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.