Habits Of Learning

Children in Years 1-6 will soon be receiving their first interim report of this academic year.  Reporting to parents in this manner is only one of the ways in which we communicate your child’s progress to you.  Regular communication between teachers and parents is important thus there should be no surprises in your child’s February report.

Several years ago we made changes to our reporting process to capture what we felt as educators was important to report to parents to enable them to support the children’s progress. Ultimately all parents have joined St. Helen’s College to give their child/children the best start in life, investing in their futures, and during your child’s journey with us we aspire to fulfil our school aims, which are:

Love of Learning

We aim to inspire a lifelong thirst for creative, stimulating and rewarding learning, leading to the full development of every child’s academic potential.

Personal Growth

We aim to instil core moral values, inspiring virtue, responsibility, resilience, independence, mindful self-awareness and a desire for continuing self-development.

Involvement and Challenge

We aim to inspire an ongoing desire to develop talents, nurture the widest possible range of interests, and contribute to society as confident, compassionate and responsible citizens and leaders of the future.

Fostering good habits of learning is essential to the children’s success. Cultivating these habits has a profound impact on their achievement and their ability to thrive both in and out of the classroom.

The Habits of Learning we focus on are:

• Organisation and readiness

• Collaboration

• Initiative and resourcefulness

• Self-discipline (Years 1, 2 and 3) / Focus on Learning (Years 4, 5 and 6)

• Independent work  (added from Year 2)

All children will develop these habits of learning at different rates. In the reports, we give parents an indicator of where we perceive their development of these habits on a continuum from ‘cause for concern’ to ‘excellent’.

What is important is that we understand how to support each child in developing good habits to become a good learner.  Mrs. Hunt’s blog on ‘Sleep’ is critical to your child developing these habits and having good routines both at home and school will help to foster your child’s learning habits.  There is a super article in Nursery World magazine which discusses the value of routines - you can read it here.
 

Over the past few years as a whole school we have been explicitly engaging the pupils in our ‘meta-learning strategies’ in order to assist in nurturing good habits of learning. We are confident that when our pupils leave us at the end of Year 6 they have a superb understanding of ‘how’ to be a good learner and it is always so rewarding when we have feedback from our senior schools on how well our pupils settle and what they achieve in their new schools.

We urge parents to discuss the habits of learning with your children and to help them to develop these habits even when they are at home. This could be as simple as packing their own bags (organisation), attempting their homework without adult support/input (but please do take an interest without doing it for them) or encouraging them to ask questions about their learning and the world around them.  Learning is a lifelong activity and if the children can see that adults are lifelong learners too, then this will motivate them to become curious and independent and to aspire to greater things. 

So maybe as adults too we should review our own habits of learning. Give yourself time to reflect on you as a learner, what habits do you still need to cultivate and improve upon?   Do not worry though - we will not be asking you to give yourself an interim report! 

We hope that you will find your child's report useful and informative and a springboard for conversations with your child about how they learn.

Mrs. Drummond