Crew Young were delighted with their first place position on the “work hard” HOWLs leaderboard that was shared with X24 and X25 / Year 7 and Year 8 students in Community Meeting last week! This is full vindication and recognition of all the collective effort that they are putting into their learning expeditions presently, and I am justly proud of each and every one of them. Great news Crew Young! As we “wind up” (as opposed to “wind down”) towards the end of term we are determined to push ourselves even harder…..for we’re convinced that we can exceed a 0.3 increase next time!
Towards the end of last week we explored the possible reasons why our position on the “be kind” leaderboard is not yet where we would wish it to be and – having identified the issues that may have influenced our current rating – Crew Young are making a collective effort and holding each other to account for ensuring that we raise our game in this area.
We spent one session on a “drawing twins” activity. This is a useful exercise that Crew Leaders themselves engaged with during the new staff induction programme. Essentially it is an opportunity to practise listening and develop oracy skills, to explore misinterpretations and frustrations when working on a task where you are allowed neither to give nor to receive feedback. We then compared our outline sketches with the original and then changed the rules to allow for deeper questioning and clarification opportunities in “round two”. The improvement in outcomes was self-evident! Effective and meaningful feedback, phrased with compassion and enacted upon, was the driving force and determining factor behind the success of Austin as he drafted and re-drafted his famous butterfly……