HOW2Learn is a:
- Riverina led program being undertaken at Albury West
- strategy focused on building students' capacity to learn
- consistent whole school approach K-6.
This is achieved by explicitly teaching dispositions and habits within the existing programs and practices at Albury West to develop a learning culture that enables everyone to:
- Be self-aware in their learning
- Use the language and dispositions of successful learners
- Share a belief that intelligence is learnable and expandable
HOW2Learn complements the NSW Quality Teaching Model and draws upon a respected body of research, including much of Guy Claxton's work on Building Learning Power which identifies the higher order ways that enable students to be successful lifelong learners.
Guiding tenets of the HOW2Learn strategy
We know that young people need to build the emotional, social and mental resources to enjoy challenges and cope with uncertainty and it is obvious that things need to change in order for schools to be more in step with the needs of 21st century learners. The following principles frame all further thinking:
Six principles that underpin the strategy
1. Real life learning
Education is about enabling young people to take their place in the world confidently, actively and successfully.
2. Sucess at school
Students can utilise powerful learning skills in order to embrace the specific content demands in various subject areas.
3. Literacy and numeracy
All students deserve the right to access strategies that will enable them to become more literate and numerate citizens as they are the fundamental building blocks that predict life success.
4. Mental wellbeing
All students deserve the right to become more resourceful and resilient when faced with adversity.
5. Expandable intelligence
All learners can behave more intelligently through developing a repertoire of learning dispositions and habits.
6. Complex but vital
It will take consistent focus and collective will over time to develop a growth culture but it is a path we need to travel.
The HOW2Learn strategy empowers learners by developing 5 dispositions and 22 habits that improve all round learning fitness.
Using a vast body of research we have developed a regional strategy in the Riverina that is underpinned by the explicit teaching of five dispositions and twenty two habits which improve all-round learning fitness. These dispositions are:
How we model lifelong learners!
At Albury West we're risk takers, we show children we are always keen to learn new things!
