From the Acting Leader of Learning

Structures and Mindset for Effective Learning

This year, the College has implemented a new model for lesson structure and rolled it out to all classes at all levels. The structure applies high impact teaching strategies with evidence-based best practices for the structure of a lesson through set routines and explicit teaching strategies. 

The start of a lesson is an important part of settling into the classroom and adopting an appropriate mindset for the learning ahead. As such, students should expect to follow this process for beginning their classes:

• Students line up (depending on the space) in two lines outside the room – students do not wait for teachers in the room
• Students stand behind chairs for greeting/prayer
• Students unpack their equipment including student planner on desk while the roll is taken
• Class is readied for the lesson activities with a learning intention and success criteria to set an objective and context for learning with a measurable target for knowledge and skill development.

From here, the lesson follows the structure from Tom Sherrington’s (2019) interpretation of Barak Roseshine’s principles of instruction (2010). There are expectations for the teacher to control the dynamics and flow of the lesson, but also expectations of the students to be engaging with this process and following the teacher’s directions.

The image below outlines the process in ten steps, as adapted by Oliver Caviglioli:

The close of the lesson is an important time to review the learning intention and success criteria and prepare for the next lesson. Students should expect the following process to take place:

• Record homework or preparation for next lesson in student planner 
• Pack up and clean up the classroom space
• Stand behind chair and desk 
• Await dismissal from the teacher once the bell has rung.

In addition to the structure of the lesson, we also wish to encourage students to be open-minded and courageous in their disposition towards learning. We discuss the dimension of our Marist Compass, Courage for Life, often and see it in action regularly with our students who take risks and engage in new opportunities for learning, development and success in and outside of the classroom. For example, a number of our students were very brave last week in celebrating International Women’s Day by speaking to their house groups about what it means to be a woman in 2024, as well as a number of students who participated in our Pi Day celebrations, reciting as many digits of pi as they could remember!

Further to this, we ask students to extend their Courage for Life into the classroom with the concept of productive struggle or productive failure in the classroom. Productive failure has been explored by Manu Kapur from 2008 as an effective strategy to activate deeper understanding for students by first allowing them to struggle with the task or problem, and then loading them with conceptual knowledge to correct their path. Kapur’s research continually demonstrates that being comfortable with failure is critical to ensuring students can move forward in their learning.

This means that students need to see failure as an opportunity and in fact, a necessity. The emotional component to engaging in failure can be negotiated with an effectively nurtured productive disposition.

We must aim for mistakes to be seen as a chance for positive redirection and feedback to be seen as helpful and motivational pushes forward rather than criticism. The notion of struggling with a task or problem may be seen as a direct evaluation of a student (“I am finding this hard, so I’m bad at this”) instead of a necessity (“I am finding this uncomfortable because I am learning something new and this isn’t easy to do!”). This is also a critical element of nurturing a growth mindset, which we speak a lot about in our classes and programs at the College. 

This week, I was introduced to the idea of presenting common mathematical misconceptions, something I deal with and try to highlight frequently in my classes, as ‘favourite mistakes’:

The possible impact of the language (‘favourite’) and symbolism of the hearts is certainly powerful here.

This week, students in Years 7 and 9 completed their NAPLAN testing in Reading, Writing, Conventions of Language and Numeracy. This also took courage for some in their comfort to work under pressure and involves being open to learning from our mistakes when the feedback and results come through later in the year.

I encourage families to have a conversation at home about mindset and productive failure. Struggle and failure are uncomfortable but they are not innately bad, nor are they avoidable. Instead, they are promises for growth and an opportunity to learn from yourself or others.