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Stickability

"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." (Confucius)

"If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again." (Unknown)

Stickability is the word we devised to explain what we expect from our learners with regards to resilience and determination. We are keen for children to keep going at something, even though it can get tough or tricky, or sometimes even feel impossible.  Even if something seems relatively easy in order to get better we have to stick at it. People say that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something and as we all know most things in life don’t come easily and definitely need to be worked at.

We want to help children foster their inbuilt and independent resilience to keep on going. What can this look like? 

Simple examples are not giving up reading a tricky word in a book, reading it again, using what we know about its phonics, the context and plausible possibilities. Or, in Maths, not just saying “I don’t get it”  as soon as you hear or read something that sound complicated, but trying to ‘stick’ with it to break it down and have a really good try at working it out.

In writing stickability is vital – the importance of not just accepting your first attempt, looking at it again and trying to make it the best it can be. Re=reading , editing and improving your work is a superb sign of stickability!   If sketching something, stickability is also that determination to make it the best it can be, and editing and improving. (Ask the children to tell you about Austin’s butterfly!)

Stickability can also be demonstrated with friendship, when it takes patience, consistency and effort to get through ups and downs. A good friend and class mate demonstrates stickability towards others.

Stickability is a great skill to have, to develop and to improve. How good is your stickability?  Can you help stickability at home? What will you aim to stick at, even though it is tricky?