Building Learning Power (BLP) is a whole school initiative based on the powerful research into the workings of the brain by Professor Guy Claxton.

At Langstone, we pride ourselves on our ability to be resourceful, resilient, reciprocal and reflective as we strive to become lifelong learners. In order for BLP to work effectively, the whole school has developed a learning to learn ethos that is now very much embedded across the school. Powerful whole school assemblies with an engaging multimedia aspect ensure that there is a common language and understanding throughout the school and that BLP is embedded within the classroom, frequently talked about in the learning process and is part of daily class routines. 

The 4 Rs…

Resilience: being ready, willing and able to lock on to learning.

The key elements of this strand are:

• Perseverance

• Noticing

• Managing Distractions

• Absorption

At Langstone we are great at “locking into our learning”, “keeping on trying” and knowing how to get “unstuck” when we need to!

Resourcefulness: being ready, willing and able to learn in different ways.   

The key elements of this strand are:

• Questioning

• Capitalising

• Making links

• Reasoning

• Imagining

At Langstone we are brilliant at asking and answering questions; using resources around us to help us with our learning; making links between the different areas of our learning and of course using our imaginations!

Reciprocity: being ready, willing and able to learn alone and with others.

The key elements of this strand are:

• Imitation

• Interdependence

• Empathy and listening

• Collaboration

At Langstone we are learning how, why and when it is best to learn on our own, with a partner or within a group and developing the skills we need to be a valued member of a team and a learning community. We have learned that everyone is an individual with our own special gifts and qualities and that we all have an important role to play!

Reflectiveness: being ready, willing and able to become more strategic about learning.

The key elements of this strand are:

• Planning

• Meta-learning

• Distilling

• Revising.

At Langstone we are learning how and why we learn and regularly look back on our learning to see whether we have met our targets, our WILF and our 'chilli challenges'. We think about our achievements and areas for improvement and plan for the next steps of our own individual learning journeys.

Professor Carol Dweck, an American psychologist, found that we all have different beliefs about the underlying nature of ability. Children (and adults!) with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and abilities can be developed through effort, persistence, trying different strategies and learning from mistakes.

At Langstone Primary School, Growth Mindset sits hand in hand with BLP as part of our approach to developing metacognition skills in all of learners. It's mantra of "I can't do it...YET" and the mindset of seeing skills as things that can be improved with effort, align perfectly with our BLP messages.

Our visual 'Learning Pit' display acts as a reminder to us all that the learning journey is not always one of plain sailing, but we can all achieve when we have a growth mindset and believe that "we can do it".