Our Christian Vision: ‘To do all things through Christ who strengthens us’ (Phil 4/13)

In so doing we want our children to become ‘good citizens’ who appreciate the diversity within the world, recognise it as a strength, and respect ALL with kindness and love.

Being a ‘good citizen’ is also about having a set of skills that contribute to personal success and wellbeing. These will allow our children to be capable and able to strive, aspire and succeed in all walks of life.

These skills help children. For example; your child is at home reading a book and gets to a hard part. What does she or he do? Does he close the book? Does he give up? Does he use ‘academic’ strategies to figure out the words and meaning?

 Of course academics play a role—if he can’t decode the words, he won’t get far. But he also needs other skills; like self-regulation, resilience, and optimism.

Developing character and capabilities is important for several reasons:

• It draws attention to the processes of learning and not just the products;
• It is more likely to engage pupils in active rather than passive learning;
• It enables pupils to go beyond the mere recall of information and to develop deeper understanding of topics;
• it creates positive dispositions and habits for learning; and
• they provide a new range of criteria against which pupils can evaluate their progress in learning.

Essentially, they enable pupils to learn how to learn.

We actively promote our children to:

• ask focused questions;
• plan and set goals and break a task into sub-tasks;
• use their own and others’ ideas to locate sources of information;
• select, classify, compare and evaluate information;
• select the most appropriate method for a task;
• use a range of methods for collating, recording and representing information; and communicate with a sense of audience and purpose;
• sequence, order, classify, and make comparisons;
• make predictions, examine evidence, and distinguish fact from opinion;
• make links between cause and effect;
• justify methods, opinions and conclusions;
• generate possible solutions, try out alternative approaches, and evaluate outcomes;
• examine options and weigh up pros and cons;
• use different types of questions; and make connections between learning in different contexts;
• seek out questions to explore and problems to solve;
• experiment with ideas and questions;
• make new connections between ideas/information;
• learn from and value other people’s ideas;
• make ideas real by experimenting with different designs, actions, and outcomes;
• challenge the routine method;
• value the unexpected or surprising;
• see opportunities in mistakes and failures; and take risks for learning.
• listen actively and share opinions;
• develop routines of turn-taking, sharing and cooperating;
• give and respond to feedback;
• understand how actions and words affect others;
• adapt their behaviour and language to suit different people and situations;
• take personal responsibility for work with others and evaluate their own contribution to the group;
• be fair;
• respect the views and opinions of others and reach agreements using negotiation and compromise; and
• suggest ways of improving their approach to working collaboratively.