April 2018 – Happy Schools

7 Habits of Effective People

April 26, 2018

Best selling author Dr Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, provides staff in schools with habits worth developing. Covey advised that, “Real greatness was the result of the slow development of character over time; it is our daily habits of thinking and acting that are the ground on which that greatness is built.” Here is a brief overview of Covey’s famous 7 Habits: Habit 1: Be Proactive: Proactive people use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them. Once we decide to be proactive, exactly where we decide to focus our efforts becomes important. Habit 2: Begin With The End in Mind: Develop a personal…

4 Stress Busting Tools

April 19, 2018

Stevef

Resilience

What’s Important? We all lead busy lives and despite our character traits, our dominant brain hemisphere’s and our ability to handle pressure, we ALL suffer stress in some form or other at different times. If you feel as though you are becoming overwhelmed from a work perspective – STOP! No, we don’t expect you to down tools and walk out – just stop for a little while when you can and take some time to prioritise your workload. What is really important? What needs doing first, second, third? Get into a habit each afternoon before leaving school to run through the jobs of the day and what needs to be done on the morrow. These become your Urgent To Do’s for the next morning.…

Effective Student Reporting

April 12, 2018

Stevef

Communication

Reports on student progress and achievement should be clear, concise and jargon-free. They need to be written in language all parents can easily understand. The challenge is to provide all the relevant detail about students’ progress and ensure that the information on the report is both clear and concise. It is important that the report is coherent and there are logical links between the achievement of the student, areas for improvement and actions the school and parents might take. Student reports should provide the following key information: Clear information on what the student has achieved – focus on each student’s progress on the basis of assessment evidence that has been gathered. Suggestions for areas of improvement that the student should…

Applying Growth Mindsets Through Praise

April 5, 2018

Stevef

Engagement

– This article is adapted from an article written by Sal Khan (Khan Academy) Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones. What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or…