BLP in Geography

You may be new to the school in Year 7 or maybe been with us for a while and making your way through Sixth Form. Either way you are probably starting to notice that many of your teachers are talking about something called BLP. BLP stands for something called Building Learning Power. The official website can be found at http://www.buildinglearningpower.co.uk/ and it gives you plenty of information on there too. However, most simply the programme is all about: * Helping younger people become better learners. * Developing skills they can use in other situations. It is about creating a positive learning culture in classrooms and in turn the entire school. The whole school then systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to face difficulty and uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively. Students who are more confident of their own learning ability learn faster and learn better. They concentrate more, think harder and find learning more enjoyable. They do better in their tests and external examinations. And they are easier and more satisfying to teach. Building Learning Power prepares youngsters better for an uncertain future. Today’s schools need to be educating not just for exam results but for lifelong learning. To thrive in the 21st century, it is not enough to leave school with examination certificates. Students need to have learnt how to be tenacious and resourceful, imaginative and logical, self disciplined and self-aware, collaborative and inquisitive. Therefore within Geography we have built BLP activities into our lessons and started to lead discussions on how students have learned and what else they could have done differently both within and outside of the classroom.

You may see the image above around your classrooms next year. In most lessons you will be working on one or two of these habits that you can see hidden within the brain above. You will find out more about these in class, but for now look at the words and think about what these words might mean within school!