Coram Life Education

Helping Children Make Healthy Choices

Jan Forshaw Education Services Director

Aims of this session

• How Coram Life Education supports best practice in relation to promoting healthy life-styles in children

• Creating and maintaining effective relationships• Adding value to schools’ PSHEE provision

Mission

To work in partnership with schools and engage with others in the community to help children make healthy choices by:

• Contributing to life-skills and health education programmes utilising models of best practice

• Educating children about the effects and risks associated with drugs, including alcohol and tobacco

• Working with and supporting parents, carers, teachers and others in the community by communicating healthy lifestyles messages effectively

Supporting PSHE

Contributing to the government initiatives:

• Curriculum 2000: PSHE non-statutory guidance• National Healthy Schools Standard• QCA Guidelines• DfES Guidance for Schools• The Five Outcomes of Every Child Matters• Ofsted School Inspection framework and SEF• Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL)

Recommended good practice(DfES guidance 2004)

• Address knowledge, skills and attitudes

• Provide developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive information

• Challenge misconceptions that young people hold about the norms of their peers’ behaviour and their friends’ reaction to drug use.

• Use interactive teaching techniques such as discussion, small group activities and role play

• Involve parents / carers as part of a wider community approach

• Active learning essential

• Normative approach

• High-quality resources

• Trained, effective facilitators

Recommended good practiceHome Office Research Project ‘Blueprint’ (Sept 09)

Curriculum (what)

Environment (where)

Teaching techniques (how)

Effective Teaching and Learning

State

Focus Group Report

Understanding schools’ needs

Spring 2009

Mobile classroom

Qwizdom

Harold

Building relationships with Schools: Formal and Informal

Staff Visit Session

• Aims of drug education

• Explore and challenge attitudes

• Teaching and Learning focus

From our Staff Visit SessionDrugs Quiz element:

Alcohol is more harmful than Ecstasy

True or False?

From our Staff Visit SessionDrugs Quiz element:

Alcohol is more harmful than Ecstasy

True or False?

Answer: a matter of opinion. It depends how you define ‘more harmful’. However…

…in 2007 a Science Select Committee ranked alcohol as the fifth most harmful drug in the UK. Ecstasy was eighteenth on their list.

Three Strand Approach Knowledge

SkillsAttitudes

Changing Behaviour

Activity… demonstrating the 3-strand approach

A spectrum of positive teaching strategies

Positive language Effective questioning techniques Use of names Building self esteem Positive behaviour management strategies Age appropriate language Encourage the participation of all children Use of neutral non-judgmental and inclusive language Circle time Role-play Hot-seating Use of Puppets Brain gym Providing guidance to staff Multiple Intelligences Accelerated learning techniques

Test or quiz?

No pressure!

Health Education – Community Action Model

Community and out of school groups

Parents and family

Voluntary and statutory organisations

School

Building relationships with Schools: Focus Group Research

• Provides evidence of schools’ need

• Informs development

• Enhances credibility with key stakeholders

Tell us about what extra value Life Education brings to your school in terms of curriculum:

Contribution to:

• Science – particularly the body• Drugs education focus• PSHE• Skill practice opportunity• Elements of literacy

Tell us about what extra value Life Education brings to your school in terms of curriculum:

Appreciation of links to:

• ECM• NHSS• QCA• National Curriculum• Ofsted SEF

Tell us about what extra value Life Education brings to your school in terms of teacher training:

• Observation of educators ‘modelling’• Teaching and Learning strategies• Positive behaviour management• NQT opportunity re Inset

‘Sessions bring a rare quality- time that gives us permission to focus on PSHE in a crowded curriculum’.

‘The visit gives us permission to take risks…a chance to try out new things that we’ve actually seen working effectively in real life – not a theory from a manual’.

Tell us about what extra value Life Education brings to your school:

Pupil Focus

• Opportunity to observe pupils• Going ‘somewhere different’ adds to

their whole learning experience• Harold’s value

Tell us about what extra value Life Education brings to your school:

Teaching Environment• Easy to maintain focus• Retention of information it engenders• Safe and secure• Visible presence generates energy

and excitement

‘Time in the mobile classroom is ‘ring-fenced’ for both teachers and pupils. To have any teaching that is free from disturbance and interruption is rare.’

QUESTION 4 What can we do to integrate our work

more effectively?• Continue to provide evidence of benefits

through mapping/links • Support assessment • Provide tools for assessment as

providing evidence (e.g. for NHSS) is not easy

• Focused observation tools for teachers attending sessions would be welcomed

‘We’d like you to deliver more family work. Schools have to focus so much on basic skills of literacy and numeracy but without good parenting progress is not possible…we have ‘stuck’ children’.

‘This is a rare and valuable opportunity that regularly throws up surprises for us about individual pupils – their abilities, interactions, behaviour and knowledge’.

Thank you for yourtime and energy