Tag: Participation

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Competitive games to promote collaboration and teamwork

Competition is seen by some people in education, youth work and team building as a dirty word, but it definitely has its uses. With many groups and individuals it is a great motivating factor and can help you break down some people’s reluctance to join in. As long as you don’t dwell on the winners and losers and instead try to pull out the learning it can be very effective.

Many of the games I posted previously can also be used in this way if you just split the group into two or more teams, but these I feel work especially well with a competitive element.

Remember to get the most out of all of these activities …

Before the activity

  • Explain the rules as simply as possible.
  • Don’t give tips on how to complete the task.
  • Don’t explain what you want them to get out of it.

During the activity

  • Unless a judge is needed, you should take full part in the activity.
  • If everyone is struggling, pause the game and ask people what is going wrong; ask them what they could do to change it.
  • Stop the games while people are still excited, don’t wait for them to start dragging.

After the activity

  • Don’t make a big deal out of winners and losers – a quick cheer or round of applause is enough.
  • Draw out the learning through asking them to reflect on the activity, don’t tell them what you think the learning should be.
    • Ask those who succeeded: What worked well in your team? What did you do that allowed you to succeed?
    • Ask those who struggled: What would you differently next time?
    • Ask those who struggled but managed in the end: What do you change? Why? Did that work?
    • Finally, ask them what they learned through the activity – they may well come up with far more than you intended!

Shark infested water

Useful for

Co-ordination; helping each other out; playing to strengths; talking to one another; lateral thinking.

Method

  1. Split the groups into teams of at least 4.
  2. Give each team fewer pieces of paper than there are people (make it harder by giving fewer pieces of paper).
  3. Explain that this room is actually shark infested water. The paper is little moveable islands.
  4. They have to get their whole team from one side of the room to the other before the other team.
  5. If anyone steps in the water they have to start again.

Resources

  • Pieces of paper just big enough for two people to stand on
  • You can use chairs instead of paper, but be careful

Move the cups

Useful for

Co-ordination; taking things slowly; talking to one another; lateral thinking.

Method

  1. Place the hula hoops on the ground.
  2. Place three cups in the centre of each hula hoop.
  3. Place one elastic band/string contraption with each hula hoop.
  4. Split the groups into teams of three.
  5. Send each team to one of the hula hoops.
  6. Explain the rules:
    • Their hands can’t go into the hula hoop.
    • They can’t touch the cups.
    • They can only hold one piece of string each.
  7. Explain that they have to lift the three cups out of the hoop and stack them in a pyramid (two next to each other and one balancing on top).

Resources

  • Hula hoops
  • Plastic cups
  • Elastic bands with three pieces of 50cm long string tied to them.

See, run, do

Useful for

Communication; seeing things from others’ perspective; importance of everyone playing their role well.

Method

  1. Split the groups into teams of three.
  2. Get the teams to decide on one of them to be a ‘Seer’, one to be a ‘Runner’ and the other a ‘Doer’.
  3. Send all the ‘Doers’ to one end of the room and tell them each to grab a pen and piece of paper. They cannot move from there.
  4. Send all the ‘Seers’ to the other end of the room. They cannot move from there.
  5. The ‘Runners’ can go anywhere, but they can’t touch the pen or paper and they can’t see the picture.
  6. You are going to show a picture to the ‘Seer’.
  7. They have to get a copy of that picture across the room.
  8. After they’ve had a few minutes get them to stop and compare the picture to your original. Choose the one that’s most like a photocopy of your image. Concentrate on details like size, orientation, neatness, what’s coloured in, etc.
  9. Ask them what went well and what they could have done differently or better.
  10. Get them to stay in the same groups, but change roles.
  11. Repeat and then change roles one last time.
  12. Ask them which role was the hardest and which was most important.

Variation (without the ‘Runners’)

  • Try in pairs, with people sitting back to back – the one has to explain the picture to the other, who can’t see it.
  • In the first round show the picture very briefly.
  • In the second, give the ‘Seer’ the picture to study whilst she explains it.
  • In the third round allow the ‘Seer’ to see and comment on what the ‘Doer’ is drawing, but don’t allow the ‘Doer’ to see the original picture.

Resources

  • Blank paper
  • Pens
  • 3 simple pictures
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School council welcome pack – helping new school councillors

As you might expect, as someone really interested in education, schools and community I’m a school governor. One of the things I’m doing in that role currently is thinking about how we make new governors feel supported and able to play a constructive role as soon as possible. So I’ve started re-writing our governor induction pack – this is basically a welcome pack for new governors. It’s lead me on to thinking about not just what information we give to new governors, but what mentoring and training we need to give them and what we need them to do to make the most of it.

How to be a SMART school councillor
You need to create a guide for your school on how new school councillors can do a great job representing their peers and making things happen. You might want to include one of these for some ideas on your roles, collecting ideas and running meetings. Please excuse the shameless plug ;)

It occurred to me that new school councillors could do with a similar sort of pack and that getting current school councillors to write it would be really useful to get your new school council off to a flying start next year.

Below is the process we are going through and how I think it could work for a school council.

  1. Get together a small group of current school councillors – ideally some who have been on the council for a while and some who are new.
  2. Write down a list of all the things you wish you had known when you became a school councillor.
  3. Write down a list of all the support that you have found useful in your role as a school councillor.
  4. Add in any support that you would have liked but didn’t receive.
  5. Write a short document (no more than a page) that will be the cover of your induction pack. This should tell new school councillors what support they will get and list all the useful information that you will put in the welcome pack. We have organised under these headings, they might work for you too:
    • What we’ll do to support you (the new school councillor)
    • What we need you to do
    • The documents attached (that will help you to understand your role and how our school and school council works)
    • Useful websites (or other sources of information)
  6. Now you’ve got to collect all that information together and work out whatever training, mentoring, etc. you have said you will provide.

Do you already have a school council welcome pack? What is in it or what would you put in it if you had one?

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involver blog

Student voice in your SOLE

In 1999 a group of educational researchers put an internet connected PC in the wall of a New Delhi slum. Then they left it alone. Children from the slum gathered around this ‘hole in the wall’ and, with no direction, taught themselves how to use the computer and browse the internet simply through their own curiosity.

When Dr. Sugata Mitra presented these findings online it was so compelling that his lectures went viral and Mitra was propelled to the status of a minor internet celebrity.

Now, after a decade of follow up research into the effectiveness of child led learning, Sugata is inviting educators from all backgrounds to take part in a wider experiment. By providing groups of children with a Self-Organised Learning Environment (SOLE), the experiment aims to find effective ways of encouraging students to embrace their innate curiosity and use this as their incentive to learn in a broad range of environments, be it in the classroom or the home. This works by posing stimulating, profound or weird questions and letting the children approach the subject in their own way, with minimal outside interference.

At involver we are very excited about the ideas behind this experiment and we think it could potentially have far reaching implications for student voice. By allowing children to take charge of their learning it promotes a culture where they are not only encouraged but expected to contribute and be listened to. A SOLE might, for example, be a great way to get students to prepare a proposal to the school council: students would be responsible for the questions asked, and they would be free to answer them in innovative and exploratory ways.

Imagine the feedback you could receive by posing questions like, ‘why do people from all over the world come to our school?’, ‘who is school for?’, or even ‘what is learning?’, to a group of children, and then leaving them to discuss, explore and discover their own answers. We strongly encourage educators to participate in this experiment so education systems all over the world can benefit from the insights we may find in the results.

If you would be interested in learning more about Sugata’s research you can find his profile at TED.com, or to get involved with the SOLE experiment you can download the toolkit available with directions and advice on how to set one up.

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involver blog

How you can help teach about participatory budgeting

[iframe http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/apprendre-a-compter/widget/ 232 330]

As regular readers of our website will know, we think participatory budgeting is a fantastic way to get your whole school involved in pupil voice. Loads of schools do it already through getting the whole school involved in deciding on new playground equipment or how a new building should be fitted out, but coming up with a good structure for it can transform student voice in your school.

This guy wants the chance to help schools across Europe learn about good ways to run participatory budgeting, but he needs your help. He’s asking for small donations (even just a couple of pounds) to fund the making and distribution of this series of interactive videos.

Watch the video he’s made explaining the idea and if you can pledge some money, please do (I have already).

If you can’t see the information about the project to the left, click this link to see the video, read more and pledge: http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/apprendre-a-compter

 

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involver blog

Great ideas from Brno for effective school council meetings

School council meeting in Brno
The screen at the top of the photo was used to display images of the topics being discussed when appropriate, the rest of the time the minutes were displayed there as they were typed up.

Today we’re sitting in Masarova School in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city. Again we’ve been lucky to witness an excellent school council meeting, albeit one that was very different to the one we saw yesterday.

This meeting was more formal, not least in the room layout,but there was still a good deal of respect and understanding between the pupils. Again, the range of issues they covered was impressive and would ring bells for UK school councils: communication with the whole school, school dinners, fundraising, the school council’s budget and how to get more teachers involved with the school council.

There were a few things that stood out to us as useful ideas that other school councils could use:

Have the minutes displayed as they are being typed. This allows everyone to see that they are being recorded accurately and see that an action plan has been agreed – if you use action-focused minutes.

The three chairpeople
The three chairpeople supported one another well and ensured that virtually everyone (22 out of 24 school councillors) contributed during the meeting.

Have people in supporting roles. There were three chairs and two secretaries. One person took the lead as each but the others helped out and ensured that everyone was seen and all notes were taken down.

Don’t just choose the oldest students to chair. In this school the three chairs seemed to be some of the youngest people in the meeting, but they were enthusiastic and did an excellent job of moving the discussions along.

Have large name badges for everyone in the room. All teachers and students had these and it meant the secretaries could easily record who was doing what.

Print out the minutes at the end of the meeting to give to everyone so they know what was discussed and what their action points are.

The two secretaries
The two secretaries typed up the minutes as the meeting was going and they were projected on to a screen that everyone could see. At the end of the meeting they printed out the minutes for all the school councillors.
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Involving very young children in pupil voice

The previous two ideas have suggested a couple of ways to improve how meetings are chaired and broaden the scope of issues that meetings cover. But how do you involve the youngest children in your school? Sitting them in a meeting, no matter how well run, can be difficult. Here’s a way to get them involved and learning how to participate.

The issue

Including Reception and KS1 (children aged 4-7) in school council meetings is difficult for them and everyone else.

The suggestion

Rather than having children of this age in meetings ask teachers in their classes to set aside 15-20 minutes per week when members of the school council can come and ask them a question. This is how it would then work:

  1. School council decides on one question to ask Reception and KS1 on an issue that directly involves them. This same question will be asked to all Reception and KS1 classes.
  2. Just before the allotted time Reception and KS1 teachers should organise their classes into groups of 3-5.
  3. Two members of the school council go to each Reception and KS1 class to introduce the question and record responses. This is what they should do in each class:
    1. Introduce themselves. (30 seconds)
    2. Remind the class what question they were asked last time. (1 min)
    3. Explain what has happened as a result of their views from last week. (2 mins)
    4. Explain this week’s question. (1 min)
    5. Get all groups to discuss the question and come up with an answer they all agree on. (5 mins)
    6. Get one person from each group to stand up and explain the decision they came to. (5 mins)
    7. This should be written down or recorded by the school council reps – the easiest way to do this is by video camera or voice recorder.
    8. Thank the class and explain when they will be back. (30 seconds)
    9. The school council reps go over the views of class and summarise them in a couple of sentences.
    10. These summarised views are reported back to the school council to form the basis of their decision, or to feed in to it.

The outcome

Young children have the opportunity to genuinely input in to decisions that affect them.

They start to practice skills of: expressing opinions, compromise, taking turns, reporting back and chairing.

Additional ideas

You could create a more direct democratic structure by asking everyone to vote after their little discussions, and recording these votes and aggregating them across the school.

It is very helpful for the school council reps to have a script to follow. This gives them confidence and ensures that each class is being treated uniformly.

You can also start introducing the concept of a chair person, whose job it is to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.

Try to make sure that a different person from each small group feeds back each week so all have a chance to practice this. The same should be done with chairing. This can be achieved by having children in the same small groups each week. Within each group people should be numbered. In week 1, all the 1s report back, in week 2, the 2s report back, and so on.

Download this idea as a PDF: [download id=”246″]