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The first Words for Work workshop gets the thumbs up from pupils
8 Mar 2010
The first Words for Work workshop gets the thumbs up from pupils.
Thirty year nine pupils at Bishop David Brown School in Woking took part in the first WFW workshop on Wednesday 3 March.
Everyone had a great time, the facilitators as well as the young people. Enjoying a mixture of games and group work the pupils brainstormed different forms of communication. All agreed that they had learnt something new on the day.
The pupils particularly enjoyed recording their findings on their ‘role on the wall’ display boards. Each group had their own board with a life size outline of a figure on it. These were used to post up comments, words, questions, statements and pictures that the groups felt reflected the work they had been doing. By the end of the workshop each figure had a funky hairstyle too.
Group work
The pupils were divided into groups quite near the beginning of the workshop. The facilitators chose group members at random and children found themselves apart from their friends and their usual class groups. The groups gave themselves names and thirty individuals became Jabs, Taboo, Symbols, Gary, Malts and Community. At the end of the session there were still some issues to be worked through regarding group dynamics. Some requested that they be allowed to chose their own groups, so that they could be with their friends. However, the majority of the young people said it was a good experience to work in a different group with people they didn’t know or work with usually. The teacher was very pleased with how her students had done – apparently this was the first time they’d worked in mixed ability groups in this way.
We all agreed that taking part in Words for Work will help everyone to play an active role in and get more out of group work.
Feedback
The young people were asked to answer some questions at the end of the workshop. They worked hard on their responses and came up with some very insightful evaluation. Their comments mean that we have altered the content of the workshop that we’ll deliver to the second pilot school on Friday 12 March. This is consultation in action.
Here are some highlights from the feedback:
What went well?
- Working with different people
- Getting the ‘role on the wall’ and working with it
- The activities
- Everything!
What went not so well?
- Too much talking (by the facilitators)
- Too much writing
- Not enough time on some activities
How would you have changed the session?
- More time for the group activities
- Be able to choose the groups they worked in
- Not so much writing
What did you learn?
- That communication is more than just talking
- Communication is important
- Everything you do sends a positive or a negative signal
- There are lots of ways to communicate without speaking
