Background
Having unleashed Yoda for Concentration the previous week, anticipation was high for week 2. WHO WAS IT? WHAT WOULD THE SPECIAL POWER BE? All 8 Learning power posters had been stuck up around the classroom but masked for the whole week behind a large question mark! Every day, the children had been speculating. Finally, the moment had arrived.
I work with a mixed attaining group which includes a high number of Pupil Premium children. Part of my remit as a Pupil Premium teacher, is to help those pupil premium children close the gap whilst building their self-esteem. All children can be fragile when they are faced with something new that they know they might ‘fail’ at and when they find that new thing difficult their ‘stickability’ is challenged.
Time to unleash – Rey for ‘not giving up’.
What we did.
Having had great success with measuring length and tearing their hair out at ‘mistakes’ in my method (see next post from me), our next step was to convert measurements.
10 minutes into converting ‘g’ to ‘kg’, I detected some frustration. I invited the most frustrated child to come and unveil the 2nd learning power.
Quivering with excitement, frustration immediately forgotten, he beamed at the sight of Rey running from a burning starship. We spent a giddy few minutes reading the learning story and talking about Rey’s qualities
This time, when asked to highlight pieces of the story which might be skills for ‘Don’t give up!’, the children had made accurate decisions within a couple of minutes.
We looked at the bullet point list we had created and the children talked about how we could use Rey’s Learning Power for what we were getting stuck on. During the discussion, without prompting, the children referred back to Yoda for concentration, making the link between the 2 learning powers and how we should use both.
Outcome
Invigorated, we kept going with our tricky conversions but the mood had changed completely. Our explicit discussion of not giving up lifted the spirits of everyone.
For the rest of the week, we talked about Yoda and Rey and the Learning Powers have become part of our classroom language much more quickly than I anticipated.
Next step
I am under so much pressure to reveal Learning Power 3 to my group! However, year 3/4 then became very busy with the school production so it is over to 5/6 and Mrs. Hodges for the next instalment. Sky class have also been introduced to the Learning Powers over the last few weeks. Time to hear how they have been getting on.