John Stanier: Mastery Learning in a Linear Universe.

The key tenet to this is that children can’t move on to the next thing until they have mastered the first thing.

John explains the impact Hattie’s Visible Learning has had on his teaching. For him, it boils down to mastery learning, acceleration and feedback. You can boost bright children’s learning by accelerating them through the curriculum rather than doing more depth – not sure how this would work in my classroom though: needs more thought.

John has also been studying karate. This relies on self-discipline, repetition, clear progression and peer support. John recommends reading Thinking Fast and Slow at this point, about how the brain works.

Therefore…
Learning must control the progress, not time.
Students may assess when they have mastered the skill or information.
Constant feedback BOTH WAYS about the learning/teaching.
Able children learn more when given more to learn. Like building up any muscle, less weight = less development.
Repetition is a vital learning tool.

We look at a picture that looks like a wand. The white bits at eother end are the teacher input. The rest, the black bit, is pupil input. This is how a lesson should look. We looked at some amazing flow diagrams John has put together to map the learning through a unit. I love these! New way of planning, I think. It shows that students don’t have to follow a single path – more knowledge can be built in to stretch the most able and provide scaffolding for those who need it.

This has resulted in much deeper learning than previously. GCSE results have improved because knowledge is better.

We apply this by doing a group task looking at a battle from Star Wars.

This is a really good activity. Each stage of the flowchart has a table with resourcesx activities and mastery criteria. Students need to master what is on that table and have a friend test them before they can move on to the next thing. John admits that this takes a huge amount of planning but that your time in the classroom is freed up and assessment becomes easier.

Hattie says that parent income has the biggest impact on learning, but also the precedent of a poor performance in a previous exam.

Now need to move on to paper to plan my own mastery learning. Pens, markers and flowcharts – I love blogging but this is my home territory!

Contact John for more information – @johnstanier1
He would like to set up a Dropbox for people to share mastery learning resources.

John finishes by explaining how he intends to teach from September. To begin his GCSE, he’ll do the whole course – all three bits – in one hour. Then Crime in 1 hour, AmWest in 1 hour, CA in 1 hour. Then more depth on each one. Sounds exciting! I might try this too.