Attitudes to Learning
Although children’s attainment is obviously important, their attitude to learning is something which can also be learned and improved and is key to their future in education.
In order to help the children understand how they can improve, the criteria needed to be clearer. This will also help teachers and parents understand what a child’s approach to learning is, and more importantly, what areas they need to develop.
Infants' School - In the Infants' school we start to talk to children about 'making mistakes' and why it is important to 'have a go' and never be afraid to try. Children all understand that to get better at something we will make some mistakes before we learn.
The Infant children are introduced to 'Learning Behaviours'. How can I become an 'outstanding learner'?
Junior School - the ‘CJS Attitudes to Learning’ scales are often discussed in lessons.
As with any scaled score, there is always an expectation that the highest band is all that is acceptable and that unless a child has reached, in this case ‘1’, they have not succeeded. This is not the case with the CJS Attitudes to Learning. Most children will find that their attitude to learning is 2, and this is a ‘Good’ score. If a child is on ‘3’ that too is also acceptable and they are by no means ‘failing’ but will have one or two areas of learning that they might need to improve. It is rare for a child to be ‘4’ and if we felt that they were struggling with their learning and it was a ‘cause for concern’, we would contact you for a discussion so that we could put something in place to support them.
If a child has developed an ‘outstanding’ attitude to learning, they have become independent learners who take full responsibility for their learning – which is quite an achievement. We would hope that the majority of children are achieving this in some, if not all, areas of their learning by the end of year 6.
We hope that they will begin to understand the importance of a ‘Growth Mindset’ in which they show resilience and begin to appreciate that nothing is impossible, it is just not possible……yet!
A child friendly version of this can be found here.
