Building Learning Power

“At DVIS we want all the children to think about HOW they learn as well as about WHAT they are learning. These learning powers will be woven into and throughout our learning and broad and balanced curriculum.”

DVIS approach to a holistic education

At DVIS we want all children to flourish with God in life, learning and love. It is therefore important to capture our approach to key aspects of early childhood education in school. These key elements of a child’s life include their emotions, relationships and their approach to learning. Without a solid basis to spring from, our experience and evidence-based practice shows that children can’t and won’t learn, therefore it is vital that we focus on the children’s emotions, their relationships with themselves as well as with others and their approach to learning i.e. how they learn.

To find out a more about how we do this please read this document:

Holistic Education at DVIS

Resourcefulness

We will be focusing on one learning power a term and this term we are finding out more about resourcefulness. We have chosen Miss Curious as a symbol for this!

Questioning - Asking questions of yourself and others. Being curious and playful with ideas – delving beneath the surface of things.
Making Links - Seeing connections between disparate events and experiences – building patterns – weaving a web of understanding.
Imagining - Using your imagination and intuition to put yourself through the new experiences or to explore possibilities. Wondering What if…?
Reasoning - Calling up your logical and rational skills to work things out methodically and rigorously; constructing good arguments, and spotting the flaws in others'.
Capitalising - Drawing on the full range of resources from the wider world – other people, books, the Internet, past experience, future opportunities...

Childs Guide to Resourcefulness

Resilience

Another learning power we use is Resilience. We have chosen Mr Bump as a symbol for this!

Mr Bump has powers that he uses for when he gets knocked over and needs to show resilience. The powers Mr Bump has for resilience include:

Absorption - Being able to lose yourself in learning — becoming absorbed in what you are doing; rapt and attentive, in a state of ‘flow’.
Managing Distractions - Recognising and reducing distractions; knowing when to walk away and refresh yourself. Creating your own best environment for learning.
Noticing - Perceiving subtle nuances, patterns and details in experience.
Perseverance - Keeping going on even in the face of difficulties, channelling the energy of frustration productively. Knowing what a slow and uncertain process learning often is.

We will keep you updated on how and when we discuss more aspects of the learning powers on this webpage and our newsletters.

Child friendly guide to Resilience

Building Learning Power at DVIS presentation for parents.

Reflectiveness

We have chosen Miss Inventor as the symbol for the learning power of reflectiveness.

Miss Inventor has powers that means she is ready, willing and able to become more strategic (clever/planned/thoughtful/forward thinking) about learning.

The powers Miss Inventor has to be reflective include:

Planning - making plans for what might be needed to do the activity, making actions step by step for the activity, plan the time it might need.
Revising - being willing to revise and change plans, reflect and work out if the plan is what you wanted or hoped.
Distilling - looking at past learning and experiences and using those to help with learning.
Meta-Learning - understanding learning and yourself as a learner.

What does it mean to be meta?
In the world of gaming, meta is used in two ways. Meta can be used as an acronym for “most effective tactics available,” and calling something “meta” means that it's an effective way to achieve the goal of the game, whether it's to beat other players or beat the game itself

Child friendly guide to Reflectiveness