Resilience

It's true. I'm a secret biscuit dunker! The mighty Hobnob is the king of the biscuit, and don't get me started on those Rich Tea monstrosities constantly having to be fished out from the bottom of the cup with a teaspoon.

But why are Hobnobs able to withstand the heat where Rich Teas aren't?

It's called resilience. Though unlike biscuits, we can learn, practice and improve ours.

Only last week, I said to one of my Year 3 learners "There might be words in this poem which you might not understand yet, but that's OK, we'll look them up in the dictionary". This made him more relaxed, motivated and eager to find out what those new words were. I was especially proud to see that, later in the session, he was feeling empowered to use his dictionary to help him again.

Another learner, in Year 5, had been putting her heart and soul into writing a story, but felt disappointed that after all her effort, she found her story "boring". I asked her what she would like to keep, how she felt she could improve it and what she'd learned from writing the first draft. Plus, after finding out that it apparently took J.K Rowling at least 15 drafts before she'd published the first Harry Potter book, my student dusted herself off and started to write an immensely more exciting story.

Let's all practice being human Hobnobs - go with me for a moment - then if we do fall in, we'll either be able to scoop ourselves up or we'll feel able to ask someone to help us out with a metaphorical teaspoon.