Growing…
Confident Individuals
Responsible Citizens &
Successful Learners for Life
At Bevois Town Primary School we are committed to building young people’s learning power; not just what they are learning, but more importantly learning how to learn. Meet our Learning Heroes and find out how they can help us all become successful ‘Life Long Learners’:
Together we represent the 4R’s for Learning
Resourceful Reciprocal Resilient Reflective
What is Building Learning Power?
Did you know that we can continually develop our capacity to learn in new and challenging circumstances throughout our life?
In the developing field of learning to learn, research suggests that there are several broad dispositions we need to develop in order to become successful lifelong learners.
Professor Guy Claxton suggests that there are four key learning dispositions:
These dispositions are inherent in all of us. They are not fixed at birth, or when we leave school. They can be developed in everyone regardless of current ability or age. There are no limits to extending our learning power.
We have introduced these dispositions to the children as groups of learning muscles. Just as we can build our physical muscles by the right kind of exercise, we can also exercise our learning muscles to develop strength and stamina. Developing the dispositions that make for success as a life long learner equates to achieving a good level of all-round learning fitness.
Each of the 4R’s is made up of a number of learning behaviours, which we call learning capacities. These are summarised below. Because learning capacities are specific in nature, they can be individually trained, nurtured and exercised.
Resilience is:
Being ready, willing and able to lock into learning. Knowing how to work through difficulties when the pressure mounts or the going gets tough.
Resourcefulness is:
Being ready, willing and ready to learn in different ways – using both internal and external resources effectively, calling on different ways of learning as appropriate:
Reflectiveness is:
Being ready and willing to become more strategic about learning – taking a longer term view by planning, taking stock and drawing out your experiences as a learner to get the best out of yourself. Your reflectiveness is made up of:
Reciprocity/social relationships
At Bevois Town we use our Learning Heroes to help our learners understand the four R’s.
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Hello, I am Tough Tortoise I don’t give up and I like to be challenged!
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Hello, I am Smart Squirrel. I am very resourceful. I try to find things out for myself and make good use of the resources around me to support my learning.
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Good Day to you my friends. I am Wise Owl. I am reflective and I think carefully about how to overcome obstacles in my learning.
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Hi, we are Team Ant. We can work independently and we are also good team players.
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