Flegg High School - A Way with Words

Norfolk and Norwich Festival

Students at Flegg High School in Martham, Norfolk have been devising activities for Year 6 pupils at their feeder schools to help them develop their literacy skills before joining the school this September.

In the first year of their Change School programme, young people at the school explored the enquiry, ‘Boys will be boys...won’t they?’ in a project that explored gender differences in levels of attainment at the school. Building on this, it was identified that the students did not enjoy writing and that this was also the experience of all the teachers in related feeder schools.

The school also wanted to improve the transition between primary and secondary school for students and was keen to develop further the relationships with feeder primary schools.

Young people and teachers at the school developed the line of enquiry, ‘What Can We do with Words?’ and began working on a project that would allow them to look at their own literacy skills by helping younger students improve theirs.

Since the outset of this year’s project, a group of Year 9 students have been devising activities to help younger students improve their skills. The focus of this project is on the participating Year 9 students, encouraging them to improve their attitude to literacy, raise their confidence and self esteem and also to enhance their ability to work with each other collaboratively.

Using the Key Stage 2 learning outcomes for writing as a starting point, the students have been working in teams to develop activities for improving literacy in four diverse areas of the curriculum: dance, history, design & technology and combined sciences. These have included a powerpoint presentation and quiz about the Vikings; a poetry-writing exercise prompted by a dance devised and performed by the young people; and, using a chromatography experiment as an inspiration for some creative writing.

Each of the activities developed by the young people was tested and reviewed by Year 7 students at Flegg High School before being piloted as part of a new 'Words Roadshow' at local, feeder primary schools.

Year 9 students took whole classes of Year 6 pupils at the primary schools for 25 minute sessions that they had conceived, planned and prepared. While for some the start was shaky, the sessions proved engaging and exciting for everyone involved.
“I feel more confident and would feel much happier now about talking to groups of people,” said one student. Others commented on a new understanding of the amount of thinking and preparation teachers are obliged to do for lessons, while others revealed a new capacity for empathy: “I have learned to connect more with people and now understand that you have to use different ways to engage different people.”

At the end of the project the material developed as part of the roadshow will be recorded in a booklet. The students are working with graphic designer, Bobby Burrage, who will assist them in the design of the booklet which will be made available to other schools. The booklet will be launched at an exhibition, showing the rest of the school what has been learnt and what progress has been made.

Director of Specialism at Flegg High School, Ruth Bullard commented, “The thing that has most impressed (and surprised) the teachers involved in the project, is the ability of all the students to work independently, taking on large amounts of responsibility within a tight framework. Through thinking about how best others might learn, they have reflected on their own strengths and weaknesses as learners. The best news for teachers is that they all have a better appreciation of the amount of planning, preparation and imagination that goes into the delivery of engaging lessons.”

Outcomes

Increased confidence for groups and individual young people;
A new enthusiasm for writing and a better understanding of how writing in used in different curriculum areas;
Enhanced capacity for empathy when working with diverse groups of people;
Strengthening of the benefits of collaboration;
Increased understanding of the ways that creativity can enhance diverse subject teaching / learning;
Strengthening of relationship between Flegg High School and its feeder schools.

Year 9 students from Flegg High School give Year 6 pupils ar one of their feeder primary schools a taster lesson about the Romans.

A Flegg High School Year 9 student, Kasey, helps a pupil from a feeder primary school in her area with a poetry and dance assignment she helped create and oversee for Year 6 pupils.

Year Nine students from Flegg High School take Year 6 students at a nearby feeder school through a history lesson they have prepared as a taster of what it's like at high school.