The ‘bottom up’ individualised approach that I offer to schools, provides students with the tools to elaborate, so that they can become independent, efficient learners. This has a positive knock-on effect to their motivation and they build on their personal achievements to continue to develop further.

The ‘bottom up’ approach, working in tandem with the ‘top down’ globalised classroom management approach, is a powerful collaboration of teachers and students, which nurtures a healthy, positive progressive working environment at school.

A ‘bottom up’ approach at a school is developed initially through individual or small group interventions that aim to develop cognitive skills, as well as classroom observations and meeting with teachers from time to time, to ensure that skills developed are bridged back into classroom learning and social behaviours. Students who are struggling learn to develop a self-awareness of their thinking processes and patterns, what is working for them, what is not, and what needs to be developed so that they can become effective learners. With this in place, huge improvements can take place across the full gamut of academic learning, executive functioning, social behaviours and classroom management.

Teachers at school are more easily able to highly individualise their classroom lessons with an understanding of (a) how their students are currently accessing the lessons they teach, and (b) what they can do to tweak and improve their students’ current performance.

As students develop their self-competence in learning and bridge this back into their academic work, they become solid independent learners, confident with their thinking skills. This in turn produces a motivated learning environment where success breeds success.