CONTRIBUTORS
Beyond targets: the well-being of the child
This month, regular
Education Today contributor FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation, looks at helping children develop emotional and mental resilience.
This month, regular Education Today KIRSTY BERTENSHAW looks at some fun and exciting ways to liven up your STEM sessions while not breaking the bank.
With SATS out of the way, it’s time to start thinking about other ways in which schools have a duty of care to the children they educate. Given pressures within the school environment, together with a seemingly constant barrage of challenging news stories, dogma and bigotry, it is vital that children are supported in developing emotional and mental resilience.
In the UK, 1 in 10 children and young people suffer mental health problems including depression, anxiety and conduct disorder (often in direct response to what is happening in their lives), but 70% of them have not had appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age. Students and staff can sometimes struggle to find any form of substantive professional support.
There are a number of different ways to approach this challenge, one of which involves bringing real world events into school and exploring them, thus enabling children to understand how they are relevant to their lives. A recent report by child development expert Dr. Jacqueline Harding examined the complex role of critical thinking, curiosity, emotional intelligence/resilience and metacognition, together with the function of creativity and imagination.
The study demonstrated that when real world news is delivered and explained in a way that stimulates curiosity, bringing current affairs into both the home and the learning environment can have significant benefits for child development. Beyond supporting “healthy minds”, engaging in discussion and giving children the tools to understand real world events has the potential to deepen academic learning and enhance cognitive growth. Building on her findings, Dr. Harding recommends that there is closer co- ordination between home and school to help equip parents with the tools to talk about difficult subjects, to help children make sense of the world around them and to spark curiosity. Resources like current affairs magazine The Week Junior, for example, can help explain difficult but important topics in a simple and fun format, stimulating children at home and sparking interest in the classroom.
Of course, there is not always an easy way to increase closer co- ordination between home and school. Another approach lies in teaching children values and modeling appropriate behaviour - providing the building blocks for how children will grow, continue to learn, work and interact within society as a whole. These are basics which help children both in achieving school targets and in setting them up for life as strong and resilient characters.
Values based Education (VbE), for example, provides an approach which underpins the curriculum with universal positive human values such as respect, integrity, honesty and compassion. Dr. Neil Hawkes argues that the ethical intelligence and vocabulary this helps to develop the foundation of a new universal narrative through which all human beings, irrespective of culture, religion or ethnicity can communicate, establishing trust and well being.
Children’s emotional wellbeing is as important as their physical health, providing them with resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them. Therefore, new tools and approaches must be explore if we are to fulfil our duty of care and support children in managing the challenges they face.
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The end of term is approaching, equipment stores are running low and both teachers and pupils are tired after a long academic year. Pupils want ‘fun’ lessons while SLT want quality learning right up to the last day of term. The solution could be STEM sessions, combining important curriculum knowledge, cross-curricular learning and vital skills such as communication, team work, perseverance and problem- solving skills. Here are few ideas for scrapheap STEM sessions – using the leftover curriculum materials or scrap from home to plan educational active learning!
Model making is an easy way to demonstrate learning from the past term or year in a 3D model. These take a few sessions to complete but can then be displayed as a summary of learning ready for next year. The digestive system could be modelled using (washed) contents of your recycling bin e.g. yogurt pots, kitchen roll tubes, fruit nets with a few curriculum materials such as balloons. Old wallpaper rolls or leftover rolls of backing paper are great for drawing around a person to make a life size model. Solar system models can be made as infographics and displayed in corridors, while plants with labels make great models for primary school curriculums. Papier maché eyes can even be created using balloons and old newspapers or unwanted worksheets, cut open and the insides modelled a labelled scientifically. One of my favourite activities is making a 10 second timer, which can take several hours to plan and complete. Pupils will need stop clocks to test their timer, but everything else can be left over materials or even recycling. Cardboard, kitchen roll tubes, left over art straws, plastic straws, paper, sand, rice, string, marbles and sticky tape are commonly used for this activity, but any materials can be offered to pupils. Pupils could include more maths by keeping a budget sheet tracking the cost of each piece of equipment used, and this can be a tie-breaker should several groups succeed in making a 10 second timer. You can make it extra hard by considering the physics involved, e.g. energy changes or forces. If you have limited time to complete the challenge, or younger pupils, then try a 2 second timer instead. Puzzle compendiums are often overlooked before all the puzzles are completed. Ask staff or parents for any unwanted puzzle books, and make an information hunt style puzzle hunt, where each puzzle should be completed before moving on to the next puzzle, perhaps moving across a department or outside space. Use number puzzles to encourage maths skills. For less able groups, place some answers in the grids to start classes off. Simple sudoku puzzles are frequently used in maths lessons so should be familiar to pupils. You can even throw in a few word searches or word fit puzzles to develop visual acuity and special awareness skills!
How could items that normally get recycled be reused to make something new? Recycling means to return the products to a previous stage in the manufacturing process, so new items can be manufactured, e.g. glass is melted down then reused. This requires a lot of energy! Could the items be reused or reimagined into new products instead? Present pupils with a selection of recyclable materials (and maybe non-recyclable plastics too without the triangle symbol on them) and let their imaginations run wild! Paint, pens, glue and sticky tape may be required, and any leftover modelling materials too. Maybe you’ll discover something new!
July/August 2017
Scrapheap STEM!!
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