What is Learning Without Limits?

Learning Without Limits is a philosophy that we wholeheartedly believe in here at West Leigh and Backwell Juniors. We offer our pupils every chance to succeed and are developing many different ways in which they can do this by taking greater ownership of their learning:

Self-Selection - Our pupils regularly choose their own level of challenge within lessons. Differentiated activities or challenges are available for the children to decide how best to take their learning forward.

'Goldilocks' Reviews or 'Purple' Learning - Once the pupils have chosen their own level of challenge, they reflect on their choice against various success criteria and decide if they have been working at a level that is 'Just Right' for them. This is also known as being a 'Purple Learner' and the pupils reflect on their work, highlighting it in purple if they think it has been completed with the right level of challenge for them.

 

 

Collaboration and Challenge - We aim to offer all of our pupils a wide variety of opportunities to work together to investigate and challenge themselves. Linked to self-selection, they can often choose if they work independently, together or with help from their teacher. Offering the pupils this level of choice, gives them real ownership over their learning choices and has a positive impact upon motivation. Allowing the children time to 'Grapple' with problems in class before offering our teaching input is also developing reasoning and problem solving skills. 

Celebration - We want all of our pupils to feel fully valued and we want to celebrate their many successes in class and out. Our weekly 'Celebration' and 'Superstars' services offer parents/carers the chance to share this with us and our 'Beautiful Work' displays showcase the effort of individual pupils to all visitors to our two schools.

Our school participates in the Learning Exchange 'Learning Without Limits' Network.

 

The Learning Exchange summarise Learning Without Limits as "based on the beliefs that can be summarised as follows:

• Education can and does have the power to transform lives.
• It is a social, emotional and cognitive experience that is shared by teachers and pupils.
• Ability is not fixed.
• What is done in the present has the potential to change in the future.
• Education works best when everybody is in it together; there is trust between everyone involved and pupils and teachers work together in a spirit of co-agency.

                                                                              North Somerset Learning Exchange

Child Voice

Purple Learning

"Red means you're finding it really hard. Purple means you're finding it just right and blue means that it is too easy!"

"We colour in the face in our book - red, purple or blue."

"It tells how much you've been thinking about a challenge."

Self-Selection

"I always think it will be hard but when I've finished learning it is easier."

"If I've picked a challenge that is too easy or too hard I know I can choose another challenge."

"If it is too easy you go on to the next challenge."

"I like it when you can choose Challenge 3 after Challenge 2."