At Halfway Houses Primary School we encourage the children to think about what learning is and what it looks and feels like for them.They have made some fantastic suggestions!

We think about how we approach learning and how to encourage the children to have a growth mindset.This means that they aim to approach all that they learn with enthusiasm and an acceptance that it may challenge their thinking but that through hard work and perseverance, they will reach their goal.

There are two types of mindset – growth and fixed. If you have a growth mindset then you are open to challenge and excited by learning new things with an acceptance that it may be hard to achieve but it will be worth it. If you have a fixed mindset then you prefer to be able to do something straight away and find perseverance tricky. We have discussed this with all of the children and are developing ways of recognising these mindsets during lessons and realising that we all differ in different learning environments according to how we feel about what we are doing. We are all working together to develop our mindsets and to figure out how to work collaboratively to improve all learning opportunities.

We believe that this will encourage resilience in our children and will help to develop a love of exciting learning opportunities. We are very aware that the world is moving at a fast pace and we are preparing our children for careers that we don’t know even exist at the moment, so by ensuring that our children are independent and confident learners, we are equipping them for a life-long enjoyment of learning.

Our work on Growth Mindsets is based on the research of Carol Dweck.