49th IATEFL Conference and Exhibition Gail Ellis & Nayr Ibrahim “Teaching Children how to learn’’

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2015/session/teaching-children-how-learn

Gail Ellis and Nayr Ibrahim both work at the British Council in Paris. Gail Ellis is adviser for Young Learners and Quality. She has more than 30 years teaching experience and her publishing career includes well-read and much-loved books such as  the Primary English Teachers Guide  by Penguin Longman.   

Nayr Ibrahim is Head of the Young Learners and Bilingual section. She is multilingual herself and has vast experience of learning and teaching languages. In her PhD she explores the link between trilingualism, triliteracy and identity.  

The two ladies spoke on behalf of Delta Publishing as they are co-authors of the book  Teaching Children How to Learn: Plan, Do, Review, which will come out in June 2015. For sample pages and more on the book, you can visit:

 http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/titles/methodology/teaching-children-how-to-learn

The paper the speakers presented was based on their own teaching experience and their work at the British Council Paris. The session started with the speakers pointing out that there is a concept that learning is something which takes place in the heads of the learners. Therefore, the teacher cannot learn for the learner. This leads us to notice a gap between learning and teaching which learners have to negotiate in order to acquire new skills and language. The teacher’s part is to help learning by creating optimal conditions for teaching, learning and interaction. I found these points particularly interesting as they connected the content of this session with aspects presented in the two first plenaries of this conference.   

What is learning to learn?

Learning to learn is an umbrella term which encompasses a wide variety of activities concerned with the process of learning. It aims to focus learners’ attention on how they learn, what they learn and lead them into becoming more independent learners by consciously developing their own learning skills. 

The speakers quoted Bruner (1966) who pointed out that the ultimate goal of instruction is to make the learners independent so that the presence of a teacher is no longer necessary for learning to occur. 

  

Therefore, learning to learn, which is not a new concept underpins all learning. It is linked with learner autonomy and it takes into account the fact that learners develop at different rates and have different learning preferences.  

 

Teachers’ opinions regarding learning to learn strategies

Teachers seem to have strong views regarding learning to learn and are hesitant to use it. Some of the opinions teachers have regarding learning to learn are the following:

• We didn’t learn that way – It is uncomfortable to implement the unfamiliar
• The children are too young for that
• It is time-consuming
• We would need to use the mother tongue
• Our materials don’t show us how to do it.   

From these quotes it can easily be seen that the main obstacle is teacher unfamiliarity with learning to learn and the general lack of training in implementing it. 

The importance of learning strategies

The speakers quoted Ana Chamot (IATEFL 2014) who sees learning strategies as efforts made by the learners to learn. There are four main categories of learning strategies

• Metacognitive
• Cognitive
• Socio-affective
• Communication

The speakers identified the two first as the focus of this session. Metacognitive Learning Strategies are concerned with leading the learners to think about their own learning, to plan, monitor and evaluate their progress. Cognitive strategies are task specific and involve learners in doing things with the language. They are learning materials which are related to skills’ areas. It is easy for any teacher to notice that learners get a lot of implicit practice in developing their cognitive strategies as this training is embedded in tasks such as sorting, classifying, listening for specific information, predicting. On the other hand, the metacongitive dimension is missing from the classroom situation and the materials. Therefore, the learners get no explicit information on the strategies they are using and why. Moreover,they are not encouraged to reflect on their learning. The speakers pointed out that it is the teachers’ role to incorporate this missing metacognitive side. 

Learning to learn activities

In order for learning to learn to be implemented, the speakers have devised activities which are based on the following pedagogical principles. 

• There are different modes of input to present language and there are different types of response to the input (differentiated output)
• The two first premises allow teachers to create an inclusive learning environment which accommodates different learning preferences and learning styles.
•  Each activity is linked to an English Language Portfolio which is a very important part of the writers’ work. The portfolio organizes the learners’ work, it helps them talk about it and account for their learning, while it allows them to take pride in it. Last but not least, it encourages family involvement and maximizes learning time. 
• Learning to learn incorporates a system for learning according to which children learn best when learning is explicit, shared and they know what to do to succeed. Learners are involved in peer and self assessment.
• Learning to learn sees valuing the children’s voices as one of the fundamental rights children have. Adults should spend time listening to children actively while children talk about their life experiences. 
• There is a spirit of transparency in learning to learn activities as they are informed. This means that the teachers share with the learners information which in the past was supposed to be preserved for the teachers only. Teachers tell the learners the aim of the lesson and the activities, what the purpose of the activity is and they negotiate together success criteria.  It is interesting to see how Joy Egbert’s plenary related to these points, although it started from a different aspect and related to different methodological concerns.
• Learning to learn activities are structured around routines which give learners a sense of security, timing and provide them with opportunities for repeated exposure to language.
• Learning to learn encourages home involvement in the children’s learning. This enhances the parents’ and the students’ involvement and  increases the learners’ exposure to the target language outside the classroom, which maximizes opportunities for learning. 
• Learning should promote a philosophy of valuing self, the others and the environment. There are five values which underpin the learning to learn activities  Accountability                Caring                   Flexibility               Resilience     &   Tolerance
• Learning to learn activities feature cross-curricular links, thus providing a broader view of learning English. This helps learners (and  teachers) move away from the ‘’English as a subject’’ approach to more wholistic approach to the language. 

• Each activity has a main outcome which children know so that it is meaningful, purposeful and motivating. The outcomes can be varied, from creating a poster to a listening experiment. 

Routines

The two speakers zeroed in on routines in order to emphasize of the Plan -Do - Review Circle. In the ‘’Plan’’ stage learners set their learning aims, they are informed about the purpose of the activity, the brainstorm what they already know and negotiate success criteria with their teacher.

In the ‘’Do’’ stage, learners experiment with the language

In the ‘’Review’’ stage they reflect on their learning

This framework systematically and explicitly helps learners to learn by combining metacongitive and cognitive strategies and by training them to reflect, then experiment and then reflect some more. Reflecting on the learning takes the form of the following questions:

• What did you do?
• What did you learn?
• How did you learn?
• How well did you do?

The questions provide some scaffolding for teachers to incorporate these aspects of learning in their lesson until it becomes a more or less unconscious process. The speakers mentioned that they have expanded the Plan-Do-Review model by adding a ‘’Do more’’ stage in which learners consolidate their learning and a ‘’Share’’ stage which gives learners a chance to talk about their work.

Learning is seen as effective, emotional, personal but also in the context of the classroom as a form of social interaction. To facilitate young learners the speakers have created a mascot Wilbur the Worm whose role is, much like the teacher’s, procedural, effective, behavioral and interactive. The speakers mentioned that Wilbur originates from the Worms’ Concept presented in IATEFL 2006, Harrogate by Carol Everhard. The speakers went on to present a Wilbur sock puppet, an activity in which the learners are to be involved as well as a Wilbur chant. 

Example of an activity

 

The speakers went on to present a learning to learn activity they did with young learners which revolved around writing poem about the experience of learning English as seen through the five senses. As the learners were young, they used pictures to express their experience of learning English. The whole activity was also linked to the activity record page from the learner’s Portfolio.

Pictures follow which show what the learners created. 

                                 

The concerns of the teachers.

Teachers were concerned, as mentioned at the beginning of this talk, with the use of mother tongue when using learning to learn activities. The speakers pointed out the following.

The use of L1 in class can

• be efficient
• play an affective role
• provide richer data
• valorise and empower children’s voices 

Finally he Learning to Learn benefits are not lost if the target language is not used

Another significant teacher concern was the fact that they had not experienced learning to learn themselves. To address this, the speakers have devised a training framework (as part of their book) which will enable teachers to experience the same framework and the same principles of learning to learn as their learners. 

The teacher development aspect of Learning to Learn is underpinned by the same pedagogical principles, it involves the development of teaching strategies, ongoing development strategies (which include larger projects such as peer observation and action research, it focuses on self assessment and includes the creation of a personal action plan. 

Benefits for the children and the teachers

The speakers pointed out that when using learning to learn strategies

• Children become active contributors and more reflective
• They take control of their own learning and become more independent
• Learners develop their sense of self-esteem and they learn to account for their learning and they get a sense of progress and achievement.

Teachers experience the following benefits:

• They gain insight into what children are thinking
• Relationships between teachers, children and parents are supported
• Teachers are helped to plan the next steps of learning
• Teachers can better understand they way children learn and their learning preferences. 
• Teachers are encouraged to become more reflective
• Teachers become more aware of the importance of routines in teaching as an aid to time management and planning lessons.

Regarding the concerns of the teachers about learning to learn requiring more time, the speakers agreed that it does. The time spent on it, though, is absolutely justified as learning autonomy is an important aim that underpins all learning. It is an ongoing gradual process which is linked to life-long learning.