Week 7 NEWSLETTER

Desirable Difficulty enhances learning

• When mistakes are made, learning starts to occur. This means tackling learning that is hard, difficult and being prepared to take a risk
• Don’t sugar coat failure...failure is part of life, is part of growth. Give children an appreciation for what failure brings
• Struggle is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of developing strength. Again, lets help our children re-frame struggle as something that is good...something that they need to do.

Self esteem or self efficacy

• He spoke about these two things...Self-Esteem being How much you value yourself, and Self Efficacy being How much Influence you think you have. While both are important, Nottingham believed that focusing just on self-esteem doesn’t build Influence...but if you focus on and build Self-Efficacy (If we help children believe in themselves and their ability to improve their lot) then self-esteem will be built also
• Failure with Self-Efficacy can be productive, Failure with NO Self-Efficacy can be a disaster
• The key to building self-efficacy is Challenge. Praise children when they tackle something challenging, when they are finding something difficult, and discuss mistakes and struggle with them in a positive way

This directly relates to the professional learning our teaching staff are doing at the moment through Stanford University. The learning is around Maths, but really encompasses the ideas above (and can be applied to any part of learning).

The video below is put together by the Professor running our course (Jo Boaler) and is what they show students at the start of a series of lessons. The video contains 4 messages that they believe are super important around Maths:

• Anyone can learn Maths to the highest levels
• Believe in yourself (Growth Mindset)
• Struggle and Mistakes are really important - feel good about the struggle
• Speed is not important

The key to the above (again) is Challenge.

Professor Boaler (the Stanford course) was recently in the country and was interviewed by Q+A. The video is below, and contains many gems...but also a warning to parents. As parents we need to be careful about the messages we give children...and she gives a great example of parents saying “don’t worry, I wasn’t good at maths” or “I don’t have a maths brain’. She then explains that messages like this are directly associated with a drop in achievement for children.

To tie all this back to Nottingham, and to the earlier newsletter...messages like that put children off Challenging themselves, and help develop a Fixed Mindset of themselves as a learner. Here at DPS we firmly believe in developing children who are resilient learners, who have a growth mindset, who embrace challenge and who are not afraid to make mistakes. These are the messages we want to promote:

• Easy is boring, Challenging is interesting
• Struggle and Mistakes are really important - feel good about the struggle
• Believe in yourself
• Praise the learning, not the outcome (as they are learning, not just when they are successful)

Creative Kids

Always enjoy seeing the kids creativity in action...Sam and Dylan turning scootering into a leisure activity, and Perrie designing and building a T-Rex out of LEGO (even has the classic T-Rex arms, love it!)

Here is the link to purchase tickets:

https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2019/the-developing-brain-masterton/wairarapa

For our Literacy/Inquiry we have been looking at different body parts. Thinking about how they work and why they are important for our bodies. We have written some 'What am I' descriptions - can you guess what body part we are?

My organ is like a ball. It looks like slippery slime, and shaped like a boiled egg. It looks like a lollipop, shiny and rattly. There are white bits in our organ. There is a dot in my organ. When I touch it, it's slimy, YUCK!

What am I?

Jared Collings

I see a bean looking thing that looks wet. I cut through the bean shaped object. Clear, purple tubes that come to the organ like tunnels. The bean looks like skin inside your body. It sounds like a bear that is known as Honey. And boom, boom, boom! When you have indigestion it feels like mini fireworks.

What am I?

Aneka Williams

I see a thin, plastic, workable layer with white wires running next to them. I look at the blue smooth lens, shaped like a pizza. I stare at the amazing observation. I like the red padding around the short edge. I see the brown iris shining in the dark.

I feel the snowy organ, bouncing in my hands. I touch the sleek white sphere. I grip my hands on the gooey oozing out the side. I brush my hands on it, it feels as small as a glue stick lid. I feel the squishy layer like a little toy.

What am I?

Tristan Hunter

Kids, are you looking for fun on a Friday night?

Then come along to Kids' Club, 5.30 till 7.30pm on Fridays at the Baptist Church. We provide a safe, family atmosphere with table tennis, computer games, craft, a kid-friendly light tea, Bible stories and organised games. The cost is just $2.50 per child. Phone Liz on 0272233100 for more details or just come along and have a look. We're on the corner of Renall and Chapel Streets; entrance off Renall St.