A couple of great pupil voice resources found their way in to my inbox yesterday (thanks to Google Alerts) that I think are really worth sharing.
The first is from the amazing Wroxham School (@wroxhamschool). It outlines some of the ways Wroxham has been using pupil voice to enhance creativity in their curriculum. If you haven’t used Prezi before, just click the play button to move from ‘slide’ to ‘slide’:
I really wish there was a way I could remove that last image.
I visited Wroxham School as part of our research for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and they really do do some inspiring stuff.
The next resource is a write-up from a Archbishop Benson CE VA Primary School in Cornwall of how they set up a ‘Learning Detectives’ scheme to give pupils more control of their learning. I really love the way they’ve matched up the animals with different aspects of being a good learner.
"You should move that bloomin' great big box", "No, you should", "They should", "Or her"
I wrote these tutor/form time activities a while ago for a school I was working with in Coventry, not sure why I haven’t posted them until now. Often elections are just sprung upon a school without any preparation. No one thinks to explain to the whole school why they should choose to stand, or how they should choose who to vote for. What this ends up with is the same people (and the same kind of people) getting elected every year.
Each one of these short sessions leads people towards an understanding of why they should stand to be a representative, or what they should consider when they are voting.
Download the whole lot here [download id=”229″] or read more …
There are 5 sessions plus the election itself. They are all participative sessions, but the resources should enable any teacher to feel confident facilitating the sessions.:
A) What is democracy?
There’s more to democracy than just voting, it’s an ongoing process. It’s not about others making decision for you, it’s about you being involved in the decision.
[download id=”230″]
B) What is a School Council?
The kinds of things the School Council might deal with.
[download id=”231″]
C) How does the School Council communicate with the whole school?
Explain the structures of the decision-making and the School Council in our school. Explain about recall. Explain structure of form/tutor groups to Year/House council to School Council. and frequency of meetings.
[download id=”232″]
D) What is a representative?
What qualities are needed by a representative?
[download id=”233″]
E) How do our elections work?
The processes for nominating, standing and voting are explained. Explain terminology of closed ballot, etc. Explain that the whole year/house will be electing year/house reps to School Council from the reps who are elected as form/tutor reps.
[download id=”234″]
The eventual voting process is ‘blind’, by which I mean people vote for a manifesto, rather than voting for a person. The school this was written for originally choose to run their election in this way to avoid it being a popularity contest and instead base it on policies and ideas.
[download id=”235″] (PDF) or [download id=”236″] (Word)
Practicalities
You can run any of the sessions on their own, but I think they probably work best as a series.
They’re each 15 minutes long, but could usefully stretch if you had the time.
It says they are for ‘vertical’ tutor groups of about 20, but they should work just as well with larger groups and groups based on age.
Files
You can download all 5 activities (including instructions and all resources) here: [download id=”229″]
Or you can download them individually if you want:
[download id=”230″]
[download id=”231″]
[download id=”232″]
[download id=”233″]
[download id=”234″]
[download id=”235″] (PDF) or [download id=”236″] (Word)
Each download is a zip file containing:
Instructions (in Word and PDF format)
An (animated) PowerPoint slideshow illustrating the key points
PDFs Posters of the essential bits of the slideshow for those who don’t have a projector/IWB
Any worksheets (in Word and PDF format)
If you can’t download zip files and need the files separately send me an email and I’ll get them over to you: asher@involver.org.uk
Can your school council noticeboard actually help drive change?
Pretty much every school I go to has one and they almost all consist of the same things:
Photos of the school council (often last year’s)
Minutes of the the last meeting (who stops at a noticeboard to read closely-typed minutes?)
A poster saying ‘have your say/make a difference/we’re your voice!’
Other than underlining for Ofsted that you have a school council, what does this actually achieve?
How about if you used that space instead for a Progress Board. This would allow everyone in the school to see:
What the school council is working on
Who they talk to to get involved
What the hold ups are (this can put gentle pressure on a slow-moving Headteacher or Caretaker to respond)
What’s off-limits and what’s been achieved
Anyway after years of describing this idea to people and sketching it up on flipcharts at training sessions I finally created a graphic last night which shows just what I mean.
If you set up a board like this you need to make sure it is updated at least once a week: make a member of the school council Progress Board Officer. Click the image to see the full-sized version.
Do you have any other ideas for what might go on here (or on a board next to it).
I’d also love to see how something like this could be part of a school council’s page on their VLE or website.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.
To be effective school councils have to be expert communicators. Often a lot of emphasis is put on public speaking, and out-going communication, but communication is a two way process and arguably how a school council collects information is even more important.
To help a secondary school in Brent think about how they canvass the views of their whole school I wrote this short, simple session. They seemed to enjoy it and it helped them come up with some really useful ideas. Why don’t you give it a try and see if it works for you?
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Aims:
For participants to experience a few different ways of collecting information.
For participants to explore what those methods might be good for and what drawbacks they might have.
Age range: 11-18
Group size: 12-30
Time: 20-30 mins
Resources:
Notepad
Whiteboard/flipchart
Tables
Chairs
Pens
Marker pens
Paper stuck to wall
Room big enough for people to move around in.
Collecting ideas instructions sheets
Face-to-face survey sheets (x5)
Written survey sheets (x5)
Method:
Before the session starts (I did this during the previous session), select 5 people who will be your ‘researchers’.
Explain to each of them what they will be doing (give each of them an instruction sheet).
Send each of your researchers to the area they’ll be working in.
Split the rest of the class up and send them to
1/3 to meeting
1/3 to written survey
1/3 to opinion wall
N.B. None to informal chat or face-to-face survey
Tell them they’ve got 10 minutes to discuss/fill out surveys, etc.
After 10 minutes bring them all back into one group.
Ask each of the researchers to feed back their findings in turn.
Also ask them how they found using that method.
After each one ask the group to think about what situations it might be good to use that research method for.
Write these up.
Add-on: Put participants into pairs, get each pair to decide on a question and a research method they will use in the next week.
Obviously you can add in other research methods, making sure you stick to the principle that they’re using the method to find out whether or not it’s a good method.
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Download the session outline and resources as Word documents (all of these are included as one download above):
I wrote this little pocket guide for the school councils of some secondary schools I’m working with. It should be useful to anyone who’s interested in becoming a rep (representative) or is one already and wants some tips on how to make a good job of it.
Most schools have reps as part of the way they run student voice, often class reps, year or house council reps and then even school council reps who might meet with people from other schools.
But being a rep’s not easy, so here are some tips and guides on how to do it well.
Inside you’ll find answers to all of these questions:
What is a rep (representative)?
What’s good student voice?
What does a rep do?
How do I collect views?
How do I create change?
How do meetings work?
What should I ask in meetings?
How do I run a meeting?
What are minutes?
Can meetings be fun?
How do I present an idea?
How do we get things done?
It’s designed as an A5 booklet so if you print it our double-sided onto A4 all the pages should match up
Download the PDF here:
[download id=”220″]
As with all of our work, we release it under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, so if you want to remix it – add your own logos, etc. – you can do that with the Publisher files here:
