Characteristics for Learning

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Meet Bobby, Monty and Olly: 

Explicitly teaching children learning habits, attributes, dispositions or characteristics is common place in primary schools. However, what is important is ensuring that you involve everyone in the process when designing your method of application. This includes teachers, children and parents. We decided to base ours on the well established Characteristics for Learning outlined in the EYFS curriculum and build from there. Next we discussed what we could use to represent each characteristic. Puppets fitted the role perfectly for our Reception to Year Two children (our pilot group). Bobby the Bee concentrates, perseveres and feels proud of his/her achievements (we tried to go for gender neutral names). Monty the Monkey is curious, applies himself/herself, takes risks and is collaborative. Finally, Olly the Owl is creative, plans, makes links and is reflective. Each of the 11 learning habits were then broken down into descriptors to help children, teachers and parents identify when the habit is being used. The puppets appear in assemblies as well as in each classroom and although we introduced Bobby, Monty and Olly to the children all at once, we had a special focus on each of them for half a term to help develop a deeper understanding of their attributes. The impact has been visible from the beginning. The children are using the language of learning to articulate their thinking and they have a clear understanding of what to do next to become an even better learner. This has been a success because we have all contributed to the design and therefore have ownership of the initiative. This is a much more effective and sustainable model when attempting to embed a different way of doing things. Staff have enthusiastically gone even further by creating a bank of picture books which relate to the different characteristics. My personal favourite is Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. In addition, we have working displays in each classroom that feature our new friends and they regularly feature in our communications with home via news letters and online portfolios. I have put the links to the actual documents we made below.


We made 'buttons' for each of the eleven characteristics. Above are four examples. 

BOBBY PDF

MONTY PDF

OLLY PDF


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