Lyfta Impact: Travelling from the comfort of their carpet space at Three Bridges Primary School

KS1 students at Three Bridges Primary enjoying a Lyfta lesson from the front of the class

Teachers at Three Bridges Primary School have found innovative ways to bring global understanding and empathy-building into the curriculum, especially in subjects like RE and science, through digital immersive storytelling.

This impact study highlights the unique ways global immersive storytelling content can work effectively with key stage one (KS1) audiences, with Lyfta, a digital learning platform that facilitates intercultural understanding and empathy-building through immersive human stories from around the world.

Three Bridges Primary school in Southall had the opportunity to spend time with Lyfta's Professional Development Lead, Anna Szpakowska, and Lyfta's Head of Educational Research, Harriet Marshall to consider the best way to embed Lyfta across the curriculum. As well as learning how to use the platform with its 360-degree story worlds, films, and lesson plans, teaching staff reflected upon the skills, values, and knowledge in the curriculum and how to support the teaching of more challenging, abstract or geographically removed issues across the school.

Haleema Ahmed shared with us the key ways in which she has so far observed the impact of Lyfta with her class of Year 2 (aged 6-7) students. Haleema had taught 'Lyfta Time' sessions as a 25-30 minute introduction to a different storyworld in a different part of the world each week.

Leonie, another Year 2 teacher, and Myra, a Year 1 teacher (ages 5-6), shared further insights into what had worked well with their classes, as well as their recommendations for adaptation and practice.

This report draws upon qualitative data received via a feedback form and comments made in training. It also evidences innovative KS1 teaching and engagement with Lyfta at Three Bridges School.

A note on data: this write-up draws upon a written feedback form from Haleema (received January 2022) and notes from an interview with her (February 2022), as well as notes taken from meetings with Leonie and Myra (March 2022).

What was taught and why?

Children watching a Lyfta documentary

Haleema identified a variety of ways in which Lyfta story worlds and content could be used to enrich and support the already established S1 curriculum.

Haleema chose Deenpal's story (part of Lyfta's Becoming Me series set in Denmark) because 'it linked beautifully with our R.E. unit on Sikhism'.
Haleema chose Flora's story (set in Amazonian Peru) because 'we were looking at the term 'biodiversity' in science and there was a lovely section on this'.
To further support science, Haleema used Tony's story (a renovator of old telephone boxes in the UK) to support the unit 'changing materials'.
Haleema also chose Erkan's story (a man who looks after stray dogs and animals in Turkey) with a sense that children would be able to connect with the film in a number of ways.

Haleema showed other storyworlds including Malte's story of being a beekeeper in Berlin, the Lyfta's Kids' Cup Series (featuring children from China, Brazil, Norway and Palestine), the Secrets of the Opera (Finland), and Tamara (a lady from the Netherlands who learned to speak again after a brain injury).

Haleema was able to use the 'adapt a lesson plan' feature of the Lyfta platform so that it supported her topic-based scheme of work and had plans to use Lyfta content further over the next few terms through Lyfta Time on Friday afternoons where children enjoyed 'the aspect of travelling from the comfort of their carpet space to somewhere else in the world'.

Leonie had worked with Haleema and followed most of the same Lyfta Time sessions with her class. Leonie also shared her plans to use the Circus Family (Belgium and France) storyworld when exploring letter-writing with her class and how she planned to use key storyworlds to support the school's themes of 'Nurturing Nature' and 'Our World United'.

Leonie and Myra (a Year 1 teacher) shared lots of insights into how best to make Lyfta work for a younger, KS1 audience and how she they have also used Lyfta to 'open up the world of hope and opportunity' for a group of students who have spent a third of their life in a Covid context (and in the related lockdowns).

Key teacher motivations for teaching with Lyfta included:

Lyfta Time - Map

Bringing in new voices and perspectives: including voices that might speak to students and their many different cultural backgrounds in a new way.
Bringing in the outside world into the classroom: Offering hope around different ways of being and living and awareness of the existence of different opportunities around the world (beyond the school-home-supermarket frame of reference that most young children have in the area, especially so because of the Covid context).
Building a sense of belonging and connection to other parts of the world.
Enriching and enlivening the curriculum: giving children new experiences to talk about.

The summary below details how these teachers have discovered additional benefits of using Lyfta (supporting the development of emotional literacy for example) further broadening their reasons for using Lyfta at Three Bridges as they became more acquainted with the platform.

What was the impact of the Lyfta Time sessions?

Below is a summary of the main ways in which the Lyfta sessions impacted students in Haleema's class:

Reinforcing learning and real life exemplification of topics and concepts that might otherwise be difficult to understand or relate to in the classroom -

'They thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this lesson as we had covered some areas of Sikhism and they were able to see it in practice, for example, when Deenpal prayed/meditated'.
Catalysing independent research and developing geographical awareness -

'Many children have independently researched some of the Lyfta countries that we have visited and have shared some of their findings during 'show and tell' sessions'.
Supporting empathy building and connecting with humanity -

'Many children… empathised with him [Deenpal] - some said they would like to help him if they could… children felt really proud of him'.
Growing emotional literacy and the opportunity to strengthen vocabulary about different (and contrasting) emotions and perspectives -

'I feel the emotional intelligence has really grown.'

'Erkan had particularly interesting divisive responses…many children felt that he was deeply unhappy…some said he was lonely and depressed… another group [said] he wasn't lonely as he had all of the dogs as his friends, we used this to introduce optimism and pessimism and the children related it to their own lives'.
Developing self awareness of their own identities and cultures. Over 45+ nationalities are represented by children and their families at the school -

'The handful of Sikh children across the year group were also fascinated by the context/setting of Deenpal's story'.
An 'accessible' and age-appropriate way of bringing and the art of film-watching into a younger classroom

'As an avid film watcher, I often watch films and long to show children certain scenes of films, however the content is usually quite mature and there are no additional resources and it takes high order inference skills to be able to unpick the different nuances… Lyfta is the perfect platform for children to explore so many incredible worlds'.
High levels of engagement in learning -

'Children were thoroughly engaged throughout' and 'keen to learn more'.
A way of bridging the safe and known to the global unknown - 'children enjoyed travelling' and exploring previously unknown worlds ('literally and metaphorically') from the 'known' comfort of Friday afternoon carpet space.
A better understanding of what young people connect with and remember about short documentary human stories - Haleema collected some quotes from the students which collectively illustrate how younger children particularly remembered and enjoyed storyworlds that featured animals, real-life practice of faiths or eating practices that were 'different' from theirs, creative projects or activities they would like to do themselves or perceived to be exciting or brave
Students better understand the importance of everyone having a voice - and, correspondingly, the need to hear and listen to all voices in discussions.

Year 2 student quotes about who they enjoyed visiting with Lyfta, why they liked visiting them and what they found interesting:

Year 2 students at Three Bridges Primary School

"I enjoyed Rob's story because the easter island statue he made is my favourite."

"I liked learning about Deenpal because he is a different religion to me and I got to learn about it."

"I liked seeing Rob at the beach because it was fun looking at the treasure he found."

"My favourite Lyfta was the opera house because it looks like so much fun to be under the stage but part of the show. I loved seeing the honey in the beehive."

"My favourite place was Berlin because we got to see the bees in the hive - I searched for the queen bee using the 360 part."

"I loved Erkan because he was really caring towards the animals."

"Tamara was paralysed and she used singing to speak again."

"The beehive because the beekeeper didn't get stung by the queen bee, he was so brave."

"I was interested in Flora eating the bugs because I don't eat bugs but she lives in the rainforest."

Student watching the storyworld The Circus Family

Haleema also talked about how teaching with Lyfta had significantly improved her own teacher knowledge, saying 'I have been able to learn about many other countries through the different storyworlds'. Heleema added that Lyfta 'shares unique stories that have been incredibly inspiring not only for our students but for me personally'.

Leonie and Myra mentioned further benefits of Lyfta for children -

Something to talk about: 'It gives them something to talk about that isn't just maths and English!' (Leonie)
Supporting understanding of new concepts: 'A different way of focusing on a value or theme.' (Leonie)
Enjoyment: The children often ask 'do we have Lyfta Time today?' (Leonie). The kids 'loved it' (Myra).
Storytelling skills: Supporting storytelling and story-mapping skills (Myra).
Geography: Supported understanding of geographical awareness including place knowledge and locational knowledge (Myra).
Multiple perspective awareness: Developing an understanding that there are different ideas and perspectives around the world (Leonie).
Relatability: Helping them make cultural links to their own lives that might not always be represented in schools (Leonie).
Hope: A way of 'offering 'hope' that the children might be able to live in different ways, different countries and have new experiences like this one day in the future (Leonie).

Recommendations for pedagogy, practice and resource adaptation

The discussion with Leonie and Myra focused upon future curriculum-planning with Lyfta and how Lyfta can be best delivered and adapted. A next stage of this case study is to better understand the particular opportunities in relation to the challenges of Lyfta Time sessions for this particular age group:

Finding time in the school day

All teachers talked about the background pressures and context of primary schooling which has been made additionally complex because of Covid (e.g. staff and student absences). The need to adhere to national curriculum requirements (from phonics screening to KS1 SATS requirements) means that finding time can sometimes be a perceived obstacle - but all teachers said that for KS1 it was relatively easy to deliver Lyfta once a week on a Friday morning as a form of golden time.

Finding ways to link to the national curriculum

Teachers talked about how they had found ways to use Lyfta to support English (e.g. story mapping and writing simple biographies of the people they meet; creating fact files on animals; inference skills; introducing compare and contrast); R.E. (e.g. Sikhism and Humanism); Geography (place and locational knowledge); and Science (use of everyday materials).

Finding ways to link to whole school themes and class topics

It seems this is often the most straight-forward way to weave Lyfta into the curriculum at KS1 because it is possible to search for a wide variety of themes in the teacher interface. School topics that seem to have been particularly well supported by Lyfta included: home; nature; seaside; forest; circus; food and healthy eating; and animals and habitats.

Teaching strategies

A range of recommendations were suggested derived from strategies and pedagogical practice which appeared to work in the classroom, these include:
Playing the 'soundscapes' as the children come into the lesson to indicate a Lyfta Time experience and encourage immersion, once seated use phrases like 'close your eyes and listen to the sounds' and try playing sound before any visuals to encourage children to guess where they might be.
Using phrases like 'buckle up your seatbelts, where are we going to travel to today?' to build anticipation and enthusiasm around geographical location, theme and person.
Turning off the film's subtitles to support inference skills.
Using story mapping techniques to recount the story and lead to a writing activity.
Using Lyfta with a large map of the world to build a sense of geography and attaching pictures of the people from Lyfta onto that map.
Using Lyfta storyworlds to add meaning and interest in linked, pre-existing school programmes like Forest Schools (e.g. going to do forest school practical after watching Flora in the Amazon), Eco Schools (e.g. watching Rob the beachcomber in Cornwall) and Rights Respecting Schools (e.g. supporting CRC Article 14 [I have the right to have my own thoughts and beliefs and to choose my religion with my parents' guidance] with the Becoming Me series.)
Only using some aspects of storyworlds like the 360 experiences and sounds and sections of a film, rather than the storyworld in its entirety.
Adapt pace and content of storyworlds where there is lots to explore and slow down engaging with different aspects bit by bit over more than one day.
Using the school 'mindfulness' strategy which includes 'brain breaks' to sit with sounds but also use some storyworlds (such as those in the Becoming Me series) to support understanding of meditation.

Learn how to adapt lesson plans in the teacher interface so that previous learning of topics or curriculum themes can be reinforced.

Recommendations for adaptation and development

Some Lyfta Storyworlds seem to work better than others for KS1 and some resources and lesson plans need to be adapted either via changing text or via delivery strategy. In particular, the teachers appreciated the ability to adapt lesson plans so that the task and descriptive language could be simplified.

Most younger learners are not able to read the subtitles and rely both on the teacher's reading and translation and upon their own inference skills, so stories that clearly showed the chronology of a story via other documentary techniques worked best.

Teachers also suggested that, where possible, rich media article content needed to have real-life pictures rather than more abstract symbols or cartoons for a KS1 audience.

Teachers also said they would also appreciate further recommendations for additional tactile activities to support the multisensory experience of Lyfta storyworlds (e.g. the suggestion of making or bringing in bread when visiting the baker in Afghanistan) and worksheets that had topic linked still images (e.g. a pdf of different bedrooms to compare and contrast).

Particularly popular storyworlds for KS1 include:

The Beachcomber (Cornwall, UK); Dinnertime 360 (especially Anni) and Secrets of the Opera (Finland); Awra Amba (the Visitor's Centre, Ethiopia); Dogs' Best Friend (Turkey); The Circus Family (Belgium/France); Kids' Cup (especially Anna in Norway and Freddie in Brazil); The Beekeeper (Germany); Flora (Peru); Phone Box Saviour (UK); and Deenpal from Becoming Me series (Denmark).

Summary and future impact areas to explore

Haleema's perspective in particular supports the understanding that a large number of Lyfta storyworlds can be used with younger children and that resources and activities can be adapted to ensure relevance for this age group.

This case study also shows how Lyfta Time as a methodology (a provocation question, a 360 experience, the watching of a film followed by a discussion) can work well with younger children when adapted (and selected) to support topic work.

However, the additional insights offered from Leonie and Myra further clarified that thought and forward-planning needs to go into using Lyfta resources with younger children and an increased number of simplified lesson plans and teaching resources would be welcome.

It would be fascinating to find out the extent to which an encounter with a different person in a different part of the world each week through digital immersive storytelling can further support student's sense of place and geography and increase aspirations to have new experiences and encounters around the world.

Pedagogically it would be also interesting to better understand how 'Lyfta Time' can best become normal, habitual practice within classroom practice and the ways in which this can support the development of: (i) social and emotional learning; and (ii) inference skills and comprehension of abstract or complex concepts (important building blocks in higher order thinking skills development). More data collection is required to both better understand the opportunities and challenges to achieving these objectives.

In the light of recent research at Tampere University (2020-21), it would be helpful to better understand whether these regular digital immersive human connection experiences supported confidence building generally, but in particular by reducing young people's intergroup anxiety about meeting new people (that they perceive to be different from themselves) for the first time. To this end, more collection of pre- and post- Lyfta Time session student impact data is recommended.

All staff at the Three Bridges Primary School intend to continue using Lyfta Time and we look forward to hearing more in the future.

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