Nurture
The Six Principles of Nurture
This year we will be focusing on 'Nurture' and ensuring this is in the forefront of everything we do at Victoria Road. We strongly believe in the six principles of nurture and ensuring children feel safe, settled, respected and cared for, in order that they can learn and achieve.
We are hoping to work towards achieving accreditation from Nurture UKs National Nurturing Schools Programme. Nurture UK describes the nurturing approach to education as giving the children 'social and emotional skills to do well at school and with peers, and develop their resilience and capacity to deal more confidently with issues they may face.' (Nurture UK 2023)
This approach focuses on the six principles of nurture. Each week in Term 1, we will be focusing on each of the principles in turn, launching each with a whole school assembly and then class activities for the children to gain a full understanding of what this means for them and their own well being and development.
The Principles of Nurture Explained
This week we launched our Six Principles of Nurture with a whole school assembly supporting children to understand that we are all different and learn in different ways.
The children then completed an activity where they were all asked to make a origami paper animal just by looking at a picture. This was really hard and not many children achieved this. They were then given the same task but could have the instructions and a step by step video guide to support them. Lots of children found this much easier but some children still struggled and agreed they might need smaller and slower steps.
What the children said:
'I needed an adult with me to make it easier'
'It was so hard without instructions, but I could do it when I had the pictures to help me'
"It was easier when it was read to me and we all did it together"
"I learnt that we all learn differently and in different ways to each other and we are all not he same"
" I didn't finish it, I think I needed someone to read the instructions out loud"
"with support was much easier"
"This is the first time I have done origami so it's tricky"
" We don't know the instructions so it's hard"
Why is this important
Different children need different things to support them to access the same learning, and this is okay. All our learning builds on things that we have learnt before. Everybody learns different things at different rates. Just because children are the same age it doesn't mean they are at the same stage in their learning.
Why not try your own origami butterfly - How did you do? Origami butterfly