As part of Health and Well-being this term P4a are deepening their understanding of how the brain grows.

They learnt about neurons and synapses, and how when we experience something pathways in our brain are created. The more we experience something the stronger the pathway becomes, and the more likely we are to remember things and increase our ability to perform certain tasks.

This links to developing a growth mindset as people with a growth mindset try and try again, learning from their mistakes, adjusting and improving instead of giving up.  This helps the pathways in their brains to develop.

For example, to learn a new musical instrument we need to practise most days to improve. if we just practise once a week then we will not progress as quickly as someone practising every day.  If we give up after a few weeks and say “I can’t do this” then our brains won’t have had enough time to develop the pathways, so we won’t know how to play that instrument well.  Instead, if we say “I can’t do this YET” and keep trying or ask someone to help us learn then we give our brain more chances to develop pathways and we will eventually be able to play the instrument.  In P4a we use mistakes to help us learn, we think about what we didn’t understand that led to the mistake and then work on developing that missing knowledge.  We keep trying and use our support team to help us!

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