How Can People Help Minibeasts Project

16th May 2023Website Admin

In Spring Two, Zayit Class worked on an exciting project linked to their topic of ‘Minibeasts’, They focused on improving their knowledge of scientific vocabulary, how minibeasts are important to the environment and how people can help to protect them.

The main focus on their project was to develop their art and design skills by designing and making minibeast hotels. Through this task the students also worked on giving and receiving feedback about their designs.

The exhibition for the project involved Gesher’s Senior Leadership Team cutting the ribbon as part of the grand opening of the hotels.

Teacher’s Reflections

  • Engaging with all children involved the different learning and play opportunities
  • Rewarding to see all the children make great progress towards their communication targets
  • Challenging to build the minibeast hotels, however with a lot of teamwork and encouragement the children made great progress

Students’ Reflections

My highlight of the project was going to the environment centre.

The project was fun and I learnt how to make a minibeast hotel

View all project cards

Top Tips for Dyslexia-friendly Learning Environments

31st January 2023Website Admin

Top Tips for Dyslexia-friendly Learning Environments

  1. Backgrounds – Change your smartboard backgrounds and/or font colour to another colour to make it easier for everyone. If you have a child who already has a preference, use that, otherwise, opt for a whole school colour. Light blue is a popular choice. 
  2. Books and overlays – Some pupils may find it easier to write in books with coloured backgrounds and have a coloured overlay. 
  3. Dyslexic-friendly fonts – There are fonts specifically designed for dyslexia that everyone can read. https://opendyslexic.org/. Alternatives are Ariel, Comic Sans, Verdana, Century Gothic, Tahoma, and Calibri. 
  4. Visuals – All children benefit from visual processing. It improves retention and supports retrieval. We do this well and know to use a range of visuals.  
  5. Graphic organisers – Graphic organisers are fantastic to support learners’ thinking, processing, understanding and organisation. This includes using writing frames, but also mind maps and flow diagrams.  

Try this link for older students where you can sign up for free https://www.mindomo.com/ or to create simple to more complex ones for all students: https://www.canva.com/graphic-organizers/templates/

  1. Speaking – ensure we are breaking down information into smaller chunks.  
  2. Don’t ‘pick’ on them to read – This can be seriously demotivating and traumatic in a whole class situation and may be detrimental to their reading progress. They can read to you on their own or with a trusted peer at any time.
  3. The usual strategies – Such as natural brain breaks to avoid cognitive overload, memory aids such as word mats, a clear line of sight to the teacher and a seat close to the front to aid non-verbal communication.
  4. Mark positively – Start with what they can do and build on that. You don’t want to stifle amazing ideas on account of worrying about grammar and punctuation.
  5. Spelling – if students can’t spell a word, spell it aloud for them, and at the same time, write it on the board – provide key spellings for them to refer to. You can also use the RWI sound board so students can ‘try out’ spellings with alternative phonemes (ee, ea, etc). If using the computer, having the spelling and grammar aids on is good! 
  6. Limit the copying they have to do – give them copies of the learning that they can have in front of them and present with appropriate fonts, backgrounds and sizing in manageable chunks. 
  7. Technology – Explore advances in technology with your dyslexic learners. Is there a use for a reading pen, a smartpen or some text-to-speech software? Microsoft accessibility has many free features to explore. When using chrome books or iPads, there is accessibility software available with fantastic programmes such as ‘Immersive Reader’. 

Pupils with dyslexia also have skills such as a strong memory for stories, a wonderful imagination, great spatial reasoning and can think outside the box! You can find more details at Dyslexia Help.

Creating Better Schools by Design

15th December 2022Website Admin

Creating Better Schools by Design

David Jackson

 

Ask most people to draw a house and nine times out of ten the house they imagine will be a square box, with four square windows, a pitched roof with a chimney, and often some smoke curling into the sky.

We share a mental model — a blueprint — for what a house is and should look like. We don’t stop to wonder:

  • Does our house have to be square or could it be a different shape?
  • Should it be one storey high, or two, or three?
  • How many windows of what size should there be, really?
  • What purpose does the chimney serve?

Our shared ideas about schools are fixed in much the same way.

There are variations, but our mental model for school tends to include classrooms, corridors, rows of desks, students grouped according to age, one-hour lessons, subject teaching, tests, and so on. This model is based on schools designed in the past. We don’t stop to question whether the school, which we are after all drawing in the C21, should be — needs to be — very different from the blueprint created decades ago. We might ask:

  • What ideas about learning are informing the layout of our school? What might classrooms look like if we thought of them as places where great learning can happen?
  • Does all learning need to be packaged into ‘subjects’?
  • Are one-hour lessons the best unit of learning?
  • Is one teacher with 25 students better than two teachers with 50 students?
  • Why are all students assessed at the same time when they mature differently?
  • Do we have to assess by written exams emphasising memory?

… and so on.

Designing a new school for real is a chance to ask questions like these, and to ensure that the new school is more than just an improvement on the existing model.

“Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.”

At Gesher School, staff, students and parents know how badly a change to the model is needed because most of Gesher’s learners have struggled in schools like the one most of us would draw. So, Gesher undertook a serious school (re)design process that placed the needs of their students at the heart of decisions about their new school design.

Gesher was transitioning from a highly successful primary school to becoming an all-through learning community and needed to find a new school building and facilities, recruit staff, create a secondary school curriculum and reframe its mission and identity.

The leaders of Gesher School knew they needed to go way beyond improvements on the existing model, to design a whole new way of thinking about and doing school, in ways that learned from and built on their experience with primary-age children. They asked:

How might we design an all-through school that will offer success, enhanced self-esteem, personal efficacy, and progression opportunities for all our young people? 

Secondly, in doing so, how can we involve multiple stakeholders in our design process?

Thirdly, how might we stand on the shoulders of existing practices around the world?

The design process that Gesher School entered into comprised eight workshops, each involving different stakeholders, which resulted in a school blueprint for:

  • A bold vision and purpose; and
  • A set of values-based design principles; which were
  • Brought to life in plans for a range of innovative features that add up to a very different kind of school.

Upwards of 100 school staff, parents, students, community members, and other local stakeholders contributed to this seriously intentional and inclusive school design process.

Each issue of The Bridge will address an aspect of Gesher’s school redesign process. This issue focuses on the first two of the eight school design workshops that Gesher School undertook, which concerned (i) purpose and (ii) design principles.

(i) Purpose

Gesher’s discussions about purpose started with identifying their ‘non-negotiables’. Non-negotiables tell everyone what is and is not on the table; what is and is not within the scope of the school design team to change. Examples might be ‘no selection by ability’ or ‘the school will be co-education’ or, in Gesher’s case:

  • We are a school for a specific cohort of children with SEND, including language, communication and social pragmatic issues.
  • We are a Jewish faith school.
  • We utilise real-world learning and projects to foster curiosity and connect our young people to authentic issues and problems.

These clear non-negotiables influenced design features relating to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, to faith observance and understanding, and to the design of curriculum and pedagogy.

A further key defining issue for Gesher to articulate was purpose – the vision and outcomes to which the school community would aspire. Being clear about what the school had to achieve with and for students; about the purpose of learning; about what matters for the community of the school — staff, students and parents – was an essential bedrock of the design process.

Within the current system, aiming for good examination outcomes is a given, and if that was all that mattered, then job done. However, during the workshop, through extensive discussion – and many post-its – it became clear that exam success on its own was not nearly enough. In brief, the outcomes Gesher agreed are that young people should become:

  • Skilled for the future workplace
  • Qualified for the next stage (exam results plus)
  • Independent learners
  • Confident in their sense of self
  • Builders of meaningful relationships
  • Ethical and responsible citizens.

These, one might hope, could be purposes shared by most if not all schools, but two things qualify them as exceptional in Gesher’s context.  The first is the inclusiveness of the intent. They are purposes for all students, regardless of their prior educational history or unique needs.  The second is to remember that Gesher is a school for children with identified SEND needs, most of whom have been unable to thrive in mainstream schools.

“Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them.”

(ii) Design Principles

Workshop two was exclusively concerned with design principles and involved staff at the school considering  the question: What would be the design principles or features of a school that can confidently achieve these outcomes for all its learners?

Staff engaged with mini-case studies of interesting and successful schools around the world to draw from them the particular design features that inspired them. They used this as a basis to shape their own, then tested the resulting principles they created together using personas of children at Gesher, asking: Would this work and how would it work for Amy or Peter?

Next Time — Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

Agreement on these three components — the non-negotiables, purposes and design principles — precedes work on designing the more practical features of a school. Clear purposes provide a constant reminder of exactly what we aspire to achieve with and for learners and their families. Design principles provide the guiding architecture that relates to these purposes. They are ‘laws with leeway’ that frame what we do and how we do it. They are also the features that unify and inspire those who work in a school, and they guide and discipline decision-making.

With these three in place, the design process moves to consideration of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices that will be informed by and consistent with the design principles and which will enable every student to achieve the outcome ambitions. That is for next time.

Designing New Schools in the USA

In America, there is a long tradition of creating new school designs. Some of the most successful schools in the world have been created in this way – Expeditionary Learning schools; High Tech High (some of whose resources we share later); Big Picture Learning schools; New Tech Network are all examples. The Gates Foundation alone funded more than 2,500 ‘small school models’ across the United States, and New York alone has 200.

Not all of these new school models have been equally successful, of course. However, their students consistently outperform their peers in conventionally sized and structured high schools with comparable demographics. There are some common design features across the majority of these models — and they are very different from the conventional UK school — they all:

  • Focus on the centrality of relationships and personalising learning — have ‘advisory’, where advisory is the soul of the school, symbolising relational support for students
  • Include project-based learning, an engaging and empowering pedagogical model, which also requires teachers to collaborate as designers of learning
  • Have a pervasive cultural identity and school-level ownership of what matters, including what is assessed and how and by whom it is assessed
  • Facilitate powerful and sustained adult learning.

The Cost of Not Having New Models in the UK…

Not to foster innovation in school design means that we constantly focus on striving to improve the existing school model – a model more than 100 years old and out of date.

It is a model with multiple features crying out for redesign. For example, it has failed to achieve equitable outcomes, or to address socio-economic challenges, or to engage disengaged learners — or to fully engage most learners, for that matter. Nor has it provided teachers with an intellectually challenging profession, or excited and involved parents around the experience of their children.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • The design process described above is effective applied to existing schools as well as new ones — revisiting purposes and design features together as a prelude to reviewing wider practices.  Might this have value for your school?

  • The review detailed above distilled six clear outcomes that Gesher is committed to evidencing for all learners. Does your school have similar clarity about its purposes?

Faith, Education and SEND: The Forgotten Sector

15th December 2022Website Admin

Faith, Education and SEND: The Forgotten Sector

Sarah Sultman

Lost in History: Since the 1990s there has been a growing debate, both inside and outside academia, about the role faith schools should play in a 21st-century education system and whether or not they should exist at all, with strong and divided opinions both for and against. And within this politically and religiously charged debate, there has been a distinct lack of consideration given to the SEND perspective.

In the UK, policy still does not permit the creation of SEND faith-free schools and when challenged or asked why this is, no one we have met on our journey in the creation of Gesher has been able to give a satisfactory or justified answer — other than to agree that this is indeed the statute. Today in the UK 35% of state-maintained schools are faith-based whilst ‘almost all’ (with no definitive numbers published) private independent schools are aligned to a faith but not necessarily practising faith.

Google ‘SEND faith schools in the UK’ and no list will pop up.

The development of faith schools in the UK is historic, from when cathedrals and monasteries began providing an education to boys who were to become monks and priests in the 6th century, whilst the first schools for children, ‘blind and deaf, epileptic, and mentally and physically disabled’ were only legislated for some 1500 years later, in 1918. For many centuries, those with SEND were not deemed worthy of a formal, or even informal education, so it could reasonably be argued that the lack of consideration given to the SEND faith education community is a symptom of the immaturity of the SEND education system as a whole.   

Parents and schools today are thankfully, in general, far more aspirational for their SEND children. Inclusion and neurodiversity have become part of our everyday vernacular and our attitudes and ideas around SEND education are continuously evolving. We are still learning much about how best to differently educate those who are differently able, yet to date, the faith element simply has not been factored in. Seemingly, this group within our society has, at best, been ignored, or it has been actively decided for them that faith does not or should not play a role in how we educate SEND pupils.

There is the old African saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. For those with SEND that village is incredibly important. It extends beyond the school gate to the institutions, places of work, places of worship, and welfare systems in the communities that a young person grows up in. Yet there has been very little research done on the intersection of faith, SEND, education and community with no empirical data freely available on how SEND students feel and relate to their faith, how faith impacts their identity, how it shapes and contributes to their everyday lives and whether they and their families feel that a faith-based education is beneficial for them.

Culture and Community Values Matter

No doubt this is a complex area of study and differing cultures and faiths will have different attitudes and views towards their SEND populations. At Gesher, our Jewish religious perspective informs the type of Jewish culture, ethos and core defining principles of the school. Learning about one’s faith is not only concerned with developing the pupils’ knowledge and understanding of each aspect of their Jewish Heritage but also with developing their love for and commitment to its laws and practices, which include moral and ethical teachings and values. With this ideology at the forefront of our curriculum, Jewish Studies is taught at Gesher not as an academic subject, but as a way of life.

I think it’s been the making of her… without it, I think she would feel quite lost.. it’s become her safe space.

Parents Appreciate its Value

Ron Berger said ‘As a faith-based school, everyone who chooses to send their child to Gesher knows that there is more to life than academics. There is the human character of who you are as a human being. You choose to send your child to a faith-based school because your faith and your culture is something that matters to you because you want your kids to embrace values that you care about. And those values mean being a good person.’   

For one parent, who knew that her son’s Jewish identity was important to him, it was a key factor in looking for a school. ‘It’s one of the reasons we chose Gesher in the first place. Because he enjoyed the Jewish side of things, we wanted somewhere that would meet his needs, and also meet his religious beliefs as well.’ For another parent, the faith element of the school, whilst initially seen as ‘a nice incentive’ rather than a non-negotiable, has come to be considered a crucial part of her daughter’s education. ‘I think it’s been the making of her… without it, I think she would feel quite lost.. it’s become like her safe space.’

The value of community permeates throughout the school and informs a large part of our practice. At Gesher, whilst we celebrate the individual: “…for the mind of each is different from that of the other, just as the face of each is different from that of the other.” (Talmud Brachot 58a),  being part of a community means looking out for others, taking responsibility for each other and coming together in unity as a collective: “do not separate yourself from the community” (Hillel).

The power of community transforms the individual and at Gesher, we actively foster community amongst the pupils, the staff, our local Jewish community, the wider Jewish community and the world in the form of Tikun Olam which literally means to repair and improve the world. This concept shapes many of our programmes around social justice, giving to others and caring for our environment. We view school as just one of the structures that supports the young people that attend, so we must recognise that we do not operate in a silo, and the measure of our pupils’ success should not be in isolation. Rather it is our responsibility to understand the communities from which our students come and to work with them.

In a recent discussion with parents, the topic of community was featured as an important factor. All parents, regardless of their religious orientation, spoke in a similar way about what it was like being part of the school’s Jewish community. One said, ‘You feel you’ve got a family, it’s an extended family, you know you are all in it together.’ It would be an oversimplification to suggest that this is exclusively down to the religious orientation of the school but it does certainly contribute greatly to a feeling of belonging that extends beyond the school gates. Other unifying factors, such as parents’ collective experience of having a neurodiverse child are undoubtedly also at play. However, within the discussion around the theme of community, parents regularly mentioned the role that religious festivals play in building and fostering this feeling. Talking about last year’s Passover celebrations, one parent said, ‘You feel involved… everyone [children and parents] is experiencing it together’.

For many, faith matters. For SEND young people too. They will need support to access the texts and tenets and practices and celebrations of their family’s and community’s faith so that inclusion for them is meaningful and supportive. It is a part of their learning and they have learning needs that we should strive to meet.

End Note: To quote Lord Rabbi Sacks: ‘Children who are confident in their identity, know their people’s story, are familiar with its literature and at home in its practices, understand their responsibilities to the wider society and practise the values of tzedakah (charity) and chessed (kindness) are at peace with themselves and with the world. They become a credit to the Jewish people and an asset to Britain. We can ask no more; we can do no less.‘

 

In one recent school project our year 8 students were asked to design a T-shirt which conveys their identity. What makes them who they are? How important is their name? What are the influences that shape their character? For these particular students, faith proved relevant to how they view themselves and contextualise themselves in their world at large.

For my T-shirt, I have made a design which shows my outer and inner self. My outer self is what people see when they look at me, I have drawn a self-portrait of half of my face. I have brown hair and when I am happy, this shows on my face by having a wide smile. My inner self and the other half of my face is a football as well as my future career as a footballer. Inside the ball, I have written the emotions I feel most on the inside which are happiness, excitement and sadness. I also added feeling nervous as this is how I feel before I play a football game. I have also drawn a Kippah, dreidel and Torah as this represents my Jewish identity which is very important to me. — Shamai (Year 8)

My inspiration for this project was to focus on what my passion is and to me, that’s cars. Based on this, I split my face in two and used one half to show how people see me on the outside and the other half to show how I like to be seen by the world. I did this by replacing some of my facial features with my favourite parts of a car. Also, I replaced my brain with a twin-turbo V8 engine representing the power of thinking. As well as cars, I’m very passionate about making people laugh. Coming up with jokes is one of my favourite hobbies and I can make my friends feel better with my jokes whenever they’re hurt or feeling sad. To show this, I gave myself a big smile and added a ‘HAHAHA’ over my head. Being Jewish is a very big part of my identity and it is something I am very proud of so I drew a star of David in the middle of my eye to show my unique Jewish perspective on life. This piece represents my favourite parts about myself and shows everyone what makes me, me. — Ariel (Year 8)

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • Having read this article, what benefits are claimed from having a unifying faith, culture and belief system (across school, family, community)? How might a non-faith-based school generate an equivalent sense of unity?

  • What arguments might you make that there should or shouldn’t be faith-based SEND schools?

Ron Berger: An Interview

15th December 2022Website Admin

Ron Berger: An Interview

 

Ron Berger is internationally recognised for his educational wisdom and insight. He was a public school teacher and master carpenter in his early career and those craft values now inform his educational leadership. He is Chief Academic Officer for Expeditionary Learning, which embraces over 300 schools across the United States, and he also teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

This is the second instalment of our interview with Ron. He is a wonderful storyteller as well as a wise educator — might those things just be linked? Anyway, it is so rich that we are feeding it in small servings! Towards the end, he talks about a lovely project done by ten-year-olds. In the Resources for Teachers section, we have included a teaching guide to that project.   

Critique and multiple drafts

Rowan Eggar, Assistant Head: Curriculum & Assessment at Gesher

How can we best support kids to make critiquing and drafting a dynamic process, as opposed to them being basically annoyed because we are having to review again? So that’s my question: What ways are there to design drafting and critiquing so that you can get the best possible outcome for the students?

Ron Berger

Great question. I think the way I’m most known in the world is the Austin’s Butterfly video. And so people understand I am obsessed with kids polishing their work and doing multiple drafts, but it’s not easy, as you say. So, I can give a few reflections on that.

The first, I would say, is that it’s only useful to keep doing drafts if the work keeps improving, if kids can see improvement happening. After that, there is no need to make them do six drafts. There’s not a magic thing that says Austin did six drafts, so therefore everyone should do six drafts. Austin’s work actually kept getting better, and that’s why it made sense for him to keep pursuing that drafting process in the video. One of the things that we can see in the Austin’s Butterfly video is that Austin had a reason to do six drafts, which was, importantly, that there was an audience for that work that he really cared about.

The butterfly Austin drew went on a card. It was sold across the entire state of Idaho. Wow. And all that money was used for butterfly habitats. And so his drawing was supposed to be so good that people would be able to use it to identify the actual butterfly, which is a reason why his first draft wasn’t that useful because you couldn’t actually identify the butterfly from that draft. Some art teachers have critiqued me for making him do something that’s very mechanical but that’s because this isn’t an expressive art project. It’s a scientific illustration. And so there was a reason for him to care about getting it right. And the kids in the video also had that photograph that they were looking at. So they knew what it should look like and felt empowered to say, ‘I can see what’s different about your drawing from that photograph.’

There’s a couple of things to take away from that. One is just the motivational thing. When kids have a purpose for their work that’s beyond their classroom, a real social purpose, a purpose they care about, then they’re way more motivated to do more drafts. Is there a way that what they’re creating can be used for something that matters a lot to them and where they really want it to be good?

For example, I went into a first-grade classroom where kids were working on letters, writing letters, and they were Y2, second years in the US. And they were still working on some of the basics of capitalisation and punctuation and ending sentences and writing legibly. They were young kids, they were six and seven years old, but they had visited the local fire station where they had met firefighters. And so instead of doing practice, they were actually writing a personal letter of appreciation to each firefighter and each student was assigned a firefighter.

A second thing is, do they have a model of what good looks like? If they have, then they can give critique.

So, if I were assigned Loni to write to, I would think, oh my goodness, I’d better get this letter to be perfect because I’m writing to this woman, who’s a firefighter, who’s protecting us, and she’s going to put it up on her locker and look at it every day. I want it to be perfect. I want my lettering to be perfect. I want my punctuation to be perfect. I want my spelling to be perfect. And so there was not a lot of pressure to say to kids, ‘You have to do another draft.’ It was like, ‘I need to keep making it better.’

A second thing is, do they have a model of what good looks like? If they have, then they can give critique.

So if I’m working on my thank you letter for Loni as a firefighter, and Ali is a peer of mine and she has a model of a thank you letter that we’ve all looked at together, a really good one, she can say, ‘You know, Ron, yours doesn’t have this actually. And notice how this one has it.’ And so it’s easier for her to give critique. And it’s easier for me to think, ‘oh yeah, you’re right, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do that’. And I know that we are often, as a culture, afraid to give kids models because we think, oh, what if they copy? But I have an entirely different attitude towards that, which is that copying is how we learn. So if we, as adults, want to learn to do something new like play guitar or speak Danish or do yoga, what do we do?

We go to a class or we go online and we watch somebody do it, and we try to copy them. And then we get critiques about what we’re not doing. Right? And then we try to copy them again. And we keep trying to copy them. We don’t start by improvising, right? We start by watching how they do a yoga pose, listening to how they pronounce something, watching how they do a chord on the guitar. And then we copy it. And then we critique ourselves and we get critique from others.

Modelling is how all of us as adults learn. We should not be afraid to show kids models of what a good letter is, what a good maths solution is, what a good anything is and to agree together why it is good. And then that empowers the kids to critique each other.

So I think it makes sense that kids get frustrated because they feel like ‘I just wanna be done. And you’re just delaying.’ The dynamic is totally different when you feel that this is what we’re aiming for. It’s about giving kids more power over it, by it not being us, the ones telling them it’s not ready, but them being able to see themselves.

Rowan

Amazing. Thank you. That’s really helpful!

How do we know our children well enough to understand what is relevant or right for them?

Ron

Teaching is about relationships. If you want to draw the best out of each kid in your school, in your class, in your group, it’s really about knowing that kid. It’s knowing what they’re proud of, knowing what they’re worried about, knowing what motivates them, knowing where their heart is. And if you want to draw them out, you have to know when it’s okay to tease them and what you can tease them about as a way of showing that you love them.

It’s all about relationships, but that doesn’t mean that we have to individualise what every kid works on. I think that’s a mistake we make, thinking that knowing kids well and loving them and caring about them means that I have to have a totally different task for Rowan, for Loni, for Ali and for Charlotte because one’s interested in dogs and one’s interested in cats etc., so they can’t do the same task as it’s not their passion. I don’t believe that. I believe sometimes kids should be able to write about their passion, read about their passion, do projects about their passion. But I think there’s a side of all of us that wants to do some good for the world.

So, it’s not just a question of passion. It’s a question of if you’re a human, you also want to do something appreciative for others.

I’ll share another story, a project from year fives (10 or 11-year-olds) in Moscow, Idaho, another rural community in the United States. All the kids were brought to an animal shelter and each kid was paired with an animal. Now, this is not an animal that they’re going to be allowed to take home. Their parents are not going to say: ‘You can take this stray dog home or this stray cat. But the kids learned the story behind each animal. What do we know about this dog? What do we know about this cat, her past, what she likes, what she’s afraid of — what do you know?

So they learned the story of their animal. They took a picture of their animal and then they went back and they did a portrait, an artistic portrait of their animal based on the photograph they had. And they did many drafts because there was a real purpose for this. The purpose was that they wanted their animal to be adopted. Oh, wow. Then they wrote a poem about the story of that animal, what they had learned about that animal’s past. Then they took the artistic portrait they had drawn and they took the poem that they had written about the animal, both of which had gone through drafts and they made a poster of it and they laminated those posters and they put them up all over town.

Now, if you’re in the laundromat, and if you are in the motor vehicle registry where you get a driver’s licence, or you’re in the doctor’s waiting room, there are posters of all these animals with poems and portraits. And once those went up all over town, guess what, people started adopting those animals. Because how much can you look at these beautiful animals on these posters without thinking’ I’ve got to adopt that one right there’.

So there was a tremendous reason for kids to care about multiple drafts of their poems and multiple drafts of their drawings and to get critique from each other and from the teacher and from experts. But we didn’t have to think, oh, that’s not a kid who likes dogs, or that’s not a kid who likes cats, therefore we won’t bring her on this trip. We just assumed, correctly, that every kid would understand the human quality of ‘we can save these animals’ lives — if we’re really good at this.’

… my students would be so motivated by that project.

Rowan

Yes. Purpose and agency. I’m just thinking already, my students would be so motivated by that project. That sounds like a dream project. Absolutely amazing. Love it.

Ali Durban, Gesher Co-Founder

It also emphasises the connectedness to the real world which, especially for our students, makes learning much more tangible — rather than knowledge that floats around that doesn’t actually mean anything.

 

Editor’s Note

A Project Card to support this project has been included here in the Resources for Schools section.

Why is School a Tough Place for Neurodiverse Children?

15th December 2022Website Admin

Why is School a Tough Place for Neurodiverse Children?

Ali Durban

A Short Reflection on Bravery

If all schools were judged by the provision they make for their most vulnerable learners (which feels not to be an unreasonable measure) it could be that there would be more “inadequate” judgements than there are currently. For some learners attendance at school requires reserves of courage.

Bravery is not a word that we would want to define any child or young person’s daily experience of school. After all, school is meant to be a place of safety, fulfilment, and positive relationships, yet for thousands of differently abled children and young people, navigating their normal school day is challenging, complex, damaging even, and bravery is a daily necessity of survival. In his recent book ‘The Inclusion Illusion’, Dr Rob Webster highlights the everyday experience of students with SEND in mainstream school as being characterised by separation and segregation.

School is meant to be a place of safety, fulfilment, and positive relationships, yet for thousands of differently abled children and young people, navigating their normal school day is challenging, complex, damaging even.

‘There are structures and processes ingrained within these settings that serve to exclude and marginalise them (children and young people). The arrangements that led to this might be defendable if they were necessary for creating an effective pedagogical experience. Yet the evidence… suggests that, if anything, they result in a less effective pedagogical experience.’

The Policy Context

Over 1.4 million children in Britain are reported to have some sort of special educational need and we all know that the unassessed number is probably much larger. Three-quarters of these (about 1.1 million) are on SEND support and 365,000 have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The current SEND Green Paper talks about ‘a clear vision for a more inclusive system’ but gives no real sense of how it will be achieved. To put this inclusive thinking into context, following a consultation on behaviour management policies and exclusion, the Department for Education appointed a “behaviour tsar” to create “behaviour hubs”. Guidance also referred to the use of “removal rooms” in schools as a punishment and to the use of managed moves as an early intervention measure for pupils at risk of exclusion. To be clear, the children and young people most impacted by these measures are the most vulnerable in society. Mostly they are those with SEND.

The Government (and constant merry-go-round of Education Ministers) continues to wrestle with inclusion and SEND system reform, with no clear approach to system transformation in sight. For this article, we set aside the complexities of system change and instead take a grassroots-level deep dive into exactly why life in mainstream education is so tough for differently abled students.

Introduction

Gesher’s Ashleigh Wolinsky, Speech and Language Therapist, and Ingrid Mitchell, Educational Psychologist, have extensive experience working with SEND learners. We asked them to share some insights drawn from that professional experience. It will not be a shock to readers to learn that SEND identification, poor resources, and assessment and diagnosis delays are some of the consistent features.

However, with that as background we have extracted from the interviews three further clusters of issues:

  1. Those that are endemic to ‘school’ — the way secondary school in particular works.
  2. Issues that are unique to the learner — the needs of a ‘differently able’ youngster.
  3. What we have called ‘wisdoms’ — some practical suggestions that may be of help.

End Note: This article is not a criticism of mainstream schools, nor of secondary schools in particular.  Nor is it a eulogy for special school provision. Let’s be clear: we believe that both mainstream schools and special schools can do a great job for neurodiverse SEND youngsters — hence the insights and advice.

What we are also clear about, though, is that hundreds of young people across the country have a potentially damaging and unhappy experience of school and that there is knowledge about how things could be better. This piece is a small contribution to that, drawn from those with expertise.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • What most challenges your school’s SEND practices in this article?

  • Are there things in the ‘practical wisdoms’ section that your school might like to adopt?

  • Might it be of value to your school to create a Learners’ Lens of insights from your neurodiverse children?

How can a Life Skills Curriculum Support Children to Access Learning?

15th December 2022Website Admin

How can a Life Skills Curriculum Support Children to Access Learning?

Danielle Petar

‘More than just practising daily tasks…’ Gesher’s new life skills scheme

The idea of teaching life skills in schools as part of a young person’s education has been formalised since the late 1990s when the World Health Organisation (WHO) introduced its ten core life skills principles. They defined life skills as ‘a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathise with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner’. Before that, it was a core mission of the scouting movement (since the 1920s) and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (founded in 1956). We have long known that life skills are an essential thing to have. For specialist schools like Gesher, they are crucial to school success, future life chances and emotional well-being.

Despite this, what the student experience of life skills learning means for day-to-day teaching can be difficult to picture. Is it discrete individual lessons about part of the WHO’s definition? Is it traditional lessons like maths, literacy, and science which implicitly teach these skills? Is it practising skills that young people will need for daily life in their classrooms and beyond? Is it something which teachers teach, or should this learning be happening at home?

What the student experience of life skills learning really means for day-to-day teaching can be difficult to picture.

These are some of the problems that Gesher’s Inclusion Team, (Danielle Petar and Matt Summers), grappled with when they first set out to develop Gesher’s own life skills scheme at the start of 2020 — and they are sharing their experience in the hope that it will be of value to others. Two years on, this scheme, called Bridges: Foundation, has been launched to Gesher’s students and will shortly also be introduced to parents. In anticipation of this, we sat down with Danielle and Matt to find out more about the journey they went on to design the scheme as well as some of its features.

Setting Up The Scheme

‘The notion of creating something which meets all of the WHO definition of life skills was exciting but also rather daunting. In the first stage of the process, we looked at the four key areas in the Government’s ‘pathway to adulthood’ guide. These are employment; independent living; good health; and friendships, relationships and community. However, we quickly realised that we’d need some more focus and to break these down further’. After going through various combinations of themes, the team decided on eight child-friendly themes.

Within each of these themes, there are eleven badges for the students to work towards achieving. In the ‘My Home’ theme, for example, the badges range from ‘Clearing the Table’ to ‘Preparing for Social Occasions’. ‘While each badge is very different they are all designed to focus on developing creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, the ability to communicate and collaborate, as well as commitment to personal and social responsibility.’

The approach is driven by the student’s motivation to learn new skills,  explore their areas of interest and develop their independence, as well as encouraging them to think about their future. Therefore, they have some autonomy in choosing their badges.

‘We were also eager to ensure that the young people themselves were included in the design process and it’s safe to say their feedback was refreshingly honest… It ultimately had a huge impact on the way the scheme looks from a visual perspective. Given that it’s the young people themselves who will be using the scheme, this is exactly what we wanted.’

The final stakeholder group that Danielle and Matt sought views from while in that crucial design phase was parents from the Gesher community. ‘The scheme was designed as an exciting journey that would foster a partnership between home and school, with students completing badges both at home and at school. As parents were going to be a vital part in implementing it, then it was equally important to get their input in the design process.’

Taking Ownership

The design of the Bridges scheme was very much focused on ensuring that students can take ownership of their learning. Within each life skill, there are four ‘steps’ to achieve along their journey that reflect an increasing level of independence and in this way students can see their progress.

As you journey through the different life skills badges, there are different steps along the way that you can take; each step leading you to be more independent.

 

 

 

Each step has a number of success criteria provided, which are visible and accessible to students. These were created by extensive research from the Inclusion team and in consultation with a wealth of other educational professionals (Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists, Art Therapists, Teachers, Teaching Assistants and Dramatherapists).

The different steps are not age-related but rather based on a child’s own stage of development at any given time. Both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised.

‘Unlike the way that learning is normally structured, both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised. The different steps are not age-related but rather based on a child’s own stage of development at any given time and based on their individual skills and needs. We did this to reflect the fact that a young person’s journey to adulthood is not linear and they will navigate their own winding path.’ Put another way, both the approach and the journey navigation are highly personalised.

Beyond Practising Daily Skills and Student Ownership

Unlike more traditional life skills schemes, Gesher’s reach is broader in terms of the themes it covers and has a greater focus on softer skills like decision-making and critical thinking. ‘We wanted the scheme to be aspirational, more than a means by which to practise daily tasks.’ This is evident in the inclusion of themes like ‘My Imagination’ and ‘My World’, which encompass skills like ‘Making a gift’ and ‘Learning about a religion’.

This breadth means that young people don’t just work on their life skills badges in the classroom but in a home context as well. ‘The success criteria for each level have been designed to include language that is accessible for students as well as the adults in their lives.’ To further promote this, students work on a minimum of three badges at a time. The idea is that one is chosen by their teacher to work on in the classroom and relates to their project-based learning; one is chosen alongside the adults at home; while the last is selected by the young people themselves. This badge they will work on both at home and at school. ‘Obtaining these badges at home and at school should be both meaningful and fun and will hopefully open up new experiences for students as they navigate their own journeys to adulthood. It’s also important to say that there is no limit on how many badges a student can be working on at any one time. The scheme is designed to give them the opportunity to explore and to be ambitious.’

Hiding in Plain Sight

The eight themes ensure that the life skills curriculum is incorporated across the school from the Early Years class to the students in Year 8. This will allow students to become familiar with the skills they need for adulthood as early as possible in their education journey. Each class has one discrete life skills session a week where they work on their chosen badges. This is led by the school’s ‘life skills champion’ and the class teacher. In addition, for students at Gesher who are less likely to graduate with traditional academic qualifications such as GCSE and may follow a more vocational route, life skills sessions are taught daily in small groups.

As well as this dedicated time, the school’s holistic approach to learning means that badges can be worked on during students’ therapy sessions or in-class sessions through project-based learning. What will be obvious is that the approach (student ownership, personalisation, real-world tasks, school and community, etc) has many features in common with the project-based learning approach to the wider curriculum.

Next Steps

Whilst the Bridges scheme is very much underway, it will evolve and the team is already planning to create further resources to support the teaching of each life skill. They are also in the process of creating the next stage of the scheme, Bridges: For Life. This will expand on the four areas of preparing for adulthood and ensure that the students build on the life skills they’ve already developed through the Foundations scheme. This article offers a window into an important aspect of our work, one of which we are proud — both the scheme itself and the process through which it was developed. If you want to know more, please contact Gesher.

Legacy

Gesher is both privileged and humbled that this scheme has been made possible by working in collaboration with the Daniels family in order to honour the extraordinary life of Sonya Daniels, their wife, mother and grandmother.

 

Professional Prompt Questions

  • We all know how important life skills are for young people. How well established is (a) your curriculum for life skills; (b) your assessment processes?

  • In particular, how coherent is your life skills work with SEND youngsters?

  • Does the idea of badges have any merit for you?