St Dunstan's School

St Dunstan's Community School and Arts College
St Dunstan's images

Building Learning Power

THE BLP Journey

Research has shown that education in the 21st Century needs to equip young people for many challenges. It is probable that many jobs our students will do in their lifetime do not yet even exist; the pace of technological advances is so great. We realise that we need to help our students to develop into effective lifelong learners. This means they will need to be independent and be able to work as a team; they will need to use many different strategies to help them to take on new concepts, and also to reflect on current practice and improve it. In 2009, we started with a team of staff who looked at making sure the students at St Dunstan’s made the best progress possible and decided that Building Learning Power would fit our school and its aspirations perfectly. We devised a system to encourage students to look at how they are learning, not just what they are learning in class and at home, in order that they may improve the way they work. These would then be lessons for life outside and after school which would be transferable skills. It would encourage staff to help students to be more independent and challenged in their learning, thus being able to achieve more. Parents are also able to sign off skills at home if you see your children using the skills. We ask students to consider 17 different Learning Skills which we have grouped into four larger areas of learning. They are Team (us), Independent (me), Exploring (looking out) and Reflecting (looking in). The first letters spell TIER which we feel reflects the level or TIER that you are working on! You can find the vital pages describing the Learning Skills as well as the signing off page in the Student planner. When a student uses the skill in a lesson, the teacher will sign off the journal or card, and 12 signatures will give a student a Challenger Badge. If a student improves or develops 12 skills, this leads to an Expert badge. A Leader badge means that you have developed 15 skills and helped another student develop, and a Master Badge will enable the student to join the BLP Team. For this, they have to develop all 17 skills and produce a learning resource.


Red square   Building Learning Power - Learning Journal

Red square   A Key to Learning Habits

Red square   BLP - Overview

Red square   BLP - Badges

Red square   BLP - Muscles

Red square   BLP - Learning Workout Grid

Red square   BLP - Signing-Off Sheet