Harriers Power Skills

At Harriers Academy Banbury, we strive for regular opportunities for our pupils to develop their Power Skills. Through our Applied Learning curriculum, we plan regular opportunities for our pupils to apply their learning in authentic and engaging ways. Below are some examples of how we might include opportunities for Power Skill development in everyday learning opportunities:

Power Skill
Communication

Harriers power skills - communication

Communicating effectively in everyday life

  • Clearly expressing wants, needs and thoughts
  • Listening to receive information and think about that has been said
  • Being respectful and polite
  • Consideration of the audience that is being communicated with or presented to
  • Use of a range of media to communicate (e.g. writing, presentations, art work)
  • Reflecting on learning, giving feedback and responding to feedback
Using your knowledge and understanding to provide clear, concise and effective communication suited to the purpose, audience and formality of the authentic scenario:

  • Informative presentation (live) to groups of various sizes and ages/levels of understanding
  • Persuasive presentation (live) to groups of various sizes and backgrounds
  • Interview (acting as the interviewer)
  • Interview (acting as the interviewee)
  • Writing to persuade, describe, inform or discuss through varied media
  • Museum curator – concise and clear information sharing with non-experts
  • Video presentation
  • Social media post (limited to 160 characters)
  • Personal statement (limited to 2 pages)
  • Mathematical communication of processes/formulas
  • Tour guide

Power Skill
Creativity

Harriers power skills - Creativity

Creativity in everyday life

  • Thinks outside the box
  • Shows different approaches to completing tasks
  • Is willing to be flexible and adapt to different scenarios
  • Coach someone else to take a more creative approach
  • Use experiences and stimuli to spark creativity
  • Develop ideas by considering different perspectives
Composition and generation of original content:

  • Using your understanding to explore and design more efficient or effective systems to generate new ideas or improve performance
  • Creating something original with the knowledge and skill that you have gained through varied media:
    • An article in the DBA News – Pupil-Led Newspaper
    • Painting
    • Sculpting
    • Creative writing
    • Speech/Persuasive writing/Advertising campaigns
    • Music composition
    • Website creation
    • Product development
    • Graphic design
    • Choreography
    • Recording a podcast or video-cast
    • Game development
    • Instruction writing
    • Model building
    • Word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software
    • Blog writing
    • Logo/mural development based on a given brief
    • Stop motion animation
    • Event planning

Power Skill
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

Harriers power skills - Critical thinking and problem solving

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
in everyday life

  • Makes connections in learning
  • Problem solves
  • Identifies problems and works towards a solution
  • Persists to solve complex problems
  • See arising problems as challenges that can overcome
  • Complete tasks by finding information
  • Analyse cause and effect
  • Analyse problems by creating and testing hypothesis
  • Implement strategic plans to solve more complex problems and reflect on learning to solve similar problems when they arise
The process of thinking carefully about a subject or idea to:

Justify:

  • Ranking activities and justification of opinions
  • Planned debates and discussions with others
  • Agree or Disagree/True or False activities

Predict:

  • Using your knowledge, what do you predict?

Find solutions:

  • Can you find and offer multiple solutions to a given problem?
  • Select the most appropriate solution to a problem?

Test and improve:

  • Using your knowledge, test and suggest improvements to an existing product, theory or solution
  • Work out the most efficient and effective method

Summarise:

  • Using your knowledge, summarise the key points so far
  • Using your understanding, can you summarise the key points so that someone else can understand?

Evaluate:

  • Can you evaluate the effectiveness of a whole and offer suggestions for improvement?
  • Can you mark a piece of work against a criteria and offer feedback?
  • Can you decide on whether information is true or false, reliable or not?

Evaluate:

  • Can you analyse information to find trends or next steps?
  • Can you work out why something occurred?
  • Can you identify strengths and weaknesses?
  • Model building
  • Word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software
  • Blog writing
  • Logo/mural development based on a given brief
  • Stop motion animation
  • Event planning

Power Skill
Character Learning to Deep Learn

power skills - Character Learning to Deep Learn

Developing Character in everyday life

  • Shows grit, tenacity, perseverance and resilience
  • Demonstrates good skills to be an active learner
  • Knows that we all have strengths and weaknesses to develop
  • Understands that different learning tasks require different approaches
Developing the necessary character traits to be successful in challenging learning situations:

  • Growth mindset – understanding that ability is earned through time, practice and dedication
  • Metacognition – understanding how we learn, our memory and how connections are made
  • Self regulation techniques – the ability to overcome stressful or challenging situations
  • Locus of Control – understanding where to invest your time, effort and attention
  • Self-reflection and critical mindset – knowing your strengths and weaknesses so that you have the power to develop them
  • Taking responsibility – understanding that you have choices to make and these choices have consequences, of which you must take responsibility
  • Self-motivation & independence – making the right choices without reminders. Understanding your purpose and drive and how you can reach your goals through your daily actions
  • Resilience, perseverance and grit – not giving up easily. Understanding that learning is meant to be challenging and enjoying the challenge

Power Skill
Collaboration

Harriers power skills - Collaboration

Collaboration in everyday life

  • Working with others
  • Cooperate in a group
  • Consideration of the group dynamics
  • Works in different ways when collaborating
  • Listens to others
  • Responds to the ideas of others
  • Understanding and respecting diversity of others’ culture, background and beliefs
Working successfully alongside others in varied group sizes to successfully achieve a goal:

  • Evaluating the strengths and limitations of your team and allocating roles and responsibilities to achieve the best outcome
  • Ensuring there is clarity of the goal and agreed method to achieve this
  • Practising repeatedly as a team to ensure that there is cohesion and flow within the group, leading to a likely positive outcome
  • Motivating and supporting others to overcome barriers to achieve goals
  • Managing expectations and personalities of team members
  • Holding others to account when performance is not of the expected standard
  • Ensuring effective time management of self and others

 

Power Skills Celebrations

Our pupils continue to enjoy their Power Skills recognitions and many children have told us that they have collected a full set and more! The Power Skills are an effective way to recognise the effort that the children put in to their school day when collaborating, communicating, critical thinking and problem solving with particular focus on their character development along the way!

Where next

OFSTED: GOOD

19th – 20th March 2024: Ofsted Inspection Dear Parents and Carers, We are pleased to share positive comments from our recent Ofsted inspection and celebrate…

Harriers Banbury Academy is a GOOD school

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