Crescent School’s Curriculum Workshops have explored how a Growth Mindset can help pupils be successful in their learning. Facilitated by staff over the last two weeks, pupils and parents have enjoyed a range of age-appropriate activities exploring different approaches and strategies for problem solving.
Year 1 parents saw how oral storytelling helps embed speaking and learning objectives in English. Using a range of crafting materials, the children created frames for a favourite story in a collaborative task with their parent. They then uploaded their work to Seesaw, along with their spoken retelling through photos and videos. Parents enjoyed the challenge set by Mrs Symons and Mrs Stapleton, and followed up the activities with great feedback and questions on how we all need to be positive role models in the vocabulary we use when approaching challenging tasks at home, work or school.
The children in Year 2 loved sharing an in school session with their parents and Mr Webb and Mrs McCollin. After agreeing what fixed and growth mindsets look like, they took on a challenge to build a high tower from marshmallow and spaghetti. Despite encountering difficulties and problems, children and parents were able to reset, to think differently, try alternative approaches and encourage one another to remain positive.
Year 3 were pleased to be able to welcome their parents into school for a taster of life in the classroom. Their workshop had a cross-curricular focus on English, ICT and Growth Mindset, led by Mr Adkins and Mrs Yates, with the pupils working with their parents to devise and plan an imaginative and unique story using a story mountain framework. The teams then used the amazing Puppet Pals app on the iPads to turn their story plan into a short drama piece, some involving pirates, monsters, aliens… and even Mahatma Ghandi being eaten by a dragon! It was a great opportunity to share their learning strategies first hand with their adults.
Mrs Monteith and Mrs Johnson led a workshop with Year 4 and their parents on 'Growth Mindset' and the difference it can make to their learning and their lives. They began by standing in a circle creating 'pathways' with a ball of wool to show how the connections in a brain works; then they took part in 'Brain Art' where the children and parents drew dots and pathways to create unique designs and shared them with each other. Lastly, they took part in a challenge to build a free-standing tower made from index cards and 10 sticky dots. It was a hotly contested battle.
A full hall of Year 5 and 6 parents and children were encouraged to look for connection through collaboration through closed and open-ended activities beginning with a mathematical, logical slant from Ms Forth. Parents were introduced to the vocabulary used in school to encourage a growth mindset and pupils and parents then encouraged to evaluate numbers, find a rule that they followed and then create rules with a set of random objects that showed logic. Children produced patterns of height, weight, translucency and order of rotation to name a few. Mrs Webb then continued sharing how staff provide opportunities to use higher order skills such as analysis, evaluation and creativity to consider who you would plant ideas into the mind of and what would those ideas be. Their suggestions for planting ideas to tackle climate change and bring about peace into the minds of world leaders were extremely humbling to hear. Collaboration and discussion were strongly encouraged as such a valuable learning tool throughout the session.
Head of Curriculum, Deputy Head, Bryony Forth, said, “We hope the Curriculum Workshops have helped parents understand the techniques and strategies that we use in school today. We work hard to create a positive, ‘can do’ learning environment in school to enable pupils to achieve. Developing skills in resilience and perseverance and an ability to thrive on challenges are essential. A huge thank you to all of the parents who came in to join us!”
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