How resilient are you? Resilience Awards at Forest Fields Primary School

How resilient are you? Tricky question and if we thought of an answer would we naturally be able to put it into words?

Well that is what happened at Forest Fields Primary School. 

All their Year groups, from Year 2 to year 5 were asked to write their own stories about “resilience” 

What did it mean to them? What does resilience actually look like? How could the trait of resilience be described in a story?

Each and every day the pupils at Forest Fields are taught how important it is to develop their character. To be able to cope with what life throws at you is very important. The earlier we can learn about that the better. The government has very recently acknowledged how important this part of the national curriculum is. How do you cope with bullying, loss, disappointment and even accolade (swot!) It’s not easy, but writing about it is certainly a way to demonstrate you get it! 

Nottingham Trent University judged 15 stories shortlisted as the best and then awarded first prize to a pupil in each year group. We were there, at an assembly, to present a shield of achievement to the winner and runner up certificates to the rest. Everyone got a £10 gift voucher to spend on whatever they wished.

It was the competiton that kept on giving. The standard of story writing by each individual was superb . The link to improving everyone’s literacy in schools is invaluable.  The chance to proudly appear in a house assembly before your friends and teachers, whilst earning those  valuable house points, was amazing. Then to take your award home to show your proud parents and carers was the icing on the cake.

We are proud to support such initiatives in primary schools. They add value to our normal school provision and classroom interventions and help raise the attainment and progress of the pupils we work with. 

It will be more again next year as NTU CenSCE continue to look for opportunities to work with primary schools in innovative ways. We have 25 “resilient” primary schools all of whom having budding story tellers and wonderful pupils.

So could you write a story around when you demonstrated you were resilient against all the odds? Have a go but I am afraid there is no promise of a shield; they are reserved for my primary friends 

Pete  Hayes