The aim of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a learning journey wall in helping students to communicate more clearly the skills and understanding they have obtained from a lesson (or group of lessons) whilst developing their growth mindset. To achieve this, a learning journey wall was designed that promoted conversation about the learning taking place and the steps the students have taken to achieve this. The wall was referenced throughout a block of science lessons and used to help develop a growth mindset. After research, the design was adapted to suit specific needs within our classroom and included elements such as un-stuck prompts, emojis to measure feelings towards learning and questions to prompt thinking about the skills being used.
Overall, this project was an excellent opportunity for pupils to focus on and develop their use of growth mindset language. Although the focus was on a group of science lessons, growth mindset approaches and strategies began to be utilised in other areas of the curriculum.
The learning journey wall was a helpful tool to encourage in-depth conversations about what the students understood about their learning, and the skills they acquired throughout. At first, the pupils struggled to use skill-based language to evaluate their success. However, over time, improvement was evident. Students became more inclined to utilise the language of the success criteria to critically evaluate their progress. The aides used on the learning journey wall, such as the un-stuck prompts and learning acquisition questions, were also very useful. This ensured the language and questions used during lessons were consistent for the children, even after a change of teacher in the classroom.
At the end of each lesson, the children were asked to evaluate their understanding of the learning intention against an emoji chart. This was colour coded and reflected the following responses:
The emoji responses were a quick way for students to reflect on their understanding. It also gave those students who needed extra support, an opportunity to re-look at the learning and learn from their peers who were feeling confident. They formed an effective end of lesson assessment tool and allowed all children to feel a degree of achievement at the end of any given lesson.
The first four weeks of this inquiry were completed on time. The final week was pushed back by one week, due to a scheduled pantomime visit. This didn’t have a huge impact other than children finding it slightly harder to recall prior learning during discussions. This inquiry was made up of a series of three science lessons, topped and tailed with a growth mindset lesson/questionnaire. Upon reflection, this inquiry would have been more insightful if it had been conducted over a longer period. This would have allowed the children to further develop their confidence, their ability to discuss their learning and more practice at using the un-stuck strategies.
In the final few weeks of this inquiry, the class teacher was no longer able to be in class full time. Although they were able to continue the science lessons, this limited their opportunity to reference the learning wall in other areas of the curriculum. Having the learning journey wall did enable the second teacher to continue using growth mindset language in the classroom. And, it did provide another perspective and opportunity for critical discussion on the effectiveness of the learning journey wall.
This project presented several changes to the teaching and learning that took place within the classroom. The elements which were new for the students included:
This project has generated a shift in classroom ethos, approaches and the language used, which is expected to continue throughout the remainder of the year and beyond. The children encourage one another to utilise ‘stuck’ strategies and critically peer and self-assess their work. Prior to this inquiry, the pupils’ immediate reaction to challenging work was to approach the teacher and ask for help. The learning journey wall has made a huge difference here, with the pupils utilising one another as a resource for their learning and not relying solely on the teacher for guidance. Better classroom teaching and learning has developed, and pupil’s resilience and confidence in challenging experiences has grown. Through teacher observations, it was also evident that the children became more sufficient at articulating the skills they were using in any given lesson and as a result, were effective in critically self and peer assessing.
As debated throughout the Mindset course, growth mindset is not something that can be discussed in a singular lesson but should become embedded in the classroom norms. This project has allowed the teacher to gain first-hand experience of the effectiveness of this and the ways it can help develop children’s independence. There was an overall improvement in growth mindset, with less children approaching the teacher for support as a first step and less appearing visibly stressed when faced with challenging work. This was particularly evident with one pupil who regularly gets emotional when left to do independent work, despite showing an understanding of the learning and a capability to complete the task. Over the course of this project, this child began to use the 'stuck' strategies. Although there were still times that she became upset or requested teacher support, this reduced significantly. We hope that this will continue to improve further for this child and the class as a whole. However, it would take a longer period to give a more accurate evaluation of the impact.
When reviewing the pre/post survey results, there was a slight improvement in pupil’s feelings towards ‘being stuck’. When asked the question ‘How do you feel when you are stuck?’, the majority of pupils (see below) felt less stressed after the introduction of the learning journey wall. This illustrates the positive impact of developing growth mindset in a classroom and placing a greater focus on celebrating the journey over the end.
The learning journey wall provided an excellent talking point and time within lessons to critically evaluate pupil’s learning and understanding. Through the end of lesson emoji responses, there was an increase of green emojis (I feel confident that I have understood the learning) from week 1 to week 2. In week 3, there were a number of absences which affected the results, albeit the majority of students responded with the green emoji.
On a larger scale, this project has presented a shift in approach and understanding of growth mindset throughout the school. The learnings from this project have regularly been shared with colleagues and the learning journey wall is now an expected practise within all classes to ensure consistency across the school. Growth mindset language, unstuck prompts and approaches will become classroom norms, ensuring a holistic approach is taken.
Please see the photographs below of the pre/post ‘stuck’ lesson. The writing in pink is from the pre lesson and the writing in black is the post lesson.
Also see the images of the learning journey wall which includes evidence of pupils work, emoji responses and question prompts.
Over the course of this project, the learning and skills gained were shared with colleagues at several staff meetings. This ensured the growth mindset strategies and use of the learning journey wall were familiar to all members of staff. In the most recent staff meeting, the project leader and her mindset colleagues shared resources and tools with teaching staff to allow them to replicate the learning journey wall in their own classrooms. From discussions, most teachers were happy with the steps involved and felt that this could work as a positive communication tool within their own classroom.
The project leader will be moving to a new school and will take the learning from this inquiry with them. The use of unstuck prompts and embedding this within the classroom environment will be introduced, to help build students resilience and growth mindset. We also intend to use the learning journey wall in class and make consistent use of growth mindset language throughout lessons. This will all be shared with new colleagues, and we will seek to share the impact of this growth mindset approach.