Tag: New ideas

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involver blog Resources

From school council noticeboards to progress boards

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.

School council progress board
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.

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Newsletters

Newsletter 5: Citizenship under threat

Hello from involver: newsletter number 5!

As I’m sure is the case for many of you, the start of the new school year has meant we’ve been so busy we’ve missed September. That’s why your September edition of this newsletter is arriving in mid-October, I know this will have thrown so many of you who base your working life around the publication date of this email :)

The attachment – our very magenta flyer

News: Citizenship education – is it for the chop?

There are rumours that the Coalition Government’s plans for a slimmer curriculum will involve getting rid of Citizenship. We believe this would undermine widespread engagement with the ‘Big Society’ and remove a key, active element of young people’s democratic education. We’ve joined Democratic Life to put the case for strong Citizenship teaching in every school. You should too.
http://www.democraticlife.org.uk

Resource: School council rep’s toolkit

This free guide is for new and prospective reps, whether they’re class reps, year reps or members of a local youth council. Its got tips and ideas on what makes a good rep, how to run meetings and manage projects. You can even download the original files to customise with your own school or LA logos and advice:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-reps-tookit/

Blog: Does a youth council have to look like a council?

Why do we assume that a formal meeting is the only/best way to run things? Most of us find meetings boring, yet we put young people through the same process. I’ve been working with a group of 15 year-olds to design something a bit different:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/09/does-a-youth-council-have-to-look-like-a-council/

Competition: Make a cool film and win equipment and a workshop with a top UK film director

Cut Films is a competition to get young people making films with, and for, each other about not-smoking. They have just launched this year’s competition with a deadline of 31 January 2011. For more information please see:
http://www.cutfilms.org

Training: New session on collecting information

I wrote and ran this session for Preston Manor High School in Brent about the benefits and problems with different ways of collecting views from your peers. They seemed to really enjoy it. Why don’t you give it a go and tell us if it works for you:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-training-collecting-information/

Resource: Help trial our Student Voice-o-meter

Building on our Simple Student Voice Audit Tool, we’ve built a more sophisticated way to see how loud the student voice is in schools. It’s student-led and is simple and quick enough it can be run in form time. We need a few schools to try it out for us though before we unleash it on the world. Let us know if you’re interested in getting this sneak peek:
info@involver.org.uk

Video: Pupil voice videos from across the web

We keep seeing great videos related to pupil voice, democratic education and school councils around the web, but couldn’t find a place where they’re all together, so we’ve created one. They’re great for CPD and to inspire your school council (or staff). Let us know if you’ve seen things we should add:
http://www.involver.org.uk/resources/videos/

Blog: Learner Voice: why bother?

Greg’s been asked to write a ‘thinkpiece’ for LSN’s magazine. He focussed on why learner voice (as it’s known in the 14-19 sector) is so important. Do you have anything to add?
http://involver.org.uk/2010/09/involver-thinkpiece-for-lsn-learnings-magazine-learner-voice-why-bother/

Resource: Find school council resources more easily

We’ve redesigned our resources pages so it’s now quicker and easier to find school council and student voice resources to download. Have a look and let us know what you think:
http://www.involver.org.uk/resources/
Hope to hear from you all soon,

Greg and Asher @ involver

P.S. If you think other people might find what we do useful and you’ve got a network, conference or event where you could give away copies of the attached flyers we’d really appreciate it. Just let us know how many you need and we’ll put them in the post. Thanks!

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involver blog Resources

School council training: collecting information

Picture of whole school assemblyTo 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:

  1. Before the session starts (I did this during the previous session), select 5 people who will be your ‘researchers’.
  2. Explain to each of them what they will be doing (give each of them an instruction sheet).
  3. Send each of your researchers to the area they’ll be working in.
  4. 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
  5. Tell them they’ve got 10 minutes to discuss/fill out surveys, etc.
  6. After 10 minutes bring them all back into one group.
  7. Ask each of the researchers to feed back their findings in turn.
  8. Also ask them how they found using that method.
  9. After each one ask the group to think about what situations it might be good to use that research method for.
  10. 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):

  • [download id=”223″]
  • [download id=”224″]
  • [download id=”225″]
  • [download id=”226″]
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involver blog Newsletters

Newsletter 3: Why bother, audit, training and fantasy football

Hello from involver: Newsletter number 3!

The summer break is almost upon us (or already here, depending on where in the UK you are), so we hope you’ve had a great year!

Here’s a round up of what we’ve been up to over the last month:

Blog: School councils and student voice: why bother?
Greg says, ‘I’m working from Scotland for most of this week, which meant a very long eight hour train journey! After a double espresso, I was feeling a bit reflective about some of the things that we’re doing with involver and why we’ve been doing them.’ Here are his thoughts:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-councils-and-student-voice-why-bother/

Training: Making your school council READY!
Lots of schools are thinking about how they can improve their school council or student voice next year – we can help you make it READY (yes, that’s an acronym, have a look here if you want to know what for):
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-council-training-get-in-touch/

Resource: Great set of student voice resources from Australia
Asher came across this series of presentations and supporting resources, which was created by Nick Rate, a trainer from Australia. He’s recorded it all so the people he supports in far flung places down under can access them, but of course it means we all can, we love the internet:
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/AlhYPd3PMcUd/Student-Voice

Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
A great video from the States about why ‘doing democracy’ in schools is so important. It is included in the set above, but worth a special mention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4

Project: Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011
After a hugely successful opening year, you can now register your interest in the Speakers School Council Awards 2011. It’s a great way to get your achievements recognised, so to get involved, hop over to:
http://www.speakersschoolcouncil.org

Evaluation: Student voice/school council progress this year?
How have you been getting on with student voice, this year? It’s not easy to get right, and it still takes work and support even when it’s a success. We’ve built a very short audit tool to help you reflect. Fill it out and we’ll even provide you with personalised feedback and ideas if you want us to:
http://involver.org.uk/participate/simple-student-voice-audit/

Network: A new Student Voice and School council Linkedin group
For those of you that use Linkedin (for those who don’t: it’s kind of like a professional Facebook), we’ve set up a group to connect and inform people about student voice and school councils. We’re still finding our way around LinkedIn, but our teacher friends tell us it’s very useful. So take a look, and join at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3089339

Networking-fun: Fantasy Democraball!
We’ve set up a fantasy football mini-league for our friends, colleagues and contacts, so please join and invite oithers.  You don’t need to know anything about football, just how to add up to £100,000,000. It’s a head-to-head league, so each game you’ll be playing against another person from the citizenship/student voice/youth democracy world (your skill in beating them will be a good ice-breaker topic for when you next meet them at a conference). It’s free to sign up. Once you’ve picked your team use this code to join the ‘Democraball!’ league: 116742-35727
http://fantasy.premierleague.com

So have a great summer!

And remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.

Greg and Asher @ involver

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involver blog

School council training – get in touch!

Lots of schools are beginning to think about training their school council, or student voice groups, for next academic year.

If you want to make your student voice READY, then get in touch! You can read more about our training here.

It might be two days training to breathe new life into your tired school council, a staff INSET on student voice, or a half day workshop supporting students to be on an interview panel. Whatever it is, all of our training aims to make student voice:

Real, Everyone, Active, Democratic, Youth-led

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involver blog Newsletters

involver newsletter 2: School council ideas, problems and solutions

If you want to our newsletter in your inbox each month, put your email address in the ‘get our newsletter box’ in the top right of this page.


Hello from involver – newsletter number 2

Hope you’re all doing well and enjoying the sun and World Cup. We’ve created some new resources and found a few things that you and your schools might find useful, so here they are …

Resource: Pupil interview panels – getting it right
After a lot of misconceptions in the press about what this involves, we’ve written a brief guide to getting the most out of interview panels that involve students.
http://involver.org.uk/2010/04/pupil-interview-panels-getting-it-right/

Resource: More student voice ideas, issues and some solutions
Some really great ideas and suggestions came up from training we’ve run recently for ASCL, in London, and Wolverhampton Local Authority in, well, Wolverhampton. You or schools you work with may find them useful and we’d find it really useful if you add any suggestions of your own.
http://involver.org.uk/2010/06/school-council-ideas-and-student-voice-issues/
http://involver.org.uk/2010/06/common-school-council-issues-with-solutions/

Resource: Excellent World Cup learning activities
You know we couldn’t get through this newsletter without one World Cup resource, and this one from LSIS is great (if you don’t work in post-16 we’re sure you resourceful involvers could adapt it).
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/media/Post16%20Citizenship%20Support%20Programme/Football_supplement_FINAL.pdf

Website: Got a school council website? Add it to our showcase
We’re building up a list of great school council websites – if you have would like to be featured here, please email us at info@involver.org.uk
Tiffany Ryan of Changemakers has been helping us out with this – thanks Tiffany!
http://involver.org.uk/links/school-councils-websites/

Also, if you think our site is useful and want to help others find it, please link to us on your blog or website.

Event: Speaker’s School Council Awards
After 2,500 schools registering interest, hundreds of schools have applied to the Speaker’s School Council Awards. We helped Parliament and the excellent team of judges to whittle the entries down to twenty. Each of these fantastic school council projects will attend an exciting awards ceremony in Parliament on June 23rd. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, will award a winner in each age category, so thanks to everyone for applying! You can see schools that have been shortlisted at:
http://www.parliament.uk/education/special-events-and-programmes/speakers-school-council/

Event: AGON – Ancient Greek-style political drama debate
On the 6th of July secondary students from Enfield will be running this innovative event which encourages discussion on issues about media and celebrity through any medium, including drama, dance, music and film. Anyone and everyone is invited to be part of the audience and take part. It’s at the Scoop Amphitheatre next to the GLA buildings by Tower Bridge, London, fittingly.
Email mark.barrett@kingsmead.org for more details.

Video: Kids taking charge – India-style
Ever visit the TED website? It’s one of our favourites. Here’s a link to an inspiring eight minute talk on the ‘I can bug’ developed by Kiran Bir Sethi of Riverside School, Ahmedebad, India.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html

Research: PSHE in schools and empowering students
Researchers from Brighton University need your help to collect responses from students on how they get to have a say in what topics should be included in PSHE. They are also seeking their views on the curriculum delivered in schools currently. Please give this link to your students and colleagues:
https://eforms.crawley.gov.uk/af3/an/default.aspx/RenderForm/?F.Name=AVhVYHSESfL

Networking-fun: Democraball!
Democraball! runs every month and new players and supporters are always welcome. It’s now got a Facebook group so if you’re in London, and fancy a (very amateur) game of five a side football, then join the group or get in touch at info@involver.org.uk.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=127543770612104

Remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.

Thanks!

Greg and Asher @ involver
If you want to our newsletter in your inbox each month, put your email address in the ‘get our newsletter box’ in the top right of this page.