St Nicholas Learning Challenge

The St Nicholas Learning Challenge has been developed in collaboration with staff to provide a clear image for children as learners, to reflect on where they are with their learning journey. It is unique to our school. It aims to encourage our children to deepen their learning by taking on new and exciting challenges, whilst also recognising that learning is not a straight-forward, linear process; it has its obstacles along the way and we use mistakes to move our learning on.

As children are faced with new challenges, they may move forwards and backwards through their journey, but it is what they do about it, that matters most. This is where our learning characters come in, who help to guide us through the exciting challenge of learning!

Above, you can see how we have triangulated and connected our vision and aims with the design of the St Nicholas Learning Challenge and the associated learning characteristics. You can view an enlarged version of the connections at the bottom of this page.

What does it look like?

The St Nicholas Learning Challenge aims to allow our children to visually explore the journey of a challenge and recognise the progress they have made and where they need to go next, in order to achieve their goals.

Our Learning Characters

At St Nicholas, staff have used a significant amount of research to draw together 4 key learning behaviours that underpin successful learning, to support children in tackling new and exciting challenges, and they need to develop and apply crucial life skills. These are envisaged through our characters, which children will get to know throughout the school.

However, as they progress through school, the qualities and skills of each character start to develop and deepen your child’s approach to learning. This allows your child’s experience to be consistent but also dynamic, where there is whole-school shared language for learning, that our children can use to communicate their learning experiences.

The 4 Learning Behaviours we have identified and aim to develop are below, and each are assigned a particular to character to help children to refer to them:

Eagerness (Ellie the Eager Eagle): Children are Eager about their learning; they love to be curious through asking questions, planning their learning, developing creative ideas, and applying to real-life

Resilience (Ross the Resilient Rhino): Our children are Resilient; they set their own goals, they persevere and take ownership of their learning, whilst using mistakes as an opportunity to move forward.

Reflectiveness (Rachel the Reflective Raccoon): Our children are Reflective; they seek and act on feedback, they are proud and think about where they are on their learning journey, and where to go next

Collaboration (Colin the Collaborative Cheetah): Our children Collaborate; they work with others in a way to move their own and others’ learning on, whilst being trustworthy and honest learning buddies.

Connecting our Curriculum Vision and Aims with the St Nicholas Learning Challenge

Our St Nicholas Learning Challenge is underpinned by our curriculum culture (see the links below for more information), where we take a Head, Heart, Hands, Health approach to learning and personal development. This underpins our St Nicholas Learning Challenge, which aims to provide our children with personalised, broad and balanced learning experiences, in order to develop well-rounded members of society.

Our approach to developing lifelong learners is underpinned by The St Nicholas Way, which is informed by our whole-school values…

Click here to find out more about behaviour and attitudes at St Nicholas.