Daniel Gooding, Wantirna College

Frequent Learner Points

After many attempts to subdue my rowdy year eights (only to find my voice getting hoarse and my patience getting thin, repeating lines like “To be a good learner you need to participate constructively in the lesson”) I decided to work smarter rather than harder at getting these kids involved in their learning. I went through the PEEL literature and bounced a few ideas around.

Energy was not an issue. I didn’t need to spark anything in these guys to keep them awake, because they were always yelling out, arguing the point and pushing boundaries. What I needed was a way to channel their energy into something positive. What I needed was FREQUENT LEARNER POINTS. There are many references to recognising, and monitoring learning behaviours in students throughout the articles of PEEL teachers, and I have borrowed the concept of FLPs. I have, however, taken the concept and integrated into my teaching adapting it to personal style and experience and would encourage you to do the same. Work with it, mould it and make it your own.

The concept of FLPs is to recognise and reward involvement in class activities, encourage positive learning behaviours and build an environment were question asking, curiosity and discussion is the norm. Since I implemented the concept with my rowdy year eights the system has undergone many changes and is continually evolving. I do attempt to base much of this evolution on student feedback.

In this article, my aim is to show you my thoughts as the concept has evolved, and encourage you to implement some sort of learning recognition system in your own classroom. As such the article may seem a little disjointed and I apologise for that at the out set.

When introducing the concept to a class for the first time, I discuss the notion that learning is (hopefully) the most important thing that occurs in our classroom. Steering the discussion reasonably carefully, I try to draw out of the students how they can show that they are learning. Typical responses include things like “answering questions” “doing our work” “doing homework”. (I am very interested in the student belief that doing “work” is directly proportional to learning) After a little prompting students begin to see that through asking questions, offering opinions and changing ideas, they can also demonstrate learning. By the end of most discussions we have come with a list that closely resembles the grid at the end of this article.

Students are then given the opportunity to negotiate the rewards. I usually suggest that a small reward such as lollies should go for around 20 points, other rewards I have used in the past include things like “Get out of homework free pass” (to be used when necessary not immediately), library passes, chocolate bars, etc. I try very hard to steer away from rewards that remove students from positive learning behaviours, free time in class that sort of thing.

Okay, so we’ve established the idea that demonstrating good learning will be rewarded and the rewards have been negotiated, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of how the system operates. When I first started using FLPs I would choose a different student every lesson to “do the points”, this student didn’t have to take down any notes during the lesson, their sole purpose was to monitor the learning going on in the class. After the class the student would get a photocopy of the notes from another person so they didn’t miss anything. At this point of my explanation I usually get arguments like “but the student taking the points is not doing any work” “It’s not fair on the point taker” and “so the person taking the points just bludges do they”. In my experience the student taking the point is probably one of the most engaged students in the room. They follow the discussion with the a discerning ear, they pick on good and bad learning behaviours (often becoming more self aware in the process) and they realise that it is definitely not a bludge. A few years on I am in no doubt that the role of “point taker” is a powerful learning experience and insist that everybody in the class have a turn at least once. One change that I have made in this area came about do to inconsistency on my part. I would often forget to bring the point sheets to the class, and the students never failed to ask for it of course. So, now I photocopy about 10 sheets at a time and delegate the responsibility to someone in the class, it is their responsibility to hand the sheet to someone who hasn’t done it and keep track of who has.

At the end of the lesson I take up the sheet and enter the points into a spreadsheet so that I can keep a running tally of how the students are going. I have this spreadsheet tied to word document and regularly give the students Points Updates. A Points Update tells the student how many points they have earned, how many they have redeemed, what they are doing well, and areas they might try and improve to earn more points. All this is fully automated using “if” statements and mail merge. It takes a bit of time to set up the spreadsheet, but once that’s done it takes about three minutes to update the points at the end of each lesson.

And that’s about it really. I find that after a little while the process runs itself, and I am constantly amazed and affirmed by the actions of my students. One such affirmation occurred recently when my year seven class (that had been using FLP for just over a term) were doing group work and I said that whilst the official sheet wouldn’t be used they could allocate points to those in their group who demonstrated good learning. I was expecting them to come to me with “So-and-so worked well so we gave her a point”, and “Thing-a-me answered all the questions on the task sheet so we gave him a point”, but not so. At the end of lesson every group sent a representative to me with statements like “We gave so-and-so a point because they linked this work with something from SOSE” and “Thing-a-me got two points because they changed their idea after our discussion” etc. I was absolutely rapt. These students were recognising positive learning behaviours in each other with out any direct prompting form me.

The tally of points that the students have earned is also a very valuable tool. I use it to illustrate to parents how their child is going in class at Parent/Student/Teacher interviews. I also use it to check that every body is involving themselves in the class. After I had been doing the points for a few weeks in one of my classes, I had a phone call from a concerned parent. Her daughter it seems had not earned many points yet and was too nervous and quiet to ask questions or share ideas in class. The parent was very positive about the concept of the system, but was worried that her daughter would feel left out and become disengaged further. I took this on board as constructive criticism, and went back to the drawing board. I had a sheet that I had made a while ago, that gave students an opportunity to reflect on their week in class, with a little tweaking this sheet became a way students could tell me about other ways they had demonstrated good learning behaviours without having to do it in front of the class. I gave three copies of this sheet to every student and explained that they could hand this to me at any time and depending on their responses they would get FLPs. I have had a good response from the students with this and the quiet students are gaining enough self-confidence to risk sharing ideas in a classroom setting.

I have also had opportunities to discuss different aspects of learning with my class as a direct result of FLPs. After a term with one class, I noticed that there were not many points being given out for some of the categories. I brought this up with the class and in groups they came up with reasons why the categories were not getting many “hits” and how we could increase the occurrence of these behaviours in our class. The students came up with many ideas and the experience was most valuable. As a result, we made a few changes to the way the sheet looked. I split into two each with only half a class on so that two people would able keep track and good behaviours would not be missed. The new sheets also had student names listed alphabetically by Christian name rather than surname so that they were easier to find. Both these changes to the sheet and the suggestion that it would help if I pointed out explicitly what sort of good learning behaviours were occurring in the class, have resulted in a big increase in both number and range of points being picked up in the class.

I hope that this article has been thought provoking and encouraged you to monitor how your students are learning not just what. Although I am very happy with the system, I am always looking for ways to improve it and would value any ideas you have. Oh, by the way, my rowdy year eights under went a process of metamorphosis changing from a dread each day to a joy, where learning was the number one priority.

The Points Sheet

The learning behaviours across the top of the grid were decided upon using the PEEL Teachers List of Good Learning Behaviours (p 57 Stories of Reflective Teaching 1996).

Name / Asked a for more information / Makes a link between idea / Commented on someone elses point / Contributed to a class discussion / Extended the work “if this..then why..?” / Found something wrong with what was said / Offered an answers to general question / Altered their idea after new information / Explained why something was unclear / Bonus Points / Did something that distracted others (-ve) / Was distracted by others (-ve) / Total

This sheet is designed to help you reflect on what we have looked at over the past week, and how you feel you have gone. Think about what you have learnt (not just what we have covered) and the things you have understood, not understood (and therefore need to find out more about) and want to know more about. I will try and check these every week. This is between you and me only, so be honest. It can only help you with your learning.

Name: / Date:
The main topic for the past week was: / Three things I have learnt about this topic are:
A question I asked about this topic in class this week was:
A question I asked about this topic at home/out of class this week was:
I didn’t really get the bit about:
Two questions that I want to know are:


I changed my idea about…
When…
Something that somebody in class said this week , that I thought was interesting was:
Said by:
This week I think the effort I put in was:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Something I am going to improve upon next week is: