(Image from onegreenplanet.org)
A
few years ago, when we started thinking about using growth mindset as a way
forward throughout our school, we realised that we would need to consider how
it might fit in with our particular students.
Each school is unique; this is
what makes us feel our hearts belong to a particular institution. Remember how
panicked you felt as a trainee when you had to change placements? But once you’d
been at your second school for a few weeks, it was hard to even remember the
name of the first school. So even though 'kids is kids', each school works in its
peculiar bubble, ethos and culture. It can feel quite strange when you spend a
day in another school when you don’t get out much, a bit like drinking in the day and
going into the daylight – it’s like real life but slightly distorted and disorientating. For this
reason, your own students in your unique context should be a school’s starting point for any focus on
change and attempted improvement.
I teach in a pretty leafy area, in a semi-rural shire county. However, we also
have one of the most socio-economically poor housing estates in the city on our
doorstep and our catchment is fully mixed – and fully inclusive.
Through
experience, close data analysis and anecdotal evidence and discussion, two key
types of student kept surfacing as needing our attention. We decided to pool
our evidence and identified them as belonging to two distinctive groups. We’ve
now committed to focusing on these groups in our teaching and in our pastoral
support. These are our RHINOs and our PANDAs.
Whilst
we recognise that every student is an individual and has their own unique set
of abilities and needs, by grouping students into these two categories, we feel
might be able to share strategies and approaches that will help them to
overcome their barriers to learning. It might also be that, in doing this, we
can pinpoint strategies that could also work with students who show similar
traits but in different ways.
Who are RHINO students?
A RHINO is
Really Here In Name Only, a term coined in the late 1990s by the then Secretary
of State for Education, David Blunkett. He was interested in the significant
proportion of students who were disengaging from the idea of education,
typically at secondary level. Unlike the students who showed their feelings
through disruptive behaviour, low attendance and poor relationships, Blunkett
found a large number of these disengaged students attend school regularly, are
of average to high ability and capable of attaining C grades (3 levels of
progress in new money) and therefore unlikely to be the subject of
intervention. They are often adept at the social behaviour teachers like to
see: smiling, maintaining eye-contact, using affirmative body language. But
school is not engaging them actively and so they do what is necessary to get
by, hence Really Here In Name Only. We have LOTS of RHINOs and I've written about them before.
Who are the PANDAs?
PANDA
stands for Perfectionist AND Anxious (name created by myself and Tess Thomas @flickasforeva, my oppo in T&L). We’ve found these often higher ability
students are surfacing earlier and earlier, and they are of concern to us primarily
for their inability to switch off from work, their heavy investment in
self-criticism and sometimes even their potential to develop anxiety-related
behaviours; in the worst cases manifesting in eating disorders, self-harm and
medium to long-term mental health issues. I know we are not alone in worrying
about students with this profile, however low down the scale of concern they
might be now.
Do
you know any RHINOs and / or PANDAs? If so, and you’re interested in what we’re
doing to focus on and support them, read on…
Who are your
RHINOs and PANDAs?
Thinking of
particular students and then seeing how far they fit the profiles can help in
deciding on strategies to use and share.
(Our Headteacher says it's also interesting seeing if any of these traits apply to colleagues!)
In
our Teaching & Learning group, we are looking at strategies that may work
well with these two types of students using three main foci from our current
areas of interest and action research:
Marking
& Feedback
Our
whole-school policy that focuses on quality, not quantity and that asks
teachers to consider the impact of their marking above everything else (copy here)
Growth
Mindset
A
continued area of importance at our school, that features in our school
development plan
Learning
Ambassadors
A
growing range of student roles throughout the school in various subjects, which
includes student voice, modelling high standards of effort/work, and support
roles
These
areas will form the focus on of our work and discussions in 2016, with the aim
of identifying the strategies with the highest impact, sharing them and
promoting their use across the school into 2017.
To
act as a starting point, we produced the following list of possible strategies,
based on feedback we’d had from staff about where they had previously had
success with particular students, and also taken from published research on growth
mindset; Pupil Premium attainment, and findings from SLT’s pilot research with
their own teaching groups.
This
is what we shared with our Teaching & Learning group and then with our
middle leaders:
Strategies
for PANDAs and RHINOs
Members
of the T&L group (and any other interested members of staff) can choose any of the coloured boxes and trial ONE idea for ONE group
or ONE student, for ONE
term.
After
one term, what worked? What didn’t? Why? What can be shared?
GREEN boxes are growth mindset
strategies;
LILAC
is marking & feedback;
BLUE is for Learning Ambassadors.
|
PANDAs
|
RHINOs
|
|
Learn more about growth mindset and apply its thinking to help PANDAs
cope with set-backs and stress more effectively. (GM)
|
RHINOs could benefit from growth mindset meta-cognition teaching
strategies to improve exam techniques. (GM)
|
|
Break tasks and challenges down into small steps that can be tackled
bit-by-bit.
|
Show RHINOs examples of medium and long-term gain as incentives.
|
|
Talk about skills you now have that you didn’t have previously because
of the practice you put in. Dramatise mistakes that demonstrate solutions;
describe things you’ve struggled with yourself and that you’ve now made
progress in.
|
Try to engage parents/carers: the vast majority want their children to
do well and once they see that you recognise their child’s potential, most
will support you to help them reach it.
|
|
Try not to over-indulge PANDAs during anxious episodes: use good
relationships to be supportive but clear and decisive about expectations.
|
Do not accept under-par work: set high standards in detail and
presentation of written work. (M&F)
|
|
Use time-planners to help PANDAs with revision timetables, including
wind-down time to help them cope with exam periods.
|
Be consistent with praise in feedback:
RHINOs will often indicate they aren’t bothered about rewards but are in
reality. Reward effort (M&F) & (GM)
|
|
Use growth mindset language in our written and oral feedback to help confidence and
attainment with our PANDAs. (M&F) & (GM)
|
Use feedback strategies that encourage responsibility for improvements
and greater detail in RHINOs’ written work. (M&F)
|
|
Use PANDAs to provide quality student voice on the teaching strategies
that work best for them. (LA)
|
Give RHINOs roles as Learning Ambassadors to help them increase their
accountability and engage more in their learning. (LA)
|
|
After careful explanation, use the ‘R’ (Requires improvement) grade
for effort, if and when appropriate. Use it to encourage conciseness when PANDAs
write too much. (M&F)
|
Be very specific about revision strategies. Tick boxes and directed
class time can help RHINOs organise their revision content.
|
|
Monitor DIRT carefully and be kind but firm with PANDAs when they
don’t follow up on your feedback. They may ignore advice if they think they
know better! (M&F)
|
Sit RHINOs with Learning Ambassadors who act as models for written
standards.
|
This
will be added to by colleagues and built up as a bank of strategies. It will
then be added to our Staff planners this year, and will also be a feature of
the T&L focus for the rest of this year and into next.
