I recently had the pleasure of filling in for a Year 1 teacher who had fallen sick and needed a few days off to recover. I say pleasure because that is exactly what it was. A class of twenty or so 5 to 6 year olds might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this was no ordinary class. What I experienced is surely a tribute to the hard work and dedication of the teacher and teacher assistant. I do not know what teaching approaches this teacher uses and it would be wrong of me to make any assumptions. However, having said this, it is quite obvious that whatever methods the teacher is applying, developing the student as a learner and as a good citizen must be on his list of priorities.

A lot has been written on what makes a good learner and there are many models that attempt to describe this.  Theories relating to student motivation, goal orientation, self-efficacy, self regulation, student choice and other general aspects of learning are often cited by those who attempt to describe what makes a good learner. For its simplicity to understand and its practicality of use I personally like The Other Three R’s (TOTRs) model that places good learner theories under the headings Reasoning, Resilience and Responsibility.  TOTRs demonstrates how reasoning, resilience and responsibility can be taught by embedding them into the curriculum. TOTRs recognizes the importance of life skills and student learning. It claims that reasoning, resilience and responsibility are key problem solving skills that when learned, can benefit a student’s academic achievement as well as the skills they will need for a life outside of school. It is a model that can be used to develop the student as both a learner and a good citizen.

With limited time with these Year 1 students I am certainly not intending to make any grandiose statements as to their learning skills, I will however give a brief summary of what I encountered and let others be the judge. The First thing that confronted me when I entered the class was a group of happy children that seemed eager to know what I had installed for them. They were also keen to know where their beloved teacher was and when I explained that he was sick they showed a genuine concern.  I asked them what they usually did on a Monday morning and they were able to tell me that they get in to speaking pairs and discuss what they did on the weekend. At this stage I was really impressed with the way they were able to confidently speak with me and at the same time not all speak out at once but rather adhere to taking turns to speak. When they got into speaking pairs I was well impressed with both their speaking and listening skills. It is no coincidence that they should be so skilled in this kind of one to one discussion; the teacher has obviously worked hard to help them acquire this skill.

I did many things with this class on this particular day, from having them read stories, act out actions and feelings, play group games, apply mathematics to the real world situations etc. I was so impressed with their enthusiasm, listening skills, the questions they asked me and their genuine joy for learning. I decided to test this class a little further. I asked them what they wanted to do……something that they think would be fun and could also be considered learning. The general consensus was some kind of writing. They were all very excited to get on with this mini assignment. Most worked in groups of three or four, a couple in a pair and only one student preferring to work by herself. They all found areas in the classroom in which to work; some sitting at their tables, some on the carpeted area at the front of the class and others in the reading area at the back of the classroom. There was no arguing and the atmosphere was joyful and sensible. Each group of students had chosen something different to work on. A group of boys sat together and they decided that each of them was going to write an information booklet. Others wrote stories, recounts and one little boy and girl studied a class millipede to get information for their writing piece. Some students approached me to ask how to spell a word. Dictionaries and resource books were used by many of the students. Some students included pictures in their work and some went to the trouble of punching holes in their work and organizing it as neatly as they could. Time was limited and most of the students were disappointed that they did not have more time to complete their work; five girls would have been happy to continue writing through their break time. One little girl wanted to take her work home to finish it. Without exception, each child was pleased to show me their work.

Without going deeper into the specifics of what kind of learning skills these students demonstrated, I can testify that there was an abundance of reasoning, resilience and responsibility that day. I will definitely be approaching the teacher to find out more about his approach to teaching.