Learning Powers

In an ever changing world, it is so important to adopt a holistic approach to learning which balances a child’s academic progress with their mental wellbeing by providing them with the ability to understand how they learn. Our school has launched a Learning Powers initiative in order to achieve this. By focusing on the areas of resilience, cooperative learning, curiosity, creative thinking, concentration and continuous improvement we aim to boost children’s self-belief and confidence which will enable them to take a more active role in their learning. This in turn will have a positive impact on the progress they make during their time at Saughall All Saints.

To support the children in using these Learning Powers, we have adopted a set of creatures who are displayed in each classroom around the school. These creatures display one of the six areas, helping the children to understand how they can take an active role in their learning. 

These Learning Powers are the basis of our School Curriculum and they clearly support our Christian Vision: We all love, learn and grow together. 'Love your neighbour as yourself'. 

Summer 2025 

The Ethos group led a whole day in school that focused on our Christian Vision and how it links to our Learning Powers. They assigned each learning power a colour as you can see above and linked them to our termly values. They then chose an activity for each character and taught the classes for the whole day. 

They began the day with a wonderful act of worship that clearly explained how our Christian Vision, Learning Powers, Spiritual Development and the chosen colours linked together. Below is the script that they used:

1. Lucy: Today is a special day. We are going to spend the whole day learning about our learning powers, what they mean and how these link in to our termly values, spiritual development and Christian vision.
2. Stanley: Spiritual development is all about our relationship with ourselves, our family, friends, those around us, to God and all of creation. (Emma, Isabelle, Lottie, Isaac, Madison, Gunnar have these words on larger pieces of paper stuck to their backs).
3. Bella C: When we thought about this in Ethos group, we realised that this is our Christian Vision: We all love, learn and grow together, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. (Nia, Lucy, Ruby, Etta, Oscar, Ben, Ella, Stanely, Charlotte, Erica, Bella C, Bella T hold these words jumbled up and children from school come and sort them into the correct order. They then walk around the group with words on their backs to symbolize our school badge).
4. Sophia: The relationship with yourself is the ‘as yourself’ from the Bible verse and the relationship with family, friends, those around us- these are our neighbours who we are loving, learning and growing with. And finally, the relationship to God and all of creation is the love. (Children with matching words come together).
5. June: Last year, we focused on the loving your neighbour as yourself and the together parts of our Christian Vision; this year we want to focus on the love, learn and grow together. We realized that this is what our school curriculum is all about because it is built on our learning powers. Each class is going to work with some members of the Ethos group for the whole day. We are going to look at each character, what it means and a colour that we feel matches their personality.
6. Temi: By the end of the day, everyone will have made one of these beautiful bracelets. These bracelets are modelled on similar bracelets called Peace Malas that promote friendship, respect and peace. If we’re going to work together (loving, learning and growing as a whole school) then we need to be friends, respect each other and be at peace with one another.
7. Isaac: Peace Mala focuses on the Golden Rule: "Treat others as you would wish them to treat you".
8. Madison: Wearing a Peace Mala is a promise to help create a more compassionate world.
9. Gunnar: The central bead represents the wearer who may or may not have a spiritual path. The central bead also represents the whole cosmos (the whole world and universe), emphasising the interconnectedness of everyone and everything.
10. Ella: Red- First up is Betty the Butterfly. Like any butterfly, Betty was once a caterpillar. She was happy being a caterpillar but she wanted more: she wanted to fly, so she needed to improve herself to be able to do that. She ate lots, grew bigger and then built herself a chrysalis. She slept in the chrysalis as her body began to change and when she woke up, she had shown that she could continuously improve herself so that she could fly: she was a beautiful butterfly.
11. Nia: If you want to continuously improve, then you need to love what you are doing. (Is there someone who can do something gymnasticy/sporty that they have had to work at and continuously improve?) For us, red is the colour of love, which is why we have given Betty the colour of red. The first red bead is for Betty. The second red bead is for the termly values that we feel link with loving and continuously improving and these are compassion and trust: to love someone you need to be able to trust them.
12. Charlotte: Orange- Next we will look at Harriet the Hermit Crab who is so clever, she decided to build her home on her back so that no matter where she goes, she always has somewhere to sleep. Harriet is creative and a colour that shows creativity is orange. It is bright and bold, just like people who are creative- just like we all are; so the first orange bead is for being creative.
13. Elisabeth: We felt that, if you are creative then you also need to be humble, recognising when you need help from others to complete your ideas and knowing that others might be better at some things that you. You can also serve other people with your creative ideas and so our second orange bead is for humility and service, our next two termly values. In the Bible, God told Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh but Moses didn’t like speaking out in front of others; so God allowed his brother Aaron to speak for him instead. With Aaron’s help, Moses was able to speak to Pharaoh on behalf of his people, the Israelites.
14. Oscar: Yellow- Yellow represents Albert the Armadillo who is incredibly resilient. Albert has a tough bony armour, which provides him with protection from predators and thorny vegetation. He is also great at burrowing down into the ground which means he can live anywhere and he is brilliant at adapting to new places and environments. Yellow is the colour of hope and resilient people are always hopeful. I have a glass of water here. Hands up if you think it is half empty. Hands up if you think it is half full. Those of you who said it is half full are people that are hopeful.
15. Ben: So the first yellow bead is for Albert and the second one is for justice, peace and perseverance because if you want justice and peace, you need to persevere and to persevere you need to be resilient and full of hope.
16. Bella T: Green- green is a calm colour and we need to be calm to help us concentrate, just like Edgar the Elephant. Elephants are incredibly intelligent and have an amazing ability to learn and remember. If we want to be like Edgar the elephant then we need to concentrate on our learning and this means being calm and ready to learn. Let’s do some deep breathing now to help us stay calm and hopefully focus better.
17. Erica: So our first green bead is for Edgar and his concentration. But what about the second green bead? Well this is for creation and thankfulness. When we look outside our windows in this country, we are very fortunate to see lots of green plants and for many people, being in their green gardens or walking in the countryside helps them to be calm and to concentrate better. This is why we have chosen creation to match with Edgar and green. We have also included thankfulness because we need to be thankful for this amazing planet that we live on.
18. Alanna: Blue- blue is the colour of loyalty, teamwork. I wonder which of our learning powers is all about teamwork. Annie and Arnold, our ants, work together to make sure they have everything they need to survive. If we don’t work as a team, then we are working against each other and that will not help us to love, learn and grow together. Model a tug of war where some team members are pulling in the wrong direction so that team loses. If you are part of a team, you are loyal to that team.
19. Molly: For us, our termly values of friendship and koinonia (who can remember what that means?), they both represent teamwork and loyalty. So the first blue bead is for our ants and the second is for our termly values of friendship and koinonia.
20. Lilly: Finally, we get to our last colour: violet/purple, which is a colour that represents mystery. When Charlie the Chimp was faced with a mystery, he wanted to find the answer: he was curious about what had happened. Just like children are curious and want to know what things means, chimps too are curious. Have you ever heard a conversation between an adult and a 3-year-old? The 3-year old’s favourite question is why.
21. Lottie: Come on Charlie, it’s time for bed.
22. Zach: Why?
23. Isabelle: Because it’s your bedtime.
24. Zach: Why?
25. Etta: Because you get tired if you don’t go to bed at bedtime.
26. Zach: Why?
27. Emma: Because you are still small and need lots of sleep.
28. Zach: Why?
29. Ruby: Do you get the picture? Having a child ask why all the time can be frustrating, but being curious is definitely not frustrating. So our first purple bead is for Charlie the Chimp.
30. Our second purple bead is for the termly values of reverence and forgiveness. We chose purple for these because it is also a colour for royalty and a colour used to represent God sometimes, all people we revere/admire. We also revere people who have been curious and made great achievements, like scientists or explorers. But to be curious means we might frustrate people, like the 3-year-old asking why all the time, and we are bound to make mistakes along the way for which we might need forgiveness.
31. Jasmin: So these are what the colours on our bracelets mean. Have you noticed something about the colours and the order of them? Yes, they are the rainbow colours but just without indigo. In the Bible, the rainbow is a sign that God will never flood the Earth again, like when Noah was alive. For us today, the rainbow beads on our bracelets will remind us of our learning powers and termly values.
32. Zach: What we learn today about each character will hopefully be a windows moment for you- usually a WOW or OW moment, but hopefully a WOW moment today.
33. Lottie: We use mirrors to look at ourselves and to reflect things. Hopefully today, you will be able to reflect on which learning powers you are good at and which ones you might need to work on.
34. Etta: We think of our song ‘Love in Action’ when we talk about the doors because this is the ‘What are we going to do as a result of what we’ve learnt today?’ moment.
35. Madison: We are going to have a time of reflection at the end of the day and hopefully, you will be able to choose a learning power that you want to focus on and have some ideas of how you will do this. 

Spring 2025 

We held a competition to create stories for each of our characters. We were really pleased with all the entries, (and thank you to those who did enter); below are our winners and their stories, which have also been put together into a book for each classroom.

Year 3 Winners

Ruby Crick and Eta Spilsbury from Year 3 wrote and publsihed a lovely story about three of our learning powers' characters: Betty, Charlie and Edgar.

Haydn Kamperman, also from Year 3, wrote a wonderful story about Betty the Butterfly and how she helped a little boy who was struggling with writing to continuously improve.

Isabelle T, Lottie and Emma, three of our Year 3 girls, worked together to write a story about Arnold and his need for resilience. Thankfully, Albert's parents realised that he wasn't very resilient and hatched a cunning plan to help him in this area.

Another of our winners from Year 3, Alanna, wrote a lovely story about Edgar the Elephant's first day at school and how he learnt the importance of concentrating.

Zach, along with Connor (who provided the illustrations for this story) wrote all about Curious Charlie the Chimp and how his mum was fed up with all of his questions, but his dad reminded him to always be curious. When Charlie heard this from his dad, he was very happy.

Winners from Year 5

Ayehsa Khan from Year 5 showed off her fantastic writing skills by creating a wonderfuls story, also about Betty and how she wanted to improve her homeland and continuously worked on persuading people that her ideas were the best. 

Daryna, our other Year 5 winner, wrote a superb story about Charlie the Curious Chimp that reminds us 'curiosity is a gift that can lead to discoveries and unforgettable adventures.' I think you will agree that Daryna is an amazing author.

 Vision Day 2025

In July 2025, the Ethos Group taught the whole school, focusing on our Christian Vision and how it links to our Learning Powers. They planned activities for each of the Learning Powers and every child in school made a bracelet with rainbow coloured beads on them. Each colour represents one of our learning powers' characters:

Red = Betty

Orange = Harriet

Yellow = Albert

Green = Edgar

Blue = Annie and Arnold

Purple = Charlie

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