This week Year 7 pupils were introduced to Einstein Time as part of the tutor programme to support our tutees to learn about learning.

Loosely based on Google’s Genius Hour, in which Google employees are allowed to spend 20% of their time pursuing a passion project as this was found to increase productivity, each pupil will undertake an independent project of their choice to work on in tutor time. The group dived right in with 18 merits awarded for engagement in the first hour!

The purpose of Einstein Time is to develop pupils’ understanding of the Habits of the Virtue of Learning: engage, react, persist, question and reflect. By basing learning solely on pupils’ interests, they can develop a deeper understanding of what good learning habits look and feel like, in a meaningful context. This in turn can be applied to the classroom and pupils will gain an appreciation of what the effort grades mean, for example ‘what does outstanding engagement look like?  How can I tell if my persistence is good or satisfactory?’.

As pupils work on their projects, tutors have an opportunity to observe pupils as independent learners applying the Learning Habits, and can offer feedback on the language of the grading system. When grades and reports are published tutors can support target setting across the curriculum with meaningful conversations in context. As the year progresses we will incorporate target setting into the programme ready for Year 8.

Einstein time is a fantastic way of pupils sharing interests and interacting with each other in addition to improving learning skills. So far the topics include animation, cooking, drawing, woodwork, baking and podcasting. I am really looking forward seeing the results which will be shared in tutor times and hopefully year group assemblies as pupils gain confidence. 

Miss Mills
Head of Year 7 and 8