Learning Resources that Challenge and Engage
This resources section of the Hub is focused on ideas that facilitate student learning. The range of ideas, resources and tools explicitly involve Empowering Learners, Building Collaborative Relationships and Valuing Progress. Attempting lessons based on these ideas should provide concrete actions linked to your vision of creating independent and collaborative learners.
All of the lesson plans and supporting resources can be used with your students in classrooms or remotely. We encourage you to try out the lesson ideas, not just once but a few times. Keep coming back to the same lesson resources, adapt them to suit your own practice, context or current affairs, and build the ideas into something personal and practical for you.
Check out the Action Learning section of the Hub too. In addition to the resources here, the action learning page encourages you to share your actions – and resources – with colleagues, so you can have a go at something new together!
Lesson Plans and Resources
Lesson Plans and Resources
The Learning Pit: A Model for Challenge
In Southern Highlands Community of Schools we believe that empowering learners enables students to embrace challenge. The Learning Pit is one of the models we use to describe the process of learning through challenge.
The Learning Pit works on the principle that learning is a positive struggle. Its’ purpose is to reassure, so that learners can take comfort from knowing that challenge is a normal part of the learning process.
Introducing the Learning Pit model to your students helps create a shared language of learning in your classroom and provides the very best opportunity for your learners to grow – in knowledge, skills and attitudes.
Thinking about Learning in your Lessons:
- Try some of the lesson plans on this page and consider the Learning Pit model:
- What do you notice about your students’ responses?
- When were your students in the pit?
- How many of your students gave up in the pit, and how many persevered?
- How did they get out of the pit?
- Does this affect how you might think about their learning?
- Encourage your students to create posters with their own designs for the Learning Pit, showing what positive struggle is like for them. For example, rather than saying “I can’t”, you can say “I can’t do it…yet!”
- Share the language of the Learning Pit in your classroom and in displays and refer to it in lessons. What do you notices about the way that students start to talk about challenge?
We will update this site with the new lesson resources regularly, as a preview or follow-up to Challenging Learning workshops, ensuring that each resource helps you towards your vision … so do keep checking back, as we will be adding more ideas and further resources!
You could also let us know what you’ve been trying with your students – we’d be happy to add your lesson ideas on to the Learning Hub too!