Meeting the Learning Needs of All Children

Personalised Learning in the Primary School

Joan Dean

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781136770562
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Personalized learning involves helping each child to reach his or her full potential - intellectually, personally and socially. To achieve this, teachers need to match learning opportunities to the learning styles and experiences of the children, taking into account individual differences in culture, language, background, ability and interests.For

Chapter 1

What is personalised learning?

Personalised learning is a term that has been much used by government and in professional circles recently and is something with which teachers are now becoming familiar. What does it mean to you, the class teacher of a primary school class, and what does it mean to the staff of the school in which you work?

Personalised learning is education that sets out to meet the needs and abilities of every individual pupil. There is a sense in which good teachers have always tried to do this, but there is now a greater emphasis on it and it has become a more possible goal with the advent of teaching assistants and the use of information and communication technology (ICT). Personalised learning involves trying to assess the learning needs and learning styles of every child and tailoring lessons to meet those needs by using a range of approaches, choices and teaching styles to match them. An important element in personalised learning is that children are encouraged to make decisions about their own learning from quite an early age and, where appropriate, this may mean offering a choice of activities within lessons. Children also need to learn to make decisions about how they learn, thus opportunities for different learning styles need to be provided. This also means that there needs to be an element of choice in learning and that children need to be made aware of their own learning styles.

In a school where there is personalised learning teachers will work together to learn themselves and cooperate to provide for children’s learning. The school will also involve parents a good deal and may cooperate with other schools pursuing the same agenda.

Personalised learning is about children and their development. Each child will come to school with different experiences, different inheritance of genes, different abilities and different potential. Some will have developed positive self-esteem and have the belief that they can achieve. Others may have a less positive view of themselves and will need to be given confidence in their abilities. Some will have learnt a great deal at home and in nursery education. Others will start at an earlier stage of learning. Some will have learned to behave well and be considerate to other people. Others may have had little contact outside the home and have much to learn about good social behaviour. There will also be children who start with a disadvantage because of a disability or because they speak very little English. The teacher needs to get to know all of them as individuals, assessing what they each can do and differentiating work according to the needs of individuals, so providing opportunities for them all to learn.

Personalised education is about helping children to become sensitive and balanced individuals who have a positive view of themselves, good human beings who care for others and can relate well to them. Of course, parents have a primary role in this, but school also plays a very important part. We need to respect children as individuals who need to grow and learn, using their talents to the full, relating well to others, developing a positive self-image and a belief that they can succeed if they try hard enough. This means that teachers have to ensure that the demands made on children match their abilities, giving each one a chance to succeed. It is important to build on the strengths of individuals as well as working to improve areas of weakness.

It is also important that the culture of each child is respected and that the child is helped to feel proud of his or her background. The range of cultural backgrounds in the school may be considerable. There may not only be children from different races, often speaking different languages, but also children from different social backgrounds. As a teacher you need to be as familiar as you can be with the children’s backgrounds and at the same time be concerned to induct all of them into the prevailing British culture, which is to a large extent white and middle-class. Children from disadvantaged homes need to learn standard English so that they would have an equal chance in the job market later on. Children from other races may have different social customs at home; teachers need to be aware of these as far as they are able because of the possibility of misunderstanding, but the children will also need to learn British social customs. All this learning needs to be introduced in ways that do not imply to children that their home culture is less valid and important but rather that there is also a culture that they need to share with the wider community.

Independent learning

Personalised learning is also about becoming independent as a learner and as a person. Many of the skills with which education is concerned contribute to this aim. Primary school children gradually learn independence and develop the ability to do things for themselves as they grow, and we need to encourage this. The ability to read gives a person freedom to access different views and ideas, but children also require the ability to read intelligently, selecting what is relevant to a given end, so helping children to ask questions about what they read and to seek replies is important. They need to learn to judge their own performance against appropriate criteria that they have been involved in defining and have accepted. Their ability to do this will gradually develop throughout the primary years, and teachers need to be concerned with helping them to learn the skills of independent learning. Children also have much to learn about making relationships and trying to see another person’s point of view. Emotional development is an important area for learning: children need to learn to manage their emotions.

Creativity

It is important for each child’s development to encourage creativity. This is not simply a matter of the so-called creative subjects such as art, music, English and technology but also a concern with encouraging children to think of ideas and be able to develop them – and this should be part of work in all subjects. You need to ask yourself from time to time whether you are doing enough to develop ideas, perhaps asking the children for ideas, such as how many different ways can they think of to solve a mathematical problem, what they imagine life was like for children in a past society or another place, or how they can test an idea in science. The creative person will have an approach to life that finds solutions to problems of everyday living and enjoyment in creating things.

Differentiating work

Primary school teachers have for many years been concerned to try to match their teaching to the needs of individuals and to differentiate work according to individual need. This is the other aspect of personalised learning that teachers need to take on board. It is not easy, particularly when classes are large and contain a wide variety of children. Children will be at different stages of development, and this needs to be taken into account when planning work. In many primary school classes there will be children with special educational needs at a variety of levels, possibly including some with quite serious problems. There may be children from different cultures and ethnic groups, some of whom may start school with very little English. There may also be some very able children who will make considerable demands upon teachers if they are to provide work for them that challenges their ability and maintains their interest. There will probably be some children who pose behaviour problems and perhaps some children from homes where they are not encouraged to learn. Most primary classes also contain both boys and girls who learn in different ways and make different demands on the teacher. While this variety may be stimulating, it is also very demanding. This diversity makes it very important to assess the abilities, attitudes and learning style of each child and to plan so that the teaching may be appropriate for them all. This is a tall order!

Support for personalised learning

There is now some appreciation of the demands made on primary teachers and this has led to the appointment of a number of teaching assistants and also learning support assistants (LSAs) to work with children with special needs. The greater provision of ICT in schools is also a help, in that records can be kept online and children can search the internet and can work with electronic lessons in some cases. Teachers can also access some lesson plans, and teachers taking the same year group can perhaps share planning by putting their plans on computer. The school can also create banks of ideas for particular areas of teaching and learning, which teachers can develop and build up over a period. The provision and use of ICT is likely to develop further, and in the future there will be more online that can help teachers, who will sometimes be in more of a support role, helping children to access suitable material and learn individually from a range of programmes. These will probably include some programmes made by the staff of the school and available to everyone who needs them. Computers can make personalised learning for all children a genuine possibility.

Personalised education does not mean that all learning should be individual. That would not only be nearly impossible but also a waste of the learning opportunities that occur when children work together and learn from each other. The Literacy and Numeracy Strategies and the Primary Strategy recognised that teachers could work with a whole class and still reach individuals within it if they planned for this. The task is one of making long-term plans, for groups of children and for some individuals, that are specific and can be assessed, and then looking carefully at what you plan each day and week in the light of those long-term plans.

Acquiring learning skills

A very important task for all teachers is to help children to acquire learning skills. Each piece of work demands particular skills, and these can be discussed with children. As teacher you need to be clear in your own mind how children will demonstrate that they have acquired each particular skill and plan work carefully so that the skills can be introduced as children seem ready for them. Children should also be made aware of the learning skills they are acquiring and appreciate when and how they should be used. They will need to learn discussion skills so that they can learn from each other. Wegerif and Dawes (2004) describe small groups of children discussing a problem posed by a computer and then learning to present a point of view and discuss its relevance to the problem. Children also need skill in using reading to learn, and older children can learn to make notes from what they read. They need to develop skill in organising their ideas in order to present them in writing or orally.

Target-setting

The process of providing for individuals within the class starts with an assessment of where each child is in his or her learning, and this will serve as a basis for future planning. The task is one of making long-term plans for grouping children and for some individuals, which are specific and can be assessed. The discussion needs to involve suggestions from you or the child about how the targets might be achieved and how they will be assessed. These will be targets in different areas of curriculum according to the needs and stage of development of the child. Some of these targets will be in curriculum areas and will be part of your overall objectives, and some may be targets for acquiring learning skills; there may also be behavioural objectives for some children. Each child could have a record book in which the targets and the date for their achievement are recorded. At the end of the target period, which could be different for each child, you could check on how well the child has done and sign, date and comment in the record book. This process is described in more detail in Chapter 4.

More general targets

Not all work can be presented simply in terms of specific targets. You also need to be concerned with outcomes, which you need to think about when you set the targets. If you teach older children, for example, you may want children to learn how to make notes from reading, and you will have to make judgements about how well an individual is doing in this. You may want children to develop skill in presentation, writing, drawing and ICT, and in talking to the class. You may be looking at skills such as the ability to play or work with others. This will be particularly relevant when you are working with younger children, who need to learn these skills at an early stage so that they can use them well as they grow older. These are all areas – and there are many others – where you can make the children aware of the skills you want them to acquire and then find ways of making judgements about their success, perhaps involving other children in helping to make these judgements. It is important in all these cases to involve children in thinking about the skills they need to acquire so that they feel some ownership of them.

A child making a presentation to the class might benefit from positive comments from other children. You might ask the class what was good about the presentation, being careful to avoid damaging a child’s confidence. You then need to look for pointers to development to discuss with the child individually. Children might also be asked to make judgements about each other’s work, perhaps in pairs, emphasising the importance of telling your partner what is good about the work. This sort of activity helps children to be aware of the criteria by which your judgements are made and so helps them to be able to judge their own work. It is also useful to ask children to judge their own work from time to time, again helping them to become aware of the criteria you want them to use. The plans may be for a small group, a pair or an individual, but sometimes they will be plans for the whole class, which will run alongside individual plans.

Case study

Janet, the class teacher of a Year 5 class, was concerned about how few boys appeared to enjoy reading. She wanted to persuade the boys – and the girls, too – to read more and to get more pleasure from reading. She decided to place stress on personal reading. The school had a good library so there were plenty of books to choose from, both fiction and non-fiction. She gave each child a notebook in which to record the books they read, and she encouraged them to make some comment about each book, saying what they had enjoyed. She provided a small amount of time for children to read during the school day, though it was difficult to fit this in. She also encouraged them to read at odd times during the day such as when she was taking the register.

She talked to the whole class about books that she thought they might like and stressed particularly those that she thought boys might like. She noted the books that the children had said they enjoyed and asked some of them, particularly boys but some girls as well, to talk to the class about these books. She made a point of introducing some non-fiction books that she thought boys might enjoy as well as some that girls would like, and this paid dividends. She arranged for a number of exhibitions of library books that she thought children might like. She talked about these and pointed out books that she thought different children might enjoy. She asked children who had enjoyed a particular book to write something about it so that other people could decide if they would like to read it. They made a display of these comments so that everyone could see the recommendations.

She also encouraged children to aim at reading a certain number of books by the end of term. This could be different for different children but she encouraged them to set the largest number that they felt they could read if they really made an effort. This gave them something to aim for, and they recorded their targets in their record books and also their progress towards them.

Overall the children’s interest in reading increased, and both boys and girls said they now enjoyed reading much more.

Learning styles and learning targets

You also need to be aware of each child’s learning style. While it is probably counterproductive to try to meet all the possible different styles, it is useful know that John learns best from things he can see and finds learning from books a bit of a chore. Marilyn, on other hand, loves to read and explore ideas from books. Still other children may learn best when they are active. You need to bear all these styles in mind in planning work and try to provide opportunities for learning in different ways.

A programme of this kind will take time to set up, and it will be important to think about children’s targets, both for individuals and for groups, when you plan work for the whole class. For example, with a Year 4 class, you might plan a study of the local environment. The plans for the whole class might involve learning the names of different plants and trees in the school grounds and making a map of the locality and a plan of the school. You may want some children to learn about how to find and use information in books, and they can be asked to look up the trees and plants they find and draw and write about their findings for a classroom display. You will need to work with them on the skills involved in making notes and discuss ways of selecting the important points and then saying something very briefly.

The use of space

Perhaps two or three children need help in measuring and setting out plans of the school. Such a programme might also involve interviewing people in the area and finding out about the history of the various buildings and perhaps asking parents or grandparents about what it was like in the area when they were young. This will involve learning interviewing skills.

Social skills

Another area of learn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• 1 What is personalised learning?
• 2 A whole-school approach to personalised learning
• 3 The children
• 4 Learning and teaching
• 5 Providing for boys and girls
• 6 Children with special educational needs
• 7 Working with very able children
• 8 Children from other cultures
• 9 Children from different social backgrounds
• 10 Personal, social and health education
• 11 Working with support staff and volunteers
• 12 Working with parents
• 13 Staff development
• 14 School self-evaluation
• 15 Conclusion
• References
• Index