The NSPCC and the PSHE Association have worked together to produce teacher resources for key stages 2-4 on personal safety and healthy relationships.
There is a teachers' guide to help create a safe learning environment for the lessons, what to do if they receive a disclosure and where to signpost young people for help. The guide also includes a template letter to parents to inform them about the content and purpose of the lessons.
The topics include:
transition to secondary school
online safety and online friendships
consent
sexualised behaviour
unhealthy relationships and
sharing sexual images
At this time of year, there are three particularly useful lessons for Year 6 pupils as they move on to secondary schools. Their friendships and relationships change, bringing about many new and sometimes difficult challenges.
Now we have 'done away' with groups we need to get even better at crafting lessons and task design to ensure stretch for high attainers and scaffolding for others. Teachers should be thinking precisely about every example we use and every question set for pupils. This ensures slow but steady progression, by varying just one component of the questions at a time. Pupil work time should be regularly punctuated by teacher-led discussion and examples, so frequently ‘reels the kite back in’ after letting children run with it in their own work. We used an example from Wroxham School in Potters Bar: https://vimeo.com/69709930
In the example lessons, students are given the input as a whole class
Children then self-select the task they feel best suits their confidence with the content.
If they feel the challenge they picked was too hard or too easy, they are free to go back and pick another one.
Children were taught to challenge themselves but also not feel ashamed of picking the easier challenge if they want to.
They can work through all 3 challenges during the lesson if they wish so can build confidence during a lesson.
"Our education helps young people understand, cope with, and take action in a crisis."
Thought we'd share something that we're doing tomorrow with our Year 6! The BRitish Red Cross offer fully funded workshops in schools and youth work settings in areas where young people are at higher risk of experiencing a crisis related to drug/alcohol use, incidents involving knives (or other sharp objects) and stigmatising behaviour.
What do the workshops cover?
The free workshops, delivered by Red Cross educators, aim to help 10–19 year olds learn first aid and/or explore the impact of stigmatising behaviour towards refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.
First aid workshops
Learn essential first aid skills, including how to help someone who is:
unresponsive (breathing/not breathing)
bleeding heavily
burnt.
Assess and manage risks to make informed choices when helping others.
Build the confidence and willingness to help in a first aid emergency.
This week's Safeguarding briefing has compiled an resource list under the theme 'Summer Time Safeguarding'. Includes this link to a great website put together by Manchester Fire Brigade. Whilst some of the site is dedicated to local information and things to do in the holidays, there is lots of good advice for all of us on: Barbecue Safety Countryside Safety Water Safety Fire Safety Two videos: Setting deliberate fires, and Water Safety Website: www.safe4summer.com
Summer Time Safeguarding
Summer time, and particularly the summer holidays, can be full of hazards and risks to manage. Here's a roundup of some resources to help you help children and parents.
Whilst its an uncomfortable thought, parents need to ask questions of any childcare provider, play scheme or holiday centre children's services, about how they prevent their workers harming a child. The NSPCC has a useful video about the prevention of sexual abuse in particular and what adults can do to ask organisations about how they keep children safe. You can watch the video here: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse (NSPCC)
Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and the community in Manchester after the horrific and tragic events earlier in the week. We are aware that some children may be upset and quite frightened by it. Therefore, we have attached some resources and guidance (published by different agencies) that may support parents, if your child raises it and you need support:
We have recently updated our website to include some e-safety resources for parents. You can find a great deal of advice and support from the internet to support you in keeping your children safe. Some sound advice from Internet Matters follows:
Agree boundaries Be clear what your child can and can’t do online – where they can use the internet, how much time they can spend online, the sites they can visit and the type of information they can share. Agree with your child when they can have a mobile phone or tablet.
Explore together The best way to find out what your child is doing online is to ask them to tell you about what they do and what sites they like to visit. If they’re happy to, ask them to show you. Talk to them about being a good friend online.
Put yourself in control Install parental controls on your home broadband and any internet-enabled devices. Set up a user account for your child on the main device they use and make sure other accounts in the household are password-protected so that younger children can’t access them by accident.
Use airplane mode Use airplane mode on your devices when your child is using them so they can’t make any unapproved purchases or interact with anyone online without your knowledge.
Stay involved Encourage them to use their tech devices in a communal area like the lounge or kitchen so you can keep an eye on how they’re using the internet and also share in their enjoyment.
Talk to siblingsIt’s also a good idea to talk to any older children about what they’re doing online and what they show to younger children. Encourage them to be responsible and help keep their younger siblings safe.
Search safely Use safe search engines such as Swiggle or Kids-search. You can save time by adding these to your ‘Favourites’. Safe search settings can also be activated on Google and other search engines, as well as YouTube.
Check if it’s suitable The age ratings that come with games, apps, films and social networks are a good guide to whether they’re suitable for your child. For example, the minimum age limit is 13 for several social networking sites, including Facebook and Instagram. Although sites aimed at under-10s like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin also have social networking elements.
Following our previous post, the website (www.schoolcuts.org.uk) has been supported by teaching unions to provide a further commentary on the proposals for education funding - the National Funding Formula. All figures are based on the DfE's own statistics. You can go to the site and enter your postcode to find out the implications for your local schools. It is worth pointing out that the new funding formula in itself is broadly supported by teaching unions but the main issue is the real terms reduction in the overall budget available for schools.
The White Rose Maths Hub is providing teachers and parents with a free 'problem of the day' in March for KS1 and 2 pupils. An ideal addition to our daily routine as we approach SATs!
The link to the resource which will be complete by the end of the month is here: Problem of the day!
LGfL and Childnet have partnered to develop 'Trust Me', the new critical-thinking resource that encourages young people to ask themselves who, what, when and why they can trust online. This looks a really useful resource and the link to it is available here: https://www.lgfl.net/online-safety/trust-me
This is a really useful link from this weeks safeguarding briefing and makes some great suggestions for children's books on a range of subjects that are safeguarding related.
A couple of new and interesting blogs have been added to our links on the right... both talking up a lot of sensible approaches to teaching and learning.
Much is being made in the world of Maths teaching about the Shanghai method. The Chinese city which seems to top the league tables when its students take the 'Pisa' tests at 15 years old. The method is really an amalgamation of many ideas based on a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and how children learn them. One of the key principles for us is that everyone can be a maths 'master' given the opportunity to build on what they know in small steps. We've recently invested in tools and resources to support our thinking including the Maths: No problem books which we hope will impact on our teaching and learning. We'd recommend parents taking a look - several staff are using them with their own children at home! We are really not on any sort of commission but if you would like more information head here.
David Didau was invited to speak at Southampton University recently as author of several books on education and the Learning Spy blog.
Much of what we do in classrooms is intuitive, steered by what 'feels right', but all too often intuition proves a poor, sometimes treacherous guide. In “What if everything you knew about education was wrong?” David set out the case for questioning many of our most deeply held assumptions about teaching and learning.
While we don't normally 'plug' books, 'What if everything we knew about education was wrong?' is well worth a read and we have added a link to the 'Learning Spy' on the right.
Safer Internet Day 2017 will be celebrated globally on Tuesday 7th February with the slogan ‘Be the change: Unite for a better internet’. The day offers the opportunity to highlight positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community. It calls upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider, to join together in helping to create a better internet. In school, we talk to our children about keeping themselves safe online as an important part of our curriculum. The day on 7th February hopes to encourage more and more of us to think about and promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.
A simple introduction to tax for 8 to 11 year olds, which explains that taxes provide the money needed to pay for the things that are essential to them, their families, communities and society as a whole.
HMRC is the UK’s tax, payments and customs authority. They collect the money that pays for the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.
A comprehensive teacher's pack, with ready-to-use lesson plans and exercises, is available to view or download, free of charge on the Times Educational Supplement (TES) website: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/junior-tax-facts-teachers-pack-11410987
We've updated our website with some recent training on attachment behaviours which we found very useful. The CPD is aimed at teachers but the principles behind it are applicable to anyone who has or works with children. Attachment is not something which only affects children, but all of us, throughout life and in all our relationships. The link is here.
The Southampton Inclusion Partnership website is a great resource for supporting pupils with SEND. They have recently put together some pre-key stage exemplifications for writing which are not currently available from the DfE. Each of the standards includes 6 pieces of evidence and they have included a checklist to help with evidencing. The link to the page is here and on the right.
The UK Space Education Office has some super links and resources for schools to enhance their teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) using space as the context. We are planning our own Science week and hope to use astronaut Tim Peake's mission to the international space station as an inspiration to pupils. The link is on the right of this page and here.
Link to a new resource on the right from Hampshire & IOW Police. For more information follow the link here.
"The 'Safe4me' Education Resource Programme is a free resource available to schools, colleges and partners in Hampshire & IOW as part of Hampshire Constabulary's on-going committment to working in partnership with education and agencies to safeguard children and young people. The programme has been carefully developed in partnership with teachers, experts, with guidance from The National PSHE Association to support schools to deliver education related specifically to law, consequences and choices by providing credible resources which align with common topics explored within current PSHE, PDL, SMSC, SRE and Citizenship curriculum and other intervention models.
The overall aim of the resource is to support teachers and professionals to help young people develop a basic level of knowledge and understanding to enable them to be risk aware, make healthy informed choices and stay safe."
National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics is an excellent resource for teachers. While 'mastery' may mean many different things to many different people, members of NCETM are certainly doing some great thinking when it comes to improving Maths teaching. We've begun to dip into their assessment materials (available here) which might seem a little daunting at first but are a bank of really good activities and questions that are indicators of what children really understand about their learning in Maths. Remember to read the first page!
