1.
Briefly describe the global learning activity you facilitated in your classroom, including the
year of your pupils.
During the Spring term with my current Year 1 class I introduced P4C sessions. The first session I
decided to concentrate on the issue of Sexism as I feel this can often be an issue within the
classroom and on the playground. I began by introducing the format of P4C and the fact that the
children needed to listen to the ideas of others and respect their opinions. I used a clip from the film
‘Billy Elliot’. This facilitated a lot of great discussion from the children. The main comments were
about whether a boy would be allowed to ‘play’ ballet and the fact that all of them had never seen a
ballerina that was a boy. Some children were very passionate about putting their opinion across and
other chose to simply listen. Obviously with the age of the children my role as a facilitator took a
more prominent role in allowing the children to think of responses to the ideas of others for
instance: Zaki said ‘Boys aren’t allowed to play ballet.’ As the facilitator I followed this with ‘Who
makes those rules?’
I feel that with an older group of children they would have said similar things without prompting.
Throughout this session I was very surprised at how mature and sensible the children were. They
listened well to the ideas of others and did not make fun of them. Once the session had come to an
end I found that the children still wanted to carry on.
2.
How did it promote critical literacy amongst you pupils or help identify different
perspectives and assumptions.
In class on a day to day basis I feel that we are all guilty of sometimes playing ‘guess the answers in
the teachers head’ due to the constraints of the curriculum but implementing an activity like this
fully allowed the children to think critically about what they have seen and then have the
opportunity to question these things without fear of and incorrect answer. The majority of children
spoke on the subject and the majority were very relevant comments. It also encouraged children
who may not usually join in with a class discussion as they feel they have a lack of subject
knowledge but choosing a topic familiar to them all I feel gave each child the opportunity to join in.
3.
I what way did global learning activity promote reflection about the implications for the
pupils own lives.
Having chosen a topic very close to home for the children it was very easy to relate to their own lives
as they discussed sports they played out of school and whether boys and girls both joined in with
these sports. I then extended this activity by showing children the end of the film where Billy
becomes a professional ballerina and many of the children were very surprised at this. We also
discussed with many very mature comments from the children that it is important to make our own
choices about things that we want to do and not be influenced by others views and opinions. I could
see that for some children they already live by this ethos but others were very strongly against
‘going against the grain’.
4.
How would you justify including global learning in the curriculum.
Having planned this, and many other activities, into my weekly time table I had to cross reference
these activities with the National Curriculum and found that it covered many of the objectives within
many different subject areas. For instance a P4C session would cover the majority of the speaking
and listening section of English in Key Stage 1.
Having reviewed the topics and curriculum that we deliver in Year 1 I feel there are many other
areas that could incorporate Global learning and challenge the children’s perceptions and
assumptions of the world around them. Completing this course and the NUT Internationalising
Learning has encouraged me to adapt the way I teach to include, more often than not, more critical
thinking activities and I now naturally ask more open ended questions.
5.
In what ways do you plan to increase your ability and understanding of global learning in
the future?
I now intend to continue to run these sessions as often as possible but I intend to try to make an
integral part of each day allowing the children to think freely and question their ideas and the ideas
of others.
In the Summer term I intend to look at the curriculum for Year 1 as a whole and implement Global
Learning within each topic for the next academic year.
In my setting at the moment, I am the only teacher who has had this training so I fully intend on
passing on my knowledge and experience of Global learning and the impact that it can have in the
classroom and on our children’s lives.