St Peter's Girls Prep launches Visible Learning Symbols
At last week’s Staff Development session, Pam van Gass, our Head of Academics, launched our new Visible Learning ‘feedback’ symbols. The images of a girl climbing a tree, have numerous relevant associations to our school, particularly in terms of the girls: taking on challenges and taking risks, not ever being ‘prissy’, connecting with nature, developing confidence in their own ability and always wanting to climb that little bit higher!
This first image is of a girl starting to climb a tree. Her feet are off the ground because she is building on previous knowledge and she is fully engaged in the process, prepared to give it her all. Skills and vocabulary are being procured to start shaping understanding, but learning is at a surface level. She is still at the beginning of her journey and has not yet gained the confidence to go any further.
This relates to the 1st column of our Academic Progress Report that reads: ‘more practice is required in order to grasp the concepts fully and develop the knowledge base required’.
The second image is of the girl, in the tree, slowly but surely making the required progress. She has moved beyond the starting phase and is on the lookout for branches to support her, to keep pushing herself upwards – but is not there yet. She is also open and receptive to guidance or feedback from anyone standing on the ground. This input leads to deeper understanding because she is making connections between concepts, e.g. percentages link to decimals. Problem solving becomes very important in order to develop this fluency and confidence to understand and comprehend the material. On our Report, this equates to: a growing understanding of the concepts.
The final image is of the girl sitting in the tree, enjoying the view and feeling proud of her achievement because she has reached the level that was expected of her.
The skills or knowledge she has acquired can now be transferred to new situations. She is able to apply the knowledge and understanding developed and is able to investigate and elaborate on the skill.
This is the third column on our Report that reads: Shows mastery – is consistently able to apply the skills and concepts accurately.
It must, however, be noted that there is still more of the tree to climb! She knows this and we hope she will want to push herself ever further. (The challenge and complexity with this particular tree is, like all knowledge, it never stops growing. Yet hopefully, if we are doing our jobs as teachers and parents, she will always want to keep climbing!)
It is also understood and accepted that there will be occasions when the girl slips back or even falls out the tree. In fact, this event is encouraged in the educational process because it’s only through mistakes and failure that true learning takes place. It’s only through the process of doing and redoing that true learning takes place.
These pictures will now become part of the feedback process to the girls. Teachers will be sticking one these stickers in their books to show how their skills development is growing and the teachers will be showing them ways to climb further up the tree!
The process of Visible Learning is very different from how we all ‘did’ school. In most cases, a concept was taught, we were tested on it, given a mark and the teacher moved on regardless. The thought of being provided with an opportunity to redo a test or assignment to show a growth in learning, via feedback from a teacher or a friend, would have been seen as outrageous! This is the difference of ‘doing’ school as opposed to ‘genuine learning’. It’s a difference between an obsession with marks and percentages on an end result of a test or assignment, rather than the use of marks and percentages to guide the learning process.
It's a move away from a system where a child, in class, asks, ‘Is this for marks?’, in trying to ascertain whether or not they need to apply themselves to a particular task. Or a system where a parent calculates the average result of every test a child does, in order to ascertain whether or not their daughter should achieve Academic Colours or not.
It is however, a system that will continue to recognise and reward those who continually commit to the learning process and achieve excellence. Not because it’s the sole reason they applied themselves but because they are intrinsically motivated to always be the best they can be.
It’s also a system that commits to a process of achieving mastery at a Prep School level, to ensure they achieve success in High School, or in the next section of their ‘climb’. It is opposed to a traditional educational bell curve system where only the minority of pupils achieve excellence or failure and the majority are somewhere in the middle or average. The objective of Visible Learning is for as many girls as possible to achieve mastery in as many aspects of their learning, as possible. This is, however, only possible, if and when they take full responsibility for their own process of learning.
I sincerely hope that the three images of climbing a tree assists our girls (and parents) to better understand where they are in their learning process in every aspect of their schooling. I’d also like to thank Mrs van Gass for the incredible work she is doing in driving our Visible Learning process at the Girls School.