Tag: Staff

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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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involver blog

We’re looking for a web design/development intern..

Hey all,

Over on the join our team page, we’ve got details of an internship we’ve got available. Please give us a tweet, email or call if you’re interested!

Or you could read the details below:

Web Developer/Designer intern

We’re looking for a web developer/designer intern to help us create a new community website for the young people and teachers that we work with. You might be a student web designer, or a recent graduate, that’s keen to build their portfolio and work as part of an exciting start-up.

Info:

involver are an award-winning social enterprise that help schools, colleges and universities to give students more of a say in their education. We help young people to see that democracy, participation and ‘taking part’ isn’t just for the clever or most confident kids, or those who give the right answers. It’s for everyone.

We’re two guys that set up involver just over a year ago now. We’ve won several awards along the way, but most importantly have trained and supported loads of really great young people in schools across the UK and Europe. We’re currently working on high profile projects with Parliament and the Children’s Commissioner, and we’re working hard to take involver to the next level.

Why are involver looking for an intern?

We’re looking for a web developer/designer to help us create a new community website for the young people and teachers that we work with.

What kind of person are we looking for?

We’re looking for a student web designer, or recent graduate, that’s keen to build their portfolio and work as part of an exciting start-up. We’ve got a site spec and think that something like ELGG, Drupal, Ning, or Buddypress can do what we want. We’re just really keen for it not too look and feel really generic!

To do this you’d need great CSS and HTML skills, and a little bit of PHP probably wouldn’t go amiss. Our assumption is that we’d build something on an existing platform (as mentioned above) rather than building the site totally from scratch. So if you’re an energetic and passionate web design student, or a recent graduate, get in touch!

Where are the details?

We’re based in Shoreditch, East London. But don’t worry, we don’t have funny haircuts (except Greg). We’d pay your expenses and sort your lunch out.

In terms of timing, we’re keen to be flexible. You might want to do a day a week for a few months, or do something shorter and more intensive. Or you might like to work remotely. We also adhere to CIPD’s Internship Charter, which you can read here.

Are we nice people?

Yes. And we make nice coffee.

What would you get out of it?

Hopefully, you’d get a great website as part of your portfolio. You’ll meet some good contacts. We’d be really keen to introduce you to the people we work with; a mix of schools, charities, politicians, government people, private sector companies. And take you to events if you want to come.

If you do a good job, we’ll also promote you widely. And give you a great reference. Finally, we’re developing more and more online work, so there’s also a good chance we’d give you paid work in the future.

What do you do next?

  • Get in touch with us at info@involver.org.uk.
  • Or give us a buzz on 020 3411 3294.
  • Or you might want to tweet us @doingdemocracy.

From there, we’ll organise an informal chat to decide if you’re what we’re looking for.

If you want a bit more information about what we do, take a look at www.involver.org.uk.

Or click on the link below for this information in PDF:

[download id=”227″]

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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

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involver blog

Using student voice in lessons, a couple of ideas

My fiancée, Chloe, told me about a couple of ways she’d used sudent voice in her classes today (she’s Head of Drama at a London secondary), so I asked her to write them down for your enjoyment.

Asher

I’ve tried out a couple of little ideas for increasing the student voice in my classroom recently, neither took any extra effort on my part, but I think both have increased the engagement of students in their own learning.

  • The first was to offer students the choice of how long they should get on the task, we set this by popular vote. They had either 3, 5 or 7 minutes to do the task. The group chose 7 but when they performed the pieces they were not as good as they or I had expected. So we discussed this and how if they have longer shouldn’t it mean the piece is better? We learnt together that they work better under more pressure and so when given the choice in the next lesson they chose the middle option.
  • I was a bit stuck as to what to set Year 9 for homework so asked them to talk to the person next to them about what written homework they thought they’d like to do. Some suggestions were quite similar and so we ended up with three choices, they took a vote as a class. Thinking about it I wonder if they could have chosen to do the one they wanted from the list. It certainly makes for more varied and interesting marking. Most of them looked more keen than usual writing it in to their planners; hopefully they’ll put more in to it too, I’ll find out next week when it’s due in.
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Making a great Student Voice conference even better – Part 1

Another year, another amazing Student Voice Conference at Little Heath School in Reading.

I thought I’d write a blog that reflected on what we saw and learnt last year. It’s split into two parts because I took LOADS of videos.

So the ‘building blocks’ for success in Little Heath are still the same and still very apparent. Pupils feel open – and are supported by teachers and other pupils – to suggest ideas (good or bad!), there’s a variety of ways for students to get involved, and the support from staff is strong. In terms of staff support, the school has managed to build on what they provided last year.

Mr Linz (Student Voice Coordinator) is now expertly supported by Alison, the new Student Voice Assistant. Last year, Alison was a pupil at the school, but this year she’s a paid member of staff. It’s her job to support Mr Linz, and use her experience as a student to get lots of people involved and improve the school.

She’s very kindly writing a blog for us which you can read here and here. It’s really clear from how the students describe them that they make a great team and helps the school to build on the success that they’ve had. Well done!

As usual, I took some videos of some of the work that the school is doing. You’ll have to excuse my video skills.

First off, we have Bailey,  a year 8 student who I’d talked to last year. This year Bailey was really clear on the role that the school’s strong student voice ethos had played in helping him and others. He’s got some great advice on helping shy pupils to get involved. This is something that sits at the heart of what we’re trying to do as an organisation, and it’s great to see Bailey describe this in such a powerful way:

Some great stuff from Jack in Year 11 telling us about the day, and the skills he learnt as a Student Voice Leader. He also stresses the role of a passionate student voice coordinator to support everyone:

Here’s Dalton, from Year 12. He’s got a rather fetching shirt, and is on the buildings committee and helps out on travel to and from school. Back in year 9, he was part of the selection panel to appoint a new head teacher. Key quote ‘being a student voice leader is not all plain-sailing‘. Here his thoughts below:

It’s also important to look at the role of other staff supporting student voice, here’s Ms. Broadhead and Mr. Naylor – a Teaching Assistant at the school – talking about their experience. As a NQT, Ms. Broadhead’s got some interesting reflections on the lip service that many schools pay to student voice:

Here’s Lucy and Daniela talking about the support that older pupils give to year sevens. It’s called the SMILE group, and shows how peer mentoring is important to the school:

Finally for part 1, here’s a short video of Tom working with a group of year 8s. We saw Tom last year explaining what was happening at the conference. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he was a bit nervous! This year, he’s expertly leading a group on the importance of courage as a leader, and what that means. Great stuff!

In part two, I’ll be talking to more of the younger pupils at the school. Stay tuned and thanks again to Little Heath for inviting me along.

Greg

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involver blog Student Voice Assistant's blog

Being a Student Voice Assistant

This is the first of a series of blog posts that we have asked Alison to write for us, to give us an insight into what it’s like to be employed as a Student Voice Assistant in your gap year and to keep us to up to date with what’s going on at a school that has excellent student voice practice and we love working with. We hope you find her experiences interesting and entertaining.

Asher and Greg

Hello all,

Welcome to my first blog! My name is Alison Seymour. I am 18 years old and last summer I completed my A levels at Little Heath School in Reading. I now work at the school as Student Voice Assistant and strange as it may have seemed at first, the staff room has now become like a second home. I have been asked to write a fortnightly blog for Involver and I am so excited to get started and share with you my experience of student voice.

Over my time as a student some of my roles included chairing the School Council and later our Student Voice Leaders, being on the Sixth Form Committee and also groups that focus on teaching and learning and how the buildings and physical structure of the school can be developed to enhance learning.

In my role as Student Voice Assistant, I now have the opportunity to work together with young people to allow them to experience and learn what I have. It is a privilege to see how they can develop and learn skills that can be used beyond their school career. Pupil voice and youth participation is an amazing way of allowing young people to make a difference. It might be in their school, local community or simply achieving a personal goal. That, in a nut shell, is what I believe to be central to pupil voice.

A really exciting part of my job is to plan our annual Student Voice Conference. This year it takes place on the 2nd February and, since being back from the Christmas holidays, much preparation has begun. We take 150 students out of school and spend the day doing different workshops and also have a question panel in the afternoon. It is an excellent opportunity to spend time with a variety of students discussing topics that are at the heart of school life.

This year the conference has three main strands. Our STARS (Students As ResearcherS) group will continue onto the next stage of their research. 40 students have spent the last year looking at different areas of teaching and learning, such as classroom environment, praise and reward and “what makes a good lesson?”, and how, we as a school, can celebrate success but also, improve these areas. The second strand is looking at Student Leadership and how we can develop a competency framework that allows students to be recognised for the ways that they show leadership. Thirdly, looking at student Rights and Responsibilities and how it feeds into a Language for Learning.

I am really excited to be a part of this day and am so interested to see the thoughts that the students have, because more often than not they are right on the money!

I’ll be back in two weeks! See you then :)