have read around the room and report it back word for word to their partner/team. The team which is first with the correct transcription/translation wins.)

• Teach the rest of the group (The best way to consolidate the learning of something is to teach it to someone else. Groups of students could be assigned a topic, and present this to the rest of the class. A whole host of assigned roles could be employed here. Could work as an introduction to a topic using research as well as a revision exercise).

• Why? (This is an idea used by Leyla Marasli, who has highlighted the benefit in any group work of having a ‘Why?’ person. This person’s job is to ask why at every step of the task to ensure that all students in the group can follow the thought process as well as ensuring students can explain how they reached a certain conclusion. A very low-stakes way to include all students and to ensure stretch and depth of learning.)

Further reading:

• Sharan, Y (2015) ‘Meaningful learning in the cooperative classroom’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Lehraus, K (2015) ‘How to integrate cooperative skills training into learning tasks: an illustration with young pupils' writing’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Isaac, M. (2012). "I Hate Group Work!" Social Loafers, Indignant Peers, and the Drama of the Classroom. English Journal, 101(4), 83-89.