Pupil Voice

Pupils at Shelthorpe primary get to rate their teacher

Shelthorpe primary school values pupil voice so much, they are now allowing pupils to record lessons and tell teachers what they think of their teaching. AST Lou Harrison's Year 4 class has devised criteria to assess her performance, including feedback sheets to accompany the video of her lesson. By giving her pupils this voice, Lou describes how this felt like leaping off a cliff with no way of knowing what the landing would be like. The success of this experiment could see the technique extended to other areas of the school.

Action! Pupil Video - Falling Off a Cliff

Students transform their dingy canteen with the help of designers

This programme follows the pupils of Acland Burghley School in north London as they brief SHH Design to help them transform their dingy canteen into The Hub, a place to eat and socialise. Involving pupils in this way is a key part of the Joinedupdesignforschools project. The brainchild of The Sorrell Foundation, the project gives pupils a major say in how an aspect of their school's environment is improved. The pupils are the clients, briefing designers who produce designs for their approval. The project follows a four stage pattern: <ul> <li>The challenge</li> <li>The brief</li> <li>The conversation</li> <li>The concept</li> </ul> A follow-up then looks at the school's success in finding the money to turn the creative designs into reality.

Civilised Lunchtime

Designer Kevin McCloud helps young pupils to revamp their hall

Designer Kevin McCloud works with a client team of pupils from Beacon Primary School in Cornwall to transform their dull hall into a bright, colourful, multi-purpose space. Involving pupils in this way is a key part of the Joinedupdesignforschools project. The brainchild of The Sorrell Foundation, the project gives pupils a major say in how an aspect of their school's environment is improved. The pupils are the clients, briefing designers who produce designs for their approval. McCloud, who presents Grand Designs, said: "It's great working with children. They show you how it ought to be with adults, and isn't." The Joinedupdesignforschools project follows a four stage pattern: <ul> <li>The challenge</li> <li>The brief</li> <li>The conversation</li> <li>The concept</li> </ul> A follow-up then looks at the school's success in finding the money to turn the creative designs into reality.

Colour in Our Hall

A primary school runs a gifted and talented pupil voice project

Meet Lucy, a Year 6 pupil who has helped implement her school's pupil voice project on how to improve gifted and talented provisions. Lucy is part of a small group of pupils from all years who make up the research group at Tipton St John Primary school in Exeter. They conduct research into learning across the whole school and analyse responses to their questionnaires. Lucy talks through the findings and discusses how the research work itself has challenged them. She shows how the school has taken on board their views and some of the changes they have made, from more pair work in class to whole school 'think days'. Tipton St John Primary is one of several schools that took part in a South West Gifted and Talented Education pupil voice action research project.

Gifted and Talented Pupil Voice - Lucy

How independent learning can transform teaching and planning

A look at the experiences of Kippax Greenfield Primary School, near Leeds, where teachers allow the pupils to encourage and shape the way they learn. Though staff at Kippax operate within the framework of the National Curriculum, they deliver it in an unusual way. In this programme, we see pupils learn about light and dark through a process of discovery and enquiry, prompted by their own "brain shower". Year 1 teacher and deputy head Kirsty Beresford talks frankly about how independent learning has transformed the way she teaches and plans lessons, describing herself as a facilitator rather than a teacher.

Independent Learners: A Whole School Approach

A snapshot of the views of children about their learning

Pupils aged from five to 15 share their views on the key issues affecting their learning. Pupils air their views on topics including noisy classrooms, rewards, what makes a good teacher and what they find boring about school. An insight into the most memorable moments of school life from children today.

Learning

Explore mobile phones' impact on primary and secondary education

See the impact on schools and education of young people with mobile phones, in this whole-school video on the pupil voice, ICT learning and media literacy in primary and secondary. Owning a mobile is becoming an indispensable element of young people's lives, for both teenagers and increasingly primary-age children all around the world. This video looks at whether mobile phones are a force for good or an example of technology gone awry. It questions whether it's sensible to ban their use in schools or give the device a place in lessons and learning.

Mobile Phones, Mobile Minds

The benefits and pitfalls of using social networking in education

The technology behind social websites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo is explored in this video on ICT learning and media literacy, looking also at the issues these websites raise for teachers. The current generation is is the first with the technical means to offer a running commentary on every aspect of their lives. This fact has sparked a debate on whether this technology - an ever increasing part of children's lives - is a force for good or an opportunity for cyberbullying to proliferate. If negative aspects can be dealt with, these technological advances could potentially alter the dynamics of future schooling, transforming the traditional lecture model with increasing group interaction and dialogue, leading to learning that's "caught rather than taught". Experts and users explain how social networking is affecting the way this generation relates to each other in and out of cyberspace, and how the technology can be harnessed to benefit learning with a more expressive pupil voice.

Online Social Networks - Friend or Foe?

A village school shows how personalised learning works

While personalised education is a relatively new concept in large school settings, the techniques of pupil independence, autonomy and self-assessment have been used in smaller schools for many years. Treales Church of England Primary School in Lancashire is a village school of only 44 pupils, split into two classes. This mixed age range means personalised learning is essential and the school has various developed techniques over the years which have proved successful. In this programme, the children engage in a series of classroom and outside activities to see whether personalised educational practices can be useful in larger settings. The students run a variety of environmental and school maintenance projects with virtually no intervention from adults, showing how they gain independence and put it to use in the classroom.

Personalised Learning at Primary - Pupil Leaders

How discussion-based dialogic learning can benefit primary pupils

At South Milford Community Primary School in North Yorkshire, Year 6 teacher Lesley Dennon encourages talking in class by using a technique called "dialogic talk". The technique, which has been pioneered by Lesley over the last six years, teaches pupils that all opinions are valid, and demonstrates the importance of pupil-to-pupil dialogue in personalised learning. In this programme, Lesley encourages her class to suggest plot developments and alternative endings during a discussion of the early twentieth century poem, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. A new teacher then works with dialogic learning for the first time and examines how the technique can be developed by video recording the pupils and playing it back in class to stimulate more discussion.

Professional Development for Quality Teaching

Whole school

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