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A whole bloomin’ class council scheme of work!

This is brilliant: our first resource shared by a teacher and it’s an absolute corker! Chloe Doherty gave us this scheme of work she wrote for her year team last year.  She wanted to get class councils off the ground as she recognised without them the school and year councils didn’t really mean much.

This resource has a series of lesson/session plans and a bundle of resources to go with them. Any resources not included in the download below (such as the Boundaries Cards) can be downloaded from involver.org.uk.

As this is a resource written by a teacher and used in her school, I’ve left it just as she gave it to me, other than putting it all in to one document and adding a contents page.

Print or download (’save’) this resource using the ‘More’ button.

Tutorial Activities Class Council SoW

Chloe wrote this last year when she was Head of Drama at Kingsmead School and a Year 8 form tutor. She’s now Head of Drama at Southgate School.  She’s also my fiancée, so all my banging on about student voice and class councils obviously wore her down as she wrote and ran this without any help from me. She sent it to us through the ‘Upload‘ page and it was honestly the first time I’d seen it! I could get all gooey about how she constantly amazes me, but I’ll spare you that.

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News

Chris Keates vs the Green Cross Code Man

Who would win? Chris Keates or the Green Cross Code Man?
Who would win? Chris Keates or the Green Cross Code Man?

I came across these two articles over the weekend thanks to Twitter.

The first is on the TES website and puports to contrast two views on pupil/student voice:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6020426&navcode=94

On one side is Chris Keates, the head of the NASUWT, on the other is Schools Minister, Vernon Coaker. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually do a very good job of this. Chris Keates puts forward a clear, reasoned argument, but essentially based around the idea that ‘advanced pupil voice can be bad for teachers where it isn’t done well, so it shouldn’t be done at anywhere.’ Vernon Coaker’s counterpoint unfortuately doesn’t address this argument directly at all, it just reads like a Government press release on current policy. I’d love to see someone like Vernon Coaker, an ex-teacher and real advocate for children and young people, address the NASUWT’s arguments head on.

Stop, Look and Listen!
Stop, Look and Listen!

However, the other article I came across put the other side of the arguement very well in an incredibly practical way. It from the blog of a couple of teachers (one which I’ll be following closely from now on) and talks about how getting students’ feedback on their schemes of work is an essential part of improving learning and teaching. They’ve got a great name for it too:

http://www.staffroomproject.com/taketheplunge/2009/08/green-cross-learning-stop-look-and-listen

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involver blog

Ofsted interviewing school councils

I was just having a look on the TES’s forums and this issue seemed to be quite popular.  Is it something we could produce a resource on?  I’m sure it’s something teachers would really value.  Maybe it would just be a short one that could be downloaded for free (if people give us their email address).

The foum thread is here: [TES] What questions will Ofsted ask my School Council?

I will also be monitoring this thread: [TES] How can I evaluate the effectiveness of  my school council?