Growth Mind Set and Learning Culture

A teacher’s job is not to make work easy. It is to make it difficult. If you are not challenged, you do not make mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, feedback is useless.

John Hattie

“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it , even (or especially) when it’s not going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during  some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

Carole S Dweck

 We Are Building Learning Power

At St Michael's we place learning at the heart of all that we do. We focus on learning values for the world that our children will face in the fast changing world of today. 

We know that Building Learning Power works, so what is it? 

* Collaboration: Knowing how to manage yourself in the give and take of a collaborative venture, respecting and recognising other view points; adding to and drawing from the strength of teams. 

* Empathy and Listening: Contributing to others’ experiences by listening to them to understand what they are really saying, and putting yourself in their shoes. 

* Imitation: Constructively adopting methods, habits or values from other people whom you observe. 

At St Michael’s we use superheroes to help our learners understand the different learning muscles that they are developing.

At St. Michael's C of E Primary School we aim to develop our pupils’ learning power, not just so they can complete school learning more easily and effectively, but also so they can develop a general purpose and set of habits and attitudes which will serve them well throughout their lives. By encouraging the children to think about their learning preferences and act accordingly, we hope to promote a life-long love of learning.

Building Learning Power (BLP) is about helping our pupils to become better learners. By creating a climate that fosters good learning habits and attitudes, we hope to enable them to face challenges and difficulties in a calm, confident and creative way.

Research has shown that pupils who are confident of their own learning ability learn faster and learn more efficiently. They concentrate more, think harder and find learning more rewarding and enjoyable.

This is not an instant programme but it takes root and develops over time.

-It is a learning culture that encourages children and teachers to become better learners.

-It allows children to approach difficulties in learning without fear of failure.

-It allows the children to take small steps within learning.

-It develops confidence.

-It is not additional to teaching but should be grounded within everyday teaching and learning.

Why are we Building Learning Power? 

We believe that BLP will allow us to develop a common language for learning across the school. The language is used in all classrooms, with all children. This helps everyone talk about understanding learning to learn. We hope that this understanding will begin to spill over into life outside school, where parents will be able to reinforce the ideas by encouraging the children to use their learning language in their everyday lives.