Greetings from the PLD Department.
This semester we are working on ensuring all the PLD students are adequately accommodated during lessons to ensure they can participate and learn effectively.
We shall continue with the interventions we planned last semester to help them build their skills in areas they constantly face challenges with as indicated in their 3 Way Conferences.
We have changed the structure of the support they will receive during Office Hours. Last semester we had all PLD students working on the same subject during Office Hours.This semester each student will work on the particular subject they need help with each day during Office Hours.
PLD COLLABORATIONS WITH THE HOME, SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY
At the end of last semester approximately 46 % of students in the PLD showed an improvement in their performance by the end of semester assessments. 27% of them maintained the same performance grades and 27% of them went down in their performance. One factor that was common in the students that did well was their determination and resilience.
I have listed a few tips that can help to build resilience in our students.
For parents
- Support your children when they fail so they know how to ‘fail forward’. This means you show them how to see failure as a learning experience and not the end of the road. Some of the most successful people in the world failed multiple times before achieving greatness.
- Find out what their exact challenges were and what you can do to help them do better next time.
For students
- Talk to someone about your challenges and reflect on your performance so you can see where the challenges came from.Was it during the lessons or only during the assessment task?
- Take it easy on yourself. The Middle School years are a pivotal time in a child’s development with a lot of changes taking place physically and due to hormonal factors. Be aware that these changes can also affect your school work and connect with the counselling team when you feel overwhelmed.
- Create a study plan and set study goals.You can do this alone or partner with your friends.Helping people can give you a confidence boost as you learn and support each other at the same time.
- Begin with very small goals that are easily achievable.For example, checking that at the end of the day you have all your homework written down.
- The next step will be to specify the deadlines for submission of homework and then work towards creating the strategies needed to meet the deadlines for your homework.
- Celebrate these little successes and you will see that as you get better at the little tasks you will feel more confident to do more difficult tasks.
- Contact the PLD staff if you need help or are unclear about any topics that you did not understand during the actual lesson.
- Understand that building your resilience takes a lot of practice and may not be achieved in a day so don’t give up if you don’t feel able to bounce back after a test or summative test that did not go well immediately.
Resilience for teens: 10 tips to build skills on bouncing back from Rough Times (no date) American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association. Available at: https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/bounce-teens