I was lucky enough to attend a free lecture from Guy Claxton
titled - The Learning Prepared School at The University of Hertfordshire on
March 6th. For those of you who do not know who Guy Claxton, he is the person who
invented Building Learning Power or BLP for short. This looks at how students
can be trained to become better more independent learners and how to build a
learning to learn culture within schools. If you want to know more I recommend
reading his book Building Learning Power: Helping Young People Become Better
Learners.
BLP has been a feature at my school for a couple of years
now and there is an expectation that we should put BLP into our lessons. I have
until recently put it in but as an afterthought i.e. we are looking at tactics
for defending in basketball, that fits nicely with students having to
collaborate together. This is almost like a tick box exercise and I hate that,
so I want to change it.
Since attending the lecture I have been thinking about how I
can really improve BLP within my lessons so that it has a real impact on
student attainment and engagement. Inspired somewhat by one of the members of
staff I have coached, I have decided I am going to start with BLP at the centre
of my planning, work out what BLP skills the students need to be successful in
the sport that I we are working on and then build the learning experience
around how to develop those skills whilst also developing their physical sills
at the same time.
It’s a bit like deliberate practice, although hopefully I
will see an impact before 10,000 hours practice! I will keep you all updated on
how it has gone.
