Exploring my itch …

Possible things I might be interested at looking at further:

Participation and pupil voice – I had recently completed a short course about pupil participation. As a team within my inclusion base it has been agree that we will start teaching about rights and the UNCRC and I feel this fits nicely with trying to focus on pupil participation and pupil voice. One thing that I would start by doing is by introducing a pupil committee (very challenging with most of our pupils attending for six week part time placements) to be focussing on the development of our outdoor area which I hope to transform into a therapeutic garden.

 

I am also interested in parental engagement which again is challenging due to the short term nature of children’s placements. One possible idea would be to develop an active ‘home learning’ programme which parents /carers can work alongside the children in order to develop learning and skills. This could take the form of a fortnightly recipe bag where children are sent home with ingredients and have to ‘teach’ their parents how to do a certain dish e.g. scones.

I am also interested at looking at the age and gender differences in reading attitudes following my reading of the National Literacy trust’s annual survey.

5 thoughts on “Exploring my itch …”

  1. Wow – Heather I love all these ideas! They all have legs! It is great that you have considered them all – I always find that it helps writing it down and then looking at them later to refine my ideas. when considering your ideas what do you think will drive your decision making?
    LA

    1. In terms of my thoughts around pupil voice/ rights based education, my interest stems originally from the participation module in the PGDip in Inclusive education that I did last year. I feel within my setting as an inclusion base that there really should be a huge drive to enabling pupil voice, particularly as many of the children referred to us tend to be amongst the most vulnerable and challenging. Pupil voice is a large section of our SIP this session which was driven partially by my further study but was also a need mentioned by our EO.

      Similarly parental engagement is hugely challenging to us for a variety of reasons including the physical geography of where children are referred from (up to an hour away is not unheard of), negative views of education held by parents/carers, the short term nature of most of our placements, time to allocate to parental engagement amongst other factors. This also features on our SIP.

  2. These are some super ideas Heather and I’m sure whichever you choose will provide many challenges and rewards. Parental engagement certainly sounds like it would be a challenge for you but the children are bound to reap the benefits of your home learning idea. I’ll be interested to hear which idea you decide to go with.

    Kirsty

  3. Thank you Heather for your reply – I hope that you are well and managing to find a little time to yourself. Have you had any further thoughts on refining your itch?

    LA

    1. Reading attitudes – however as my inclusion base is still closed I am going to explore practitioner strategies to promote positive reading attitudes in children with social, emotional and behavioural needs.

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