Blog: Learning to Learn at King’s

There is often an assumption that pupils know how to learn. After all, it’s what they do every day at school.

However, research and experience tell us that this isn’t the case and pupils really benefit when they are taught to learn in order to ensure that they develop the right learning habits.

At King’s, we have developed a programme called Learning to Learn, which has been designed to sit alongside and underpin the academic work done within individual subjects.

In this blog, Mrs Hartley (Learning Skills Coordinator) explores the study and learning skills pupils need to become great life-long learners.

If pupils embrace habits of continual growth, not worrying about the results of their learning but thinking about refining the learning process and focussing on getting better at the skills needed, then they will be on a trajectory of success. That is our aim.

Two of the key principles of our Learning to Learn programme are growth mindset and metacognition.  

Pupils with a growth mindset value the importance of effort and are resilient in the face of challenge. They are not afraid to fail, they listen to and act on feedback.

Metacognition is the framework within which students work day in and day out both in the classroom and in co-curricular activities. It, too, is a mindset because they are asked to think about their own learning – to plan, monitor and evaluate it.  We believe that in order to be able to do this effectively they firstly need a ‘toolkit’.

Through Learning to Learn, we give pupils the tools and language they need to be able to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

We do this through fortnightly, timetabled lessons with a specialist teacher. In these sessions, we teach the skills below, give the pupils opportunities to practise the skills, and ensure that they are backed up in their academic subjects:

• Growth Mindset
• The Learning Pit
• Effortful Focus
• Metacognition
• Study space
• Planning and Organisation
• Target Setting
• Note Taking
• Memory Theory
• Memory Strategies
• Memory Techniques
• RAG rating and planning
• Responding to feedback
• Research skills

Although we have been using Learning to Learn for a number of years, this year’s Removes pupils are the first new year group to have the timetabled sessions and it has been very encouraging to hear about the positive impact that they have felt.

In our next Learning to Learn blog we’ll hear direct from current students about their own experiences of the programme.