Helping students deal with change at Brooklands Farm Primary School

Change - Chance

Brooklands Farm Primary School is a very large, six-form entry school in Milton Keynes. The school is proud of its community-building journey - it started out as a school of 49 pupils and ten years later has 1,300 pupils on roll. The school talks about 'weaving a learning journey' and global citizenship within its policies and website stating:

"We adore children at this school. We believe they are strong and powerful and they can be the difference we need to see in the world. In our school we are not just preparing children to be active citizens of the future; we also recognise the steps they take along this journey. We celebrate each year group with a word that describes the challenges they face on this journey."

Having been introduced to Lyfta during the Connecting Classrooms Through Global Learning Lyfta training webinar, Shane Pola, year 5 teacher, investigated the resources in some depth and saw an opportunity to approach the personal, learning and conceptual challenge of 'dealing with change' faced by students. Shane had clearly been adopting other strategies to meet this need, but saw the opportunity for a different pedagogical approach through using Lyfta resources which might in turn lead to other educational experiences. For example, when invited to comment upon the perceived behavioural changes Lyfta-inspired sessions might help bring about, Shane explained:

"The Lyfta resources promoted different types of responses than we had already been discussing around issues in class because it was in a different context. It provoked more discussion about how we could take these ideas and apply them at home, as well as at school."

Shane told us that he noticed that the different pedagogical approach associated with the Lyfta resources and the different country context of the videos helped bring about a learning context that was more conducive to discussion.

It was evident that Shane had spent some time exploring the learning opportunities and resources, and he found it had helped him meet his aims of supporting his children to cope with change. Shane talked about his next steps in terms of finding ways to link learning to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to explore the opportunities presented by Lyfta resources further, and to evaluate how these could enhance his pre-existing schemes of work. The school embraces the ideas of curriculum and learning journeys and so we were happy to hear that the global learning journey approach advocated by Lyfta complemented this strategy. We are excited to see where Brooklands Farm children take their learning next.

You can read the previous blog in this series, that looked at Paddock Secondary School and their use of Lyfta to teach global learning and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) here.

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