To say that the last few months have been a challenging time is a bit of an understatement. Every single one of us has faced situations we had never even thought of. It is in these times that we have seen people in all parts of society adapt and change to whatever new situation was thrown at them. This is why we encourage our students to be creative and be risk-takers. No one learns without making mistakes. Actually, the opposite is true —we learn the most when we make mistakes. If we only tackle work that we know we will do well, we might not ever have the courage to try something hard. We want our students to take a risk on making a mistake, try a creative way of solving a problem - even if it doesn’t work out.
How can we help our students to be risk - takers? We give them open ended tasks that don’t have one right answer. We encourage creative tasks that allow students to express their ideas and emotions in a variety of ways. We create a classroom where each child thinks they can speak freely and where the effort of a task is celebrated, where perseverance is praised. Safe risk-taking develops confidence and independent thinking and these are important skills in the 21st century. By emphasising and praising effort, small gains in learning and steps toward a goal facilitate safe risk taking in the classroom and encourage lifelong learning.
Mrs Willard
Assistant Principal
