Nurture Week 1
The Six Principles of Nurture
Throughout this academic year, we are working towards achieving accreditation from Nurture UK’s National Nurturing Schools Programme. This project recognises our commitment to prioritising children’s wellbeing and mental health and the impact that this can have on their success as learners. Nurture UK describes the nurturing approach to education as giving children the ‘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 is guided by the six principles of nurture. Over the next six weeks all children will spend some time learning about each of these principles. This will be shared with you weekly in our newsletter and also on our website.
Week 1 : Children's learning is understood developmentally.
The children were tasked with creating a piece of Art work; some made origami butterflies or dogs and others sketched butterflies. Initially, they had a go without instructions. After attempting this and discussing the outcome they had another go following instructions.
Before instructions were given, the children said;
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"I didn't know what to do."
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"I panicked."
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"We don't have instructions."
After being given visual and verbal step by step instructions, they commented;
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"It was easier than I thought."
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"I'm ok cause we did it together."
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"Not everyone is exactly the same and we don't always do stuff in the same ways."
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"Some of us might be fabulous at it and some might need a little bit of help!"
Why is this important?
All of our learning builds on things that we have learnt before. Everybody learns different things at a different rate. Just because two children might be the same age, it doesn’t mean they are at the same stage in their learning.
