Gut Warnberg Schule: Using the Discovery Framework in Extra-Curricular Activities

Gut Warnberg Schule, has been employing the Discovery Framework in its Extra-Curricular activities. Through a series of projects and challenges, the students are encouraged to use the Discovery skills and reflect on their personal development in regular feedback sessions.

Author and position: Tobias Lindinger, English, History and Ethics teacher; Round Square ‘teacher’ as part of the Life Skills Curriculum 

School: Gut Warnberg Schule 

Introduction 

The Life Skills curriculum at Gut Warnberg Schule affords us with opportunities to bring the Round Square IDEALS and Discoveries to life through practical projects and student challenges. Students volunteer to attend these weekly sessions learning with their peers from across different school years (grades 5 to 10) and alongside students with special needs.

I saw an opportunity to explore the Discovery Framework in this group to support the efforts across the school to embed the Framework into other curriculum subjects. I planned a series of set activities that would bring the Discoveries to life and help students recognise their individual strengths and development needs.

Planning  

All staff received training in the Discovery Framework during Inset at the start of the school year. This was led by Mr Peter Schröder-Mohr (Headmaster) and involved all teachers. Following the training, staff were encouraged to seek opportunities to connect the Discovery Framework with their own subjects.

As a new initiative, I had free reign to explore the Discovery Framework in more depth. In planning the lessons, it was important for me to consider active ways of learning – to show rather than tell the students about the Discoveries. I also varied the structure of learning by using multiple environments and using a mixture of partner and group exercises.

Students are already familiar with the Discovery Framework from the posters displayed in classes (at the start of the year, they helped colour in a Discovery Framework chart) but I encouraged them to explore the skills further by interviewing students from the other Life Skills classes to help them connect the Discovery Framework with the life skills already taught by the school. These interviews were written up and shared via a TV screen in our school, close to where the Life Skills lessons take place.

I prepare lessons on a regular basis rather than mapping out a curriculum for a term or year. I enjoy the freedom of doing this and exploring areas of interest for the students and myself, using the opportunity to tap into school activities and areas of priority. For me, it’s important that the students have fun, and that rather than cramming in lots of activities into our time, we focus on fewer topics/activities and have the space to do them well.

Activity 

By way of context, the school incorporates the IDEALS through a number of initiatives including:

I: Exchange – established with different schools in Capetown, South Africa.
D: “It`s our turn” – students exercise responsibility, participation and democratic skills in school discussions.
E: “Lebenskompetenz” – our Life Skills curriculum includes gardening, sustainability, programming, cooking, happiness and consumer education to increase environmental and global consciousness.
A: Expeditions and Experiences – students have an outdoor class experience in the open. “Herausforderung” – students spend eleven days out of school to meet a personal challenge on a budget in a small group.
L: Representation – students answer questions and give information to future parents and families.

Against this backdrop, opportunities were also found to highlight and provide experience of the Round Square Discoveries in our Life Skills classes.

Exchange tourist guide: To aid their communication skills, appreciation of diversity, teamwork and tenacity, the students works in groups as ‘tourist guides’ for the school’s exchange student, explaining the sights and highlights of their local city, Munich. During the city visit, they are only allowed to speak in English, which requires them to think carefully about the way they communicate. This is a particularly difficult task for the younger students, given their level of English ability, so the older students are encouraged to work with the younger ones to help them with any difficult words or concepts. It is also interesting for us to consider how our city and country is perceived by someone from another culture. Our exchange students write diaries and are encouraged to share with us their impressions of being in our country, so we can share and exchange ideas and learn about another perspective. Our Round Square students are also encouraged to be considerate, helping the exchange student adjust to life in ways large and small – from language barriers to learning about our public transport ticketing system! Exchange students deliver a welcome presentation on joining our school. This allows us to appreciate the similarities and differences in our cultures.

Carrotmob campaign promoting sustainable business: We will be teaming up with fellow Round Square school, Landheim Schondorf, on a campaign to encourage local businesses to show a greater commitment to sustainability. Working with our partner school, we will identify local businesses that we feel could make more environmentally-friendly choices, for example, substituting plastic bags for recyclable packaging. The students will be expected to visit the shops themselves to politely lobby the owners and put together communication materials (such as flyers) championing their cause. By identifying businesses in their local areas where interventions could be made, we hope to draw on the students’ compassion for the environment, communication skills in effecting change, sense of responsibility for their local area and courage in promoting their cause.

Boosting fundraising initiatives in school: I have encouraged the students to get behind fundraising initiatives in school, for example, Grade 8 students have recently been raising funds to provide meals for people living in poverty. Working in groups, the students used their inventiveness to consider ways that the donation amounts could be increased. The ideas that resulted included selling their time at home, for example, offering to walk the dog in return for a donation.

Challenges 

• Working with students with special needs – As a small school, we have a very inclusive approach; students with special needs attend all our mainstream classes. It can be difficult for some children with particular conditions to work in groups but we always try and encourage it. We are also aware that activities that require concentration for a long period of time may be difficult. A task such as our Exchange tourist guide trip to the city is a big undertaking for some students but we find a way to make their involvement specific and contained and draw on the encouragement of other students to support them. The contribution that each student makes is therefore manageable whilst allowing them to draw on the learnings from the whole experience (challenging themselves and seeing others being challenged).

Impact 

At the end of each activity, I ask the students to reflect on the experience asking them to share what skills they thought we used and how well they feel they used those skills.

In these feedback sessions, I encourage the students to reflect on their own achievements as well as the group’s. It’s important to recognise that certain students may have bigger obstacles to overcome. During our city tourist tour, the weather was really bad, we had some new students joining our group, and were aware that our activity was a difficult one for students with special needs, more used to a controlled environment. It is important to recognise what we did well, the challenges we faced, and honour those who took steps to overcome those challenges. For example, some of the students delicately stepped in to help a student with special needs when they were struggling with their part of the presentation.

We are still looking at ways to formalise measurement and use the passports; I am keen for the students to think about the progress of the group, rather than competing with each other individually on their achievements in certain areas. I have considered having a passport for the group, and sharing pictures of our completed pages on the TV screens near our life skills classes.

After a period of about four weeks, I encourage the students to reflect on our group’s progress over the previous month. This helps the students to consider how certain skills may have developed further, or flourished in different ways, and also celebrates their growth. This longer-term reflection underlines the fact that skills development is a process – it’s not about an absence of a skill and a sudden acquisition of that skill. We need to learn, develop and grow in strength in that skill.

In my teaching of other subjects, I have seen how valuable use of the Discoveries can be in broadening students’ abilities in other parts of the curriculum. For example, in my History lessons, I set the students the task of creating a movie of the gunpowder plot. They had to think of ingenious ways to create a set, the props etc, and solve the ‘problem’ themselves. I can see that if students are used to this way of thinking, they will be encouraged to be more creative and confident in their approach to their studies.

The Future

I am hoping to have a more in-depth evaluation session with the other subject teachers over the school holidays to explore how we have applied the Discovery Framework in different settings and what the results have been from those interventions.

Advice

• Be flexible – The great thing about the Discovery Framework is that you are free to set your own priorities. You can identify single Discoveries to develop or choose a few together to explore.
• Do your own homework – Make sure you have thought about the Discoveries yourself and what they mean so you can explain the terms to your students. They might appreciate it in an abstract sense but try and think of lots of examples to explain what you mean.
• Plan well, show rather than tell – Take your time to plan the lesson and think about ways you can show rather than tell the students about a certain Discovery. It won’t always be perfect, but you can refine it as you go along.