At St Albert’s we are committed to building children’s learning power; not just what they are learning, but more importantly learning how to learn. One of the major developments in recent years has been the introduction of Professor Guy Claxton’s pioneering work on helping young people become better independent learners, which suggests that there are four learning dispositions.  We are calling these – Determination, Curiosity, Reflectiveness and Co-operation.  We have 4 Superheroes that help us:  Danny Determination, Cara Curiosity, Ryan Reflectiveness and Chloe Co-operation.

• Determination – being ready, willing and able to learn and sustain concentration (the emotional aspects of learning)
  resilience, managing distractions, absorption, noticing, perseverance
• Curiosity- being ready, willing and able to learn in different ways (the cognitive aspects of learning)
  thinking, questioning, capitalising, making links, reasoning, capitalising,  
• Reflectiveness – being ready, willing and able to plan how you will learn (the strategic aspects of learning)
  managing, planning, revising, distilling, meta-learning
• Co-operation – being ready, willing and able to learn alone and with others (the social aspects of learning)
  relating, imitation, interdependence, empathy and listening, collaboration

Just as bodies can become fitter, so too can minds – learning how to learn will prepare the children for the future equipping them to become motivated and enthusiastic life-long learners.