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The Radcliffe School is a comprehensive secondary school with sixth form that is at the heart of its community. We have cohort of around 1200 students; around a third are classified as pupil premium and the majority live a short walk from the school gates. One of the key challenges is to ensure our students develop learning resilience and awareness of strengths and areas that can be refined. As such there is a focus on metacognition; developing our students' ability to Plan, Monitor and Evaluate their own work. Our STEM team have been using Skills Builder and the Problem Solving strand to reframe what it means to solve problems and how metacognitive skills are vital for sustaining success.
Overall impact
We have not made use of the whole programme as we have had a tighter intent - solely focusing on Problem Solving and targeting the metacognitive skills in STEM subjects. The trends are positive so far, but not fully established. We will carry on with this approach to problem solving next year and spread the good practise beyond the STEM subjects
Keep it simple
We used the levelled skill steps as part of our CPD and expected approach with students. This was built into a Plan-Monitor-Evaluate cycle diagram that was easy to follow and generic enough to be used schoolwide. Staff use this to model the metacognitive language, but also to prompt students to get further through a problem without teacher support.
Start early, keep going
We have focused on KS3, particularly Y7 and Y8. Students have the opportunity to use the skill steps weekly to understand where they are succeeding and what they could do next. This subtle but consistent approach means that all KS3 students are engaged with the development of metacognition and relating it to problem solving in STEM. This has not explicitly involved parents.
Measure it
Metacognition is now part of a half-termly department SEF as well as a focus on student feedback. This allows us all to discuss and refine areas of problem solving that have been challenging; estimation, comparing viable methods, translating subject specific skills into other areas of the curriculum. Students receive verbal feedback daily, and written feedback at least half-termly. Learning walks have demonstrated a more consistent use of language and a greater increase in planning and monitoring techniques, though less on evaluation. Student surveys have demonstrated a development in: awareness of STEM, understanding of what planning and monitoring of work looks like, noticing when metacognition is a focus in lessons, cross-curricular skills (STEM).
Focus tightly
Direct instruction comes in the form of class task with Plan-Monitor-Evaluate modeling/ focus, indications to the P-M-E cycle diagram along with the skill step statements, written feedback and specifically designed problem tasks. The framework skill steps were useful in the development of the tool.
Keep practising
The opportunities are in class and set around curriculum progress. There are extra-curricular activities that utilise the skills they are developing on a day-to-day basis.
Bring it to life
Both Y7 and Y8 have had STEM and career related sessions ranging from contact with employers to national competitions (maths challenge, TeenTech etc). As mentioned above, the language and approach is starting to be ingrained in most STEM lessons, so translating it to these bespoke events has become easier.
What's next
We need to focus on how students evaluate work; understanding limitations to current learning and using this to build the next planning steps. Closing that loop will ensure progress is self-sustaining and start to develop a sense of guided autonomy in our students.
