Help For Collecting Evidence Of Pupils Views

[Guest]

Hi

As the new ofsted format is asking for pupils views on lots of issues in school, I wandered how infant schools are supposed to collect them If we were a primary we would have a school council but our age range is 3-7yrs. We do discuss issues around circle time, but it's collecting evidence, that worries me. Any opinions, help, would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest]

At my pre-school I asked some of the older children to take photos of their favourite places around the pre-school and wrote down their comments on why they had chosen these. Next time I might also ask for least favourite-comments could be even more revealing! I think this would go down well with ofsted.

[Beau]

Don't underestimate this age range! Forming some sort of student council is feasible. My pre-schoolers came up with our golden rules, with support.

[Guest]

Yep, and we have a very active school council (infant school)

[Guest]

When children start they fill out an all about me with the aid of parents. One question I ask is What are you looking forward to doing?

When they leave we have another sheet ( a teddy holding balloons ) in the balloons we write what they have enjoyed doing at nursery.

[Running Bunny]

We encourage schools to carry out 'child consultations' as part of their out of school funding applications.

 

Most choose to get the children to draw pictures of what they enjoy doing and what they would like to do (a kind of wish list) which is carried out after discussion at circle time.

 

Something that is also very popular at the moment is 'target' evaluations where a target is drawn on large paper (like an archery target) with the centre being 'great' or 'good' the next ring out being 'okay' and the last one being 'didn't enjoy' -this can be adapted with a smiley face, straight face and sad face for really young children.

 

The idea is that after a specific activity the children are encouraged to put a cross in the zone which represents how they felt about that activity. You should end up with a target with lots of crosses near the middle if it was a good activity or in the outer ring if the children didn't like it.

 

You can be clever with this and give boys one colour pen and the girls another to see if there are any differences according to gender or if you have a mixed class, some children could do ticks and others crosses to see if there are differences according to age.

 

You could even give really young children stickers, so you won't even have to worry about pencil control - genius!!

 

Another activity is an 'thought pond' which is a piece of blue card, with lily pads, frogs etc. The teacher or children have 'pebbles' (grey card) with questions on - 'what have you enjoyed today? 'What activity would you do ' 'was there an activity that you didn't like?' - the children or teacher 'throws' the pebbles into the pond and each child has the opportunity to answer the questions, which can be recorded as evidence.

[Guest]

Thanks very much for all your suggestions. Does anyone have any advice about setting up a school council in an infant school? Would you involve nursery thrtought to Yr2? Many thanks for your advice.

[Guest]

www.schoolcouncils.org

[Sue R]

In my wanderings I happened across this thread. It struck a chord, because of changes we've made recently in our setting. As a result of these we have written a 'Child involvement' policy, which seems fairly pertinent here?

 

Sue

[Marion]

We conduct 'audits' of children's likes and dislikes at periods throughout the year. Things like.......who their friends are.......what activities they like/dislike...........what they think they are good at..........what they dont like doing...........what they would like to do.

 

I've persuaded the head to extend the school council to include the FS so will let you know how it goes.