The Learning Pit

Recently I have been doing observations in other schools - I will delve further into this in another post.  One of the schools that I visited was a MLE and was said to be an outstanding school.  As a result of having been at that school and having viewed their learning in practice I was doing some research around MLE when I came across the article Modern Learning Environments – the underlying philosophy to success. On this webpage there was a mention of the 'Learning Pit' - something that all learners must go through in order to achieve success.  I was interested in this concept as it seemed to align with the 4E's that my students now assess themselves on at the end of every lesson.  When researching this further I found both a presentation by the person who created the concept of the 'Learning Pit' and a research article written on it.

Attached are the presentation and the research article:
Presentation
Research article

Within the research article there was a diagram that helped me understand the four stages of the learning pit and begin to understand how these linked in with the 4Es that I ask my students to work with each day.

I will be going through this with my students on Monday and looking at how this works and ties in with the style of learning that they are doing currently.

The Four Stages of the Learning Pit

Stage 1: CONCEPT
The Learning Pit begins with a concept. The concept can come from the media, conversation, observations or deliberate study. So long as most pupils have a basic understanding of the concept, then the Learning Pit can work. Examples of the sorts of concepts that might be suitable can be found later in this article, as well as in Challenging Learning. 

Stage 2: CONFLICT
As soon as a concept has been agreed, the teacher’s responsibility is to create ‘cognitive conflict’ in pupils’ minds. Cognitive conflict arises when people have at least two opinions in their minds, both of which they agree with but that both of which are in conflict with each other. For example, I agree that stealing is wrong but I also think that Robin Hood was a good man; I agree with both statements even though they are in conflict with each other.

Stage 3: CONSTRUCT
Giving students the opportunity and reason to construct meaning for themselves is the raison d’être of the Learning Pit. After they have struggled in the Pit for a while, some of students will begin to make meaning. Some may even have a ‘Eureka’ moment. This is at the heart of the Learning Pit and is explored later in this article.

Stage 4: CONSIDER
The final stage encourages pupils to reflect on how their thinking has changed, been adapted, assimilated and / or constructed throughout the course of the lesson. Thinking about thinking, or metacognition, is a crucial factor in the learning process. The Learning Pit provides a frame of reference to help structure this metacognitive reflection for pupils. 

Helping the children to help themselves

The whole idea with POGIL is that it is very inquiry centred - students push themselves to learn and question each other to develop higher order thinking.  It is fair to say that I threw my students straight into the deep end with this one - we had looked at questioning each other whilst working with me but their follow up tasks had very nearly all been individual activities.  Last week they were expected to participate in the same level of discussion when they were not with me as when they were with me - looking back I may not have given them the correct level of scaffolding around this and so this week I have aimed to do things slightly differently.

To introduce the tasks, especially in maths, I had them brainstorm their prior knowledge and then research what they were being asked to do - I did not direct them with where to go for the research or how they should undertake this.  I think this was the part that the students found most difficult - not surprising considering for the past five years at school they have been given the content and told exactly where to do and exactly when to do it.  This week I am going to explore using their weebly to help guide their research - put them onto websites that I think are age and stage appropriate that hook their interest in an engaging but meaningful way. I think that for maths this will help them begin the week with more confidence.  During the week and after their first teacher session the students were all feeling much more confident and working well in groups.  One group was multiplying fractions by whole numbers and started off with equation such as 7/5 x 6 and 6/9 x 15.  This group is not known to naturally extend themselves, however after discussion in their group and working out these problems they came to me with more complex problems that they had taken turns to write and solve such as 8/5 x 320 - and asked me to provide them with more challenging tasks along the same line.  It was great to see them pushing themselves and each other to develop success - they were working effectively as a team and not one child was left behind.

I found that reading was a lot easier to get straight into, as we were already following our future learning process of "plan it, find it, sort it, use it, evaluate it" in our reading programme.  The children were up to the use it part of this process and used POGIL as a way to change their thinking on how they could present their information.  All of the students had at first decided that they would make posters - but began to challenge each other to create and share their learning in a way that would influence others also.  As a result of this, and the guidance that the students were provided with they began to discuss a variety of ways that they could share some information.  Groups are doing Pontoons, making videos, slide shows, songs and one group is still making a poster - but have just changed how they are doing this in a way that is visually appealing.  These students can express why they have chosen their method and what it will make people who view it think about - they are engaged with their own learning at a much higher level than simply recalling knowledge.

The student discussion within the reflection period of each session is also much richer.  Within the last five minutes of each subject block I am now hearing discussions about what made them work effectively, what they need to improve on for next time, how they think that they could have made that session more effective - and what level of understanding they have reached about a particular subject. The students begged to continue with this style of learning on Friday - so whilst we may only be beginning to crawl at the moment, the students are engaged, challenging each other and taking ownership for their learning - the building blocks of what I believe to be the most important aspects for POGIL to be applied successfully within a classroom.

With parent pupil discussions coming up this week, the next task is to convince the parents of the benefits of this learning style - and hope that they buy into it as much as myself and their children have.

Children begin POGIL.

This morning in class the students had their first experience of POGIL - as it was an introductory exercise the children completed fun team building activities to introduce them to the concept of working in teams after watching fun animated videos of what team work involved.

The discussions around what team work involved were very interesting as the children came up with ideas such as collaboration and supporting each other, challenging each other and individual responsibility as all being key factors in team work - ideas that were very prominent in the reading about POGIL also.

Here are a few things that the children had to say about what they learnt from this morning - and how they think they could put this to play in their normal classroom.

Process-Orientated Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL)

One of my goals for next term is to be having my students working in a much more student directed/led manner.  Obviously after numerous years schooling where the traditional model is followed of the teacher directing learning this is a skill that needs to be taught.  At the moment there are processes in place whereby the students are working towards this and I am acting as a facilitator.  After some discussion with my tutor teacher about how we could further enhance this practice in my classroom we stumbled across POGIL.  It looked very similar to what we had been discussing and so I decided to research it.  After reading a 40 odd page document I am hooked and very excited to try this within my classroom - however also very aware that it may not work and may require a lot of work for it to look how I want it to look.  I have decided that taking it step by step is the easiest way to get around this and so doing the reading POGIL guide and introducing the concept of learning to my class are the two steps for this week.

The reading was related more to secondary schools and so I have taken from it what I believe to be applicable to my classroom.  Whilst there are many points made these were the ones that stood out for me:

- Students working in learning teams (organised in a very similar way to a sports team).  Whilst my students are currently in learning groups and they areal working on the same content and having discussions it is still very individualised.
- Having the students apply the notion of the learning cycle of the 4Es to each piece of work - and to evaluate themselves and each other against this at the end of each session - thereby giving themselves feedback with which to begin the next session.
 - Ensuring that relevant focus is placed upon both content and process - the process relating to how the children apply the content - and ideally the higher up Blooms taxonomy the better
 - The importance of connecting prior learning, visualising concepts, interacting with others and taking on a variety of roles and assessing themselves
 - Ensuring that tasks set for the students require them to apply their knowledge within directed, convergent and divergent discovery settings
 - The use of graphic organisers to allow students to extend on their working memory
 - For the success of one, all have to achieve individual and group success - the notion that responsibilities in a team are both to ensure you are able to be successful and that others are also able to be successful.  Interdependence between the team whilst still maintaining individual accountability.
 - That the learning process may be flipped and twisted - it does not have to always follow a linear model and in some cases it is not most beneficial to do so.

Obviously however I cannot provide the students with this list and tell them to get to work in a POGIL styled classroom.  Therefore the second step for me is how I am going to introduce this learning style to my classroom.  As I have decided this is extremely influential in how my students might learn and how much they benefit from being in my class I have dedicated tomorrow morning to exploring this concept in a fun manner - so that the students can identify what is needed for them to achieve success in child speak.

As a class we are going to watch the videos on the children's class weebly Learning Teams and discuss teamwork and collaboration before carrying out fun activities that require them to put into practice what they have observed in videos.  After this the students will think, pair, share what they found to be effective in working as a team - and record their ideas for the classroom.  The children will mark themselves on how "strong" their team was based on the following table How strong is your team? before being introduced to their 'Four E' cards that they will begin using from Monday.

Hoping the children buy into this and become as excited as it as I am!