Perseverance.......Derek Redmond 1992 Olympics

Two Weeks on!

Since the initial rush of ideas, interest and enthusiasm BLP has....... continued at a manic pace! It is being discussed in staff meetings, new displays are being created, staff are sharing resources, creating assemblies and the children are talking about it and now beginning to  understanding RESILIENCE.

The Pitstop (Nurture Room) planned and delivered an assembly showcasing situations in school where children needed to show resilience............


After the assembly children and staff  then shared their own experiences of showing resilience
During the assembly Mrs Sutcliffe came up with an analogy to represent resilience - For the forty plus people out there may remember 'THE WEEBLES' - WEEBLES WOBBLE BUT THEY DON'T FALL DOWN. Mrs Sutcliffe used this by saying yes we wobble emotionally through a number of issues but we don't give in we show resilience and try again.


Whilst working with Year 5 discussing resilience we recorded their thoughts and feelings

listen to ‘Jessica yr5’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Ellie Mai’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Callum yr5’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Jason yr 5’ on Audio

listen to ‘Alectra yr 5’ on Audioboo

Examples of the initial displays appearing around school

First 4 Days......

Launch Assembly

'We are all learners and Resilience in our learning'

I introduced the language of BLP and explained that we would begin with Resilience and that we are all learners.
I explained how I'd recently begun to learn to Mountain bike - explaining even as an adult how I'd learnt something new.
Showed a video and explained how my son had shown resilience in learning to ride his bike without stabilisers.
I then challenged a year 6 child to a snowboard race on the Wii... I lost! I asked the children if they were in my shoes, What would you do?........ Every child replied they would want to beat him.
EXACTLY I shouted...... that's the RESILIENCE I want in your learning.

2nd Assembly

Famous People who have shown RESILIENCE

JK Rowling showed huge resilience to publish her Harry Potter series. She was a single parent, she wrote by hand in a cafe every night and got her work refused for over a year by publishing houses. Imagine if she hadn't persevered! Hadn't been resilient! Read her story by clicking on her image.



Finally Achievement Assembly on the Friday of the week - 3 classes mentioned resilience when selecting their children- 1 - Reception child for resilience in sounding out his key words, 2 - year 6 for resilience in their learning prior to SATS and 3 - year 5 were given a task to investigate evaporation by designing their own experiment, selecting their equipment and deciding how to report their findings. This is an example of their recording.
The year 5 lesson was planned with a dual focus - a curriculum one and a BLP one. This sort of lesson encourages collaboration, problem solving, curiosity and resilience. All aptitudes I would love our children to leave Greengates with. 
And finally again year 3 spent the afternoon making gas masks but what was so pleasing was the language the children used "I must be resilient" "I can't give up" "How do I do this?"  These discussions arose because of 2 posters their teacher had put up. 1) a riskometer which helped the children see if they are learning in the panic, risk or comfort zone. If the children are in comfort zone they are not pushing themselves - we are expecting them to be in the risk zone - pushing themselves, challenging themselves, learning not to be scared of failing. 2) An unstuck board - this helps the children to be independent in their learning, looking for ways to solve their learning issues.
 

These may seem small advances, but after only 4 days I can only say how pleased I am that the staff have given it a go and the children are starting to use the language.

As we learn more, try more and implement more they'll be blogged about here.

Building Learning Power..... What! Why! How!.......Will it impact?

For a while we have felt something has been missing at Greengates, something to pull together all the great things which are currently embedded in the school curriculum, ethos and life - a common link/language/hook to pull everything together....... Results are good, Value Added is good, great staff team, a varied and interesting curriculum from den building to Ipads..... What was missing?

During our recent Pupil Progress Meetings a common thread became apparent - a fear of failure, an inability to problem solve a problem - a lack of determination in the children's learning. 
We had already decided to develop a Forest School curriculum and ethos and are ready to launch in September 2013- this is based around problem solving and collaboration, but again it felt like an add on not a whole school ethos. How could we take the forest schools attitudes and ethos into the rest of the schools learning?

I'd heard a colleague @BryanPHarrison rave about Building Learning Power(BLP) , but had never seen it in action and came across an old university friend @leanneday72 via Bryan who is a consultant for BLP. Through Facebook we agreed to meet, she came down to visit school and the SLT. 10 days later she delivered whole school training and assisted the SLT to devise a school implementation plan. Leanne advised us this was a 2-3 year plan to see wholesale impact.

I am writing this blog a week later and am extremely pleased with how our journey has started....

Timescales
2nd May - Whole school training
3rd and 6th May school closed
12th May first blog post.

The following blogpost describes our first 4 days - keep checking back to follow our journey.