Case study: Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA)
Teachers and pupils taking part in Words for Work were interviewed about their experiences on the project so far. DACA is one of 13 schools delivering the project in partnership with around 20 businesses across England.
DACA have been exemplary in their project co-ordination, vision and communication and are pleased to share their thoughts on the Words for Work ethos, project set-up and hopes for the future of Words for Work and beyond.
Jessica Coy, Teacher of PE
I am taking part in Words for Work because I felt it was a really good idea - teaching an exam subject like PE, poor literacy is something that really holds students back so anything that could help literacy on any level ultimately impacts the curriculum on any level no matter what subject it is. I thought it was a really worthwhile project to get involved with. I had a literacy background, and this was a project that brought Entrepreneurship and literacy together.
We want our students to come out with good exam results so they can enter into further education and ultimately go on to be functioning members of society and work and contribute to society. Literacy underpins all of that. I hope that on a school level our students’ confidence and ability level will increase and improve and that improvement continues after this project. Hopefully we’ll see an increase in the amount of students who are more oral in expressing themselves. It’s a skill that they should be good at – being able to verbalise how they’re feeling will hopefully see them go on to bigger and better things when they leave school.
I like how the resource pack doesn’t say ‘you have to deliver this and this in this way’ which is quite nice for us to put our own stamp on it. We deliver it within PE so I tried to make it quite practical so they’re not missing out on their PE time. We’ve mapped the project along the Sports Leaders Level 1 Award that’s worth 6.3 GCSE points. To pass the Sports Leaders they have to lead sessions, so the two things sat quite well together and it’s working quite well.
Challenges we have faced have only been small, and support from colleagues means the challenges have been quite easy to overcome. Commitment levels have now gone through the roof.
I think the students like something real, something they can see. From that, they might be able to see real life examples of where you can go, regardless of your background and see as long as you’ve got that passion and determination you will succeed. Using the volunteers will help the students see what is out there, what direction they can head in. Students can also ask the volunteers lots of questions, and feed off them for their experience and see it’s not just me giving some spiel. They can question and cross-question, see people from a real life setting, not just school.
George, year 9 pupil at DACA participating in Words for Work
Communication is anything that is contacting another person. It doesn’t matter if it’s verbal or non verbal. Bad communication is when you’re not nice to someone, or you ignore someone and start talking to someone else. Say if someone texts you back and you don’t text them back.
When I am older, I want to be a film director. Communication is definitely important because say you’re making something to do with film, you’ve got to have good communication because there’s a lot of people working at it so there’s usually lots of things used in communication; things like walkie talkies.
By taking part in Words for Work, I expect I will get better at communicating and better at PE, I like the fact they’re both mixed in, it’s quite good. We can show the volunteers what we’ve done so far. It’s exciting that people are coming in from out of school as we don’t usually have people come in from outside to speak to the students.
Nathan, year 9 pupil at DACA participating in Words for Work
Communication is a way to stop solitude, so people get together, get to know each other – it can be verbal or non verbal, through text messages or talking for example. Bad communication is when people shout, swear in public and when unsociable things get said across the internet.
When I am older, I’d like to be in IT, I really like the idea of programming things – computers, stopping viruses. Communication will be useful in IT because you have to email people and receive emails from people who have problems and be able to see what the situation is with computers. And you have to learn how to communicate complex problems to people who may not understand computers.
By taking part in Words for Work, I expect to gain confidence in my vocal skills and be able to speak fluently in front of people. I think working with volunteers be very good because we will be able to speak to people who have jobs that we would like and get experience in it.
Jen Fishwick, Teacher of English and Literacy co-ordinator
We are taking part in Words for Work because we do feel that there is a big focus on reading and writing, and sometimes the student’s speaking and listening skills can get neglected. From a vocational point of view, students who to go down the vocational route need that earlier pickup of how to communicate in the workplace. It’s preparing them for work really and that’s our ethos at the Academy. It will give them a snapshot and insight into how to communicate in the workplace. I thought it was a perfect opportunity. If the pilot project works, we can then try and look at ways we can roll that out on a whole school level.
One of the things I’ve observed as a classroom teacher is a fear of being wrong in students – we have to try and instil confidence. An Academy ethos of ours is about risk-taking and being determined and making sure there are plenty of opportunities available on a cross-curricular level.
I think the fact that the lesson plans in the resource pack are interactive and different get students out of the classroom means the pilot project is being well received, particularly by the boys. We are adapting the resource pack to suit our student’s needs and with Junior Sports’ Leaders project as well.
Participating students will hopefully become ambassadors for communication skills. It’s also contextualising oral skills and so the students aren’t seeing it as something just in the Academy environment and it’s something they can use outside of the Academy environment as well. Next year when we have work experience we can monitor if the project has made an impact and given them confidence. I think development of speaking and listening skills have been slightly abandoned so hopefully the project will give it equal standing.
At DACA, we have an entrepreneurship specialism, and our second specialism is PE/ Sports and Leisure. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to raise the profile of our specialism.
We didn’t face any major challenges, but minor challenges that we faced when trying to set up the project were looking at where it could be timetabled – we wanted to do it during in Academy time to ensure that we got the uptake of students. We managed to work this out. There’s been a couple of issues with students seeing it as them being taken off PE and not wanting to miss PE, so we’ve had to keep relaying the importance of it and saying they have been specially selected to take part in the project.
The fact that volunteers we will be working with are local is quite powerful. I hope that the message that the students grasp will be that it is possible to achieve and hopefully their expertise will help the students to have a clear focus and know how to adapt the way that they communicate. It gives the students the opportunity to put their work in school into a real-life context, it’s not just teachers telling them ‘this is what you need’, it’s genuine business acumen being imparted on our students. Hopefully they will see that link between here and the outside world. And also to set up links with the Academy as well for the future – maybe there are ways we can help businesses in the future. It may be that in the future some of the pupils may end up working with the businesses or having apprenticeships – hopefully there are benefits for all. We are quite a new Academy and we are trying to establish links.
