Tag: KS1 (P1-P2)

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Pupil voice, creativity and learning detectives

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’:

Whole Education – Creativity and Pupil Voice on Prezi

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.

[gview file=”http://www.campaign-for-learning.org.uk/cfl/assets/documents/CaseStudies/Archbishop_Benson2%5B1%5D.pdf”]

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Project planning and evaluation videos for school councils

We helped make this series of six videos for Parliament’s Education Service. As well as encouraging schools to enter the Speaker’s School Council Award they contain loads of great tips from MPs and school councillors of all ages on how to make any project a success.

If your school council or project team is getting a bit stuck have a watch of some of these, they might just give you a few ideas.

Why enter the Speaker’s School Council Award

Getting ideas and choosing a project

Planning your project

Keeping your team on track

Keeping people informed and involved

Evaluating your project

These videos were all shot, directed and edited by the fantastic Kwame Lestrade of Franklyn Lane Films.

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Strengthen Citizenship in the National Curriculum – a personal response

So today is the last day to respond to the National Curriculum Review Consultation.

involver’s primary interest in this is the threat to Citizenship. To this end we’ve been founding members of Democratic Life and I’ve just used their excellent form to submit a personal response to the consultation (we’re submitting an organisational one too).

Please do go and give your own response too (Democratic Life have even filled out some answers for you too if you just want to adapt them): http://www.democraticlife.org.uk/curriculum-review/curriculum-review-response-form/

I thought I’d put it up here in case it might serve as inspiration to anyone.

If you are responding as an individual, please describe yourself

I am a primary school governor and a parent with a child starting primary school in September. I am also an educational consultant with an interest in promoting political and active democratic education in schools.

Should citizenship be a National Curriculum subject, and if so at what key stages?

Yes, I believe there is a place for citizenship at all levels of schooling. A functioning democracy needs citizens who understand the political system, how they can use it to effect change and how they can change the system.

We do not become citizens at 18, we are citizens from birth.

What does citizenship education bring to the National Curriculum?

State education is about ensuring that everyone can play an active part in the society, this needs to cover the political and social spheres as well as economic and cultural.

Unfortunately most families do not understand well enough the links and boundaries between parish, local, regional, national and European branches of government to explain them to an adult, let alone a child. How many letters do MPs get every week about pot-holes? Formal education has a key role to play here in renewing our democracy.

Whilst the specific ins and outs of the town hall, Westminster and Brussels may be too much for a 7 year-old, learning the underlying principles is not. Most (over 90%) will have a school council, but could any of them tell you if it was democratic? Now, pull that forward, how many 27 year-olds can explain to you which is more democratic, ‘First Past the Post’ or the ‘Alternative Vote’?

What areas of knowledge does the citizenship curriculum cover?

Citizenship teaches how our current political structures work. Those things that have a direct impact on the schools the pupils go to, the services they use and the streets they live on.

It teaches them their rights are how these are linked to responsibilities.

It places British society in an international context; explaining the rights and privileges that we enjoy and making people aware that these are not enjoyed universally.

Furthermore it encourages deep learning of all of these by getting pupils to apply them in a real-world context. This adds skills and agency to the knowledge.

How is citizenship education best delivered in schools?

Whilst any good school will have the principles and values of citizenship embedded in everything it does, it is incredibly difficult to teach the knowledge in this way.

For this reason I believe it should be a discrete subject.

It also needs properly trained and motivated teachers who have graduated in politics or a related subject. Many of the best citizenship teachers have spent time in other professions before entering teaching and so bring additional skills and knowledge to the classroom. This is to be encouraged.

In many cases where citizenship is being poorly delivered it is because it has been given to a non-specialist as an ‘add-on’ responsibility. Encouraging pupils to get a qualification as part of the course seems to help schools to put more weight in to the teaching of the subject.

I believe these views are all backed up by Ofsted’s findings.

What is citizenship education’s international standing? How do English pupils compare internationally in their civic and citizenship knowledge?

I think Democratic Life have summed this up very well:

Citizenship education is an internationally recognised and respected subject. The recent IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) shows that 20 out of 38 countries surveyed include a specific subject for civic or citizenship education in their national curricula. Finland, the country who tops the international comparison tables for reading and science in PISA 2009, also had the highest country civic knowledge scores (along with Denmark). England was 13th in the ICCS civic knowledge country scores and 24th (or last) amongst European countries in civic knowledge of the European Union, its institutions, laws and policies. England needs a world class National Curriculum, that includes robust citizenship education and high quality citizenship teaching to ensure our students can compete with the best in the world.

How can the Government improve pupils’ civic and citizenship knowledge and their attitudes towards participation in society?

By having citizenship as a discrete subject at secondary school and as a strand in the curriculum at primary.

By ensuring that citizenship education combines knowledge of civics with active application of that knowledge to develop the skills and passion for civic participation.

By ensuring that those teaching or leading the teaching of citizenship are well-trained experts in the subject.

Again, please do go and give your own response too: http://www.democraticlife.org.uk/curriculum-review/curriculum-review-response-form/

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Student voice-o-meter is born!

Happy friday everyone,

For the last few months, we’ve been working on an exciting new student voice/school council tool called the Student Voice-o-Meter. We’ve worked closely with two very talented people, Robert Johnson doing the amazing illustration, and Derek Winton pulling all the database and code stuff together. We’re extremely grateful for their help, ideas and talent in making the voice-o-meter come alive.

Put simply, it’s a student-led tool that helps schools to look at what’s good and bad about student voice or their school council. And how it can be improved. Here’s a wee preview:

Involver : Student voice-o-meter from bitsOfBobs on Vimeo.

The Student Voice-o-Meter is very young at the moment, and needs to work with some friendly schools to help him to grow. It’s really hungry and would love some data from your school.

That means we’re looking for three or four schools to give it a trial, get some support from us, and tell us what they think. When it’s up and running, we’ll give those schools free access to the tool. Forever.

So if you’re a teacher or a student, we’d love to hear from you.

Take a look at www.studentvoiceometer.org.uk and if you’re interested, then get in touch with us at info@involver.org.uk.

You can also follow the Student Voice-o-meter on twitter..

Make sure to follow Bits of Bobs on twitter too. You can hear all about his illustration and sandwich adventures.

Greg

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How can you encourage more people to get involved in your Student Voice?

This is a question that I am sure many schools struggle with, and I’d be lying if I said Little Heath hadn’t faced this problem over the years as well. The answer to this question can be the key to success in student voice.

It might be that the attendance at your school council is dwindling, or the uptake for your new peer mentoring scheme is low, or maybe you are struggling to keep your student voice “cool”. I don’t claim to have a definitive answer but I hope to offer some practical advice that you may find useful.

Publicise it! Ensure that the students know what is going on, what your plans are and how they can be involved. Go into assemblies once every half term, produce a mini newsletter, create posters and display boards around school, go into their tutor times, send letters home. You name it, it’s possible. But most crucially get out and speak to them. Chat with them about what student voice is, what activities are available, get them to share their thoughts with you, get their advice.

Be inclusive. Don’t hand pick the good students or reject the more challenging ones when they volunteer. Each one has something to offer. It is important to go out to your students as well as expecting them to come to you. At Little Heath, our Student Voice Leaders (a small group of senior students who each take a lead on an area of Student Voice) regularly go into tutor groups to chat informally to students about their lessons and other areas of school life, but also to share with them what is going on in the student voice world.

One of the greatest, and most effective, outcomes of student voice is that students feel valued. Ensure that everyone knows that your school council, for example, is there, not just because you have to have one but because you want to hear what your students have to say. Show them that their work has impact, that it makes a difference and that it can be rewarding. This gives students a sense of ownership and that their school council is their school council.

Informal structure as well as formal structure can work. Elections are great but don’t always work for everyone. Having an informal place where suggestions can be made and students can show an interest is also really helpful. This can either be a place that allows students to drop in and share ideas with you or it might even be a suggestion box that is checked regularly.

These are just a few ideas but I hope that in some way they are helpful to you.

Alison,
Student Voice Coordinator
Little Heath School

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Making a great student voice conference even better – part 2

This is part two of a blog on Little Heath’s Student Voice conference. You can read the first part here. This concentrated on the older students who were organising the conference, and the adults that supported them.

This second part will look at the experience of some of the younger pupils who are more recently involved with student voice. Let’s focus on student voice in learning since it’s one of the areas that the school does amazingly well. This centres around the STARs project – Students as Researchers.

The STARs (students as researchers) project is a key part of student voice in Little Heath. It’s designed to give the students an influence in their learning and school-life. Importantly, this isn’t based on whim, but research. Even more importantly, this research is student-led.

This first group looked at the types of homework that students liked most. Lots of students were complaining about their homework so they worked on a questionnaire to send out to pupils. The results were presented to Governors and SLT.

Here’s two year 9 students telling us about their STARs project. As opposed to the first group, this project focuses on classroom teaching. It looks at specific subjects: English, History and ICT in years 7 and 8. A crucial area to look at, and some very useful findings:

This group looked at the help that is available for students within the school. Here’s a member of the group talking us through the teacher questionnaire that they organised, and what will happen to their ideas:

Members of the STARs team can get involved year after year. These two members led a successful project last year, and are doing a first plan for their anti-bullying project this year:

Lots of the learning from the STARs project goes into a booklet which is given out to the school to publicise their work. Here’s the team in charge of making it:

Ongoing reflections on Homework:

Year 7 pupils (I think) talking us through their planner/homework diary/timetable.

They’re encouraged to reflect on what they’ve learnt and their homework, if there was too much or if they really enjoyed it. Teachers would then look at this. It’s a simple but good way to encourage reflection on learning and start a conversation with teachers.

Student voice in school planning:

Year 7 pupils on the Buildings and Environment group looking at how to improve this aspect of their school. They’re starting point is how they would make their school into the ‘dream school’ and they’re drawing a big map. They’re clearly getting a lot from approaching this in a visual way.

Key quote ‘it makes it come to life’

So that’s a taster of some of the great work being worked on by the younger pupils at Little Heath. The range of student voice work is really amazing, and if you’re interested, take a look at my original post from last year’s conference for a bit of analysis into why it works so well.

Well done to everyone involved :)

Greg