Reigniting the love of learning

 One child in KA has been particularly disruptive and disrespectful during the first 2 weeks of term 4. According to the other mentors he has regressed back to how he was at the start of the year when he didn’t want to come to school, didn’t like school and didn’t like learning. This is in stark contrast to the end of term 3 when he was caught on video talking about liking school because he liked learning.

We had a meeting this week with the child and his parents to discuss what we could do to bring the love of learning back. They have troubles with him at home and he is quite a lively, energetic child who has trouble staying focused and gets easily distracted.

To help combat some of this and encourage him to manage himself we are going to move where his mentor group meet to a less busy area, we will create a learning space for him to go to (a carrel type set up), have ear muffs available when the noise gets too much and bring in a wrist band reward system. Whenever a mentor catches him doing the right thing he gets a wrist band, when he has earnt 5 then he gets extra play time (something he chose).

Hopefully by focusing on the good (ignoring the bad), and having a space for him to learn that has less of a sensory impact we can make a positive change and restore the love of learning. He does have to realise that learning is hard and that by using a growth mindset he can grow his brain and that managing himself and being motivated to learn will enable him to succeed. We just need to put systems in place around him to enable this.

Fingers crossed it works!!