Values and Growth Mindset
Stretchy Learners
For all learners, it is important that they understand the difficulties of the learning process and value the effort and resilience required to overcome a challenge. When children have a positive outlook and understand that they can achieve what may seem difficult, we call this a Growth Mindset. This does not just happen in school lessons, but can be applied to every aspect of their lives: riding a bike, mastering a football skill, learning times tables and baking a cake to name but a few.
To help embed the necessary stages of a Growth Mindset, we use the nmemonic of being a STRETCHy learner.
We aim to teach children that self-belief is the vital first step, otherwise you are much more likely to want to give up at the first sign of things becoming difficult.
Trying Hard is an obvious step, but we need to work hard if we are going to find and then overcome thet things that we find challenging.
Resilience is so important so that we don't become discouraged when we find things tough. This also goes back to our self-belief and knowing that we can achieve if we keep working at it.
We need to Embrace Errors because they help us find out what we do not know. If we never made mistakes, we must only ever be doing things we can already do. Being scared of mistakes will ultinately stop us trying new things.
After we have welcomed our errors, we need to Take-on Feedback so that we can learn how to correct them and understand our errors. If we do this, we become more comptent and eventually we will master the new learning or skill. Our feedback can come from our marked work, from an adult who helps us, or we may even see it for ourselves in the results. The most important thing is that you get good feedback on how to overcome any errors.
Our last stage is to keep on Challenging ourselves to improve either in them same learning / skill or to move onto the next one. That we way we keep on progressing.
Values
Our core Values are Kindness, Respect and Responsibility:
We see these core values as umbrella terms that encapsulate many more values that we view as desirable. If we can support children to live our core values, they will adopt many of the values that underpin each other, for example:
Kindness: Generosity, Charity and Patience
Respect: Tolerance, Equality and Inclusivity
Responsibility: Trustworthiness, dedication and community-spirit
British Values
British Values are defined as:
- Democracy,
- Rule of Law,
- Respect and Tolerance,
- and Individual Liberty
All of these values are underpinned through the values of the school and through relevant policies and procedures.
Democracy
The principles and benefits of Democracy are enacted through our democratic process of electing House Captains and School Councillors. Children have the chance to put forward their personal attributes to the electorate that make them suitable for the role and are then subject to the votes of their peers to choose a representative.
We also cover the major elections of the national and local government and the process of how Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister are elected.
Rule of Law
We have our school rules and we always aim not to just enforce them, but to help children understand why they are in place. We learn that laws and rules are in place to help a society live together and that it only functions when we have a shared set of rules that we adhere to.
Respect and Tolerance
Respect is one of our core values and tolerance is developed alongside this value. This is taught specifically during October when we mark Black History Month and in March when we celebrate International Women's Day with a month dedicated to women and the struggle for equality. During both these months, we learn about the historical discrimination faced by these groups and important people from history who either had their contribtuion ignored or diminished, or those who blazed a trail in the fight for equality. During both of these months, we set aside a day for an Enrichment Day when we come off-timetable to learn and celebrate the life of a notable individual.
We also develop respect and tolerance for people's religious beliefs by learning about key religious holidays for the main religions. These are covered through assemblies but also through special Enrichment Days when we move off timetable to celebrate a festival.
Individual Liberty
The value of individual liberty is covered through our values of Kindness and Respect and we encourage children to value the differences between us as individuals. We want all children to be free to express themselves and value their own and others uniqueness. The world would be a particularly dull place if everyone was the same and having the freedom to express yourself freely has led to a diverse and much more interesting country.