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Welcome to The Learning Curve, 

I am excited to be writing my first blog for our new newsletter and I hope that you will enjoy the different elements that will become regular weekly features. Primary and Secondary have specific sections and the notice board should provide you with an easy to access place for important upcoming dates and events. In addition the Hall of Fame will celebrate student achievement and People of Mougins will allow us to get to know a member of our community a little better! It does not stop there! Each week you will be able to find a link to an interesting article / video / website that we are calling parent learning and take a look at student photography in Behind the Lens. 

I am also excited to introduce to you our new Mougins School Podcast – Take the Stairs. We will bring you an episode roughly every two weeks and I am delighted to tell you that the first episode is a discussion with our new Head of Secondary, Mr Paul Michael from the British School, Amsterdam. I hope you enjoy it. To listen simply click on the link below. 

Take the stairs, podcast from mougins school
the learning curve, newsletter from mougins school

The name of our newsletter, The Learning Curve, is important.
A learning curve represents the level of challenge a piece of new learning presents. If something is hard to learn we might describe it as having a steep learning curve. This is also true for something that we have to learn quickly. If learning is easier or more incremental we might say that it’s learning curve is shallow. There is always a curve!

In schools we must carefully consider what the learning curve is for any student in a given experience. Too steep and they will likely run away from it. Consider learning to ride a bike on a steep and rocky descent. If the learning curve is too shallow they will get bored. Think about learning to ride a bike for 6 months with stabilisers, full safety suit and a parent who will not let go. It’s important that we all think carefully about this. If the curve is just right the learning will be great, meaningful and long lasting. We’ve all experienced steep, shallow and “just right” learning curves. The latter will often lead to those lightbulb moments, those clicks of understanding and a feeling of flow. 

We must all seek these moments. 

Finally, thank you to all of you who completed our school values task. We now enter the final stages after narrowing our list down to the final 8.  Once again and I would ask you to take a few moments to discuss and select the final four. Simply click HERE to complete the short survey. 

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I look forward to seeing the school “back to normal” next week. 

 

James Wellings