Home Educational insightsSt Andrew’s Turi: An Immersion Week to Launch the Discovery Framework

St Andrew’s Turi: An Immersion Week to Launch the Discovery Framework

Posted: 22 January 2019

Since attending a Round Square conference in Nairobi in 2017, the Headmaster and I have been looking at how we should introduce the Discovery Framework into St Andrew’s Senior School. We started by introducing the language of the Discoveries in various aspects of school life, such as assemblies and our ‘Moving On Up’ Day (taking a year group and preparing them for the year ahead). We saw an opportunity to build on this work with our Year 9’s. As the youngest age group in the Senior School, we felt that it would be a good opportunity to introduce the importance of character skills and attributes to them and track their progress for at least three years. From a practical point of view, there is also a natural point at the end of the school year where opportunities for reflection can be weaved into the Year 9 timetable.

Having a focused immersion programme for a year group allowed me to measure the impact of the Discoveries in developing our students’ character. This is an area of professional interest, and links to my Masters Degree on SEND/Inclusion. My belief is that when students realise the true potential within themselves, they will also use that self-belief in areas that they find more of a challenge. This is true of all students, and not just those with learning challenges.

Author: Carol Heath-Smith, Head of Learning Success

Planning

Staff were introduced to the Discovery Framework gradually over a 12-month period. At the very start of the school year in September 2017, we had a staff inset session with the Head, which outlined what the Discovery Framework was and why we were looking at introducing it into the school.

The following January, I liaised with the Headmaster and our Round Square Rep to agree the overarching approach for the Discovery Week and also engaged the Year 9 tutors, as we wanted them to take a lead in the organisation, planning and delivery. The tutors also spoke to their tutees to get a student view of things. A key principle for us was that we wanted this to be an experiential learning week – ‘Discovering the Discoveries’, not being taught them – with activities designed to challenge the students in the Discoveries. The Year 9 tutors were asked to identify the Discoveries which they felt were most relevant to the year group. They agreed on 7 key Discoveries and felt that if these were developed first, the students’ capabilities in the other Discoveries would follow.

All the Discovery Week’s activities took place on the school site. The students had four afternoons for the purpose of the activities as well as an overnight sleep out.

Activity

On the first day we put the students into groups and held some warm-up activities. To help the students understand the definition and the importance of ‘character skills’, we showed them a video of a football manager talking about a player in terms that highlighted his strengths of character, rather than just his footballing skills.

We then went through the 7 Discoveries: Communication, Courage, Compassion, Sense of Responsibility, Self-Awareness, Tenacity and Teamwork. Integrity was also added to this as it is a school theme. Different members of staff introduced the Discoveries and all had an activity connected to it. For example, to demonstrate the meaning of Communication Skills, we introduced the ‘3 second rule’. This meant that students had to wait 3 seconds after someone had finished speaking before they responded, to highlight the importance of listening in effective communications. Following this, students were paired with other students they did not know well. One of the pair had to talk for three minutes to their partner, after which, their partner would respond with some follow-up questions. Then, they would try another approach, which was to talk for 30 seconds without their partner listening to them. This was designed to show them how it feels when you are not being listened to.

Other warm-up activities included setting a ‘Teamwork skills’ task (working together to collect water) and exploring ‘Compassion’ by inviting students involved in charity work outside of school to talk about their projects. To help students think about the topic of ‘Self awareness’, they were invited to do a personality test (I used Peoplekeys ‘The children’s profile’), which resulted in a personality type and was also of interest from an evaluation perspective.

The students were then given this scenario:

Your boat has sunk but you have managed to swim to a ‘deserted island’.  You have nothing with you except what you are wearing. In order to survive you must build a community and navigate certain challenges. From these challenges you can earn ‘money’ with which you can buy the resources you need, such as food and building materials. By the end of the Discovery Week you will have built a shelter in which you will sleep for one night. You will have 4 hours a day to complete the challenges. On Saturday afternoon, there will be a cultural show in which each community has to provide a 3 minute video of their Discovery Week, which may include a dance, a song, a poem/rap, their group flag/ name and will be an opportunity to celebrate Discoveries made during the week.

Student Challenges

  1. Sense of responsibility: “Egg Protector!” Students were given a raw egg to look after for the duration of the Discovery Week. They had to carry it with them at all times and any teacher could ask to see it. We purposefully avoided setting any rules around the task. We wanted to see what they would come up with and encourage them to be inventive. Some of the students, for example, hard boiled the egg, whilst others protected it in their pencil cases. Many eggs were broken, of course, but the students were given the chance to gain another egg by helping with school clean-ups.
  2. Self-awareness: “Blind Partner Walk”. Students were divided into two groups. One group blind folded the other and guided them through a series of obstacles. The group leading were allowed to hold the hands of the blind folded group but NOT talk to them. Then the groups swapped and this time, the group leading were allowed to give instructions verbally WITHOUT touching them. The blind folded group had to trust the leading team to keep them safe. The task was designed to test students’ patience and help them understand how they react to challenging situations.
  3. Tenacity: “The Wall”. Students had to scale a wooden wall with their team members. It was engineered to be difficult, students were expected to need many attempts to achieve it, demonstrating to them a key facet of tenacity in never giving up.
  1. Compassion: “Planks and Crates”. Students had to stand on a plank raised by crates. They then had to move from either side to arrange themselves in the order/rank that the instructor requested of them (height, birthday etc.). The idea was for them to help each other because if they did not, they would fall, and get a penalty until they got it right.  Students were encouraged to show compassion for one another when things went wrong so rather than teasing one another for mistakes, they had to show support and willingness to help others.
  1. Courage: “Trust Fall”. The students climbed onto an elevated area one by one. The other students then formed two lines underneath them and tightly interlocked their hands with each other. The student at the top of the obstacle then had to fall into the arms of the other students, trusting that they would safely break their fall.
  1. Teamwork: “Spiders Web”. A ‘spider’s web’ made of ropes was presented to the students. The students had to take all team members to the other side through the different holes in the web. No body part or hanging clothing could touch any part of the rope at any time. If that happened, the student had to return, and the hole was sealed and could not be used again. The success of this activity required a high level of team work and strategizing.
  1. Communication Skills: All of the tasks provided students with an opportunity to explore their communication Skills. With a tutor assigned to each student group for the entirety of the Discovery Week, they were able to interact with the students to highlight the topic where relevant. On the Wednesday of the Discovery Week, we had a Turi Model United Nations Conference with guest speakers, which gave the students another opportunity to exercise their communication skills.

Other Challenges

It was a lot of work for the Year 9 tutors to be so involved in the programme, especially asking them to sleep out overnight. This was also a challenge for the students as in Kenya, camping is not a particularly common hobby. But the setting took them out of their comfort zone and helped them to learn more about themselves. It was pouring with rain when they were building their shelters and some got a nasty shock when they didn’t build their shelter, and realised they would not be able to sleep inside! We organised a bonfire so anyone without shelter would be able to stay warm and safe. One girl in particular was terrified of the activity but the following morning, said ‘It was the best experience she had ever had’. We were also pleased to see students demonstrating team work by helping others who needed it. Having a scenario and challenge to work towards was also helpful in giving a purpose to the Discovery Week.

On reflection, we probably needed to give the students more materials for shelter building and maybe some guidelines for those who struggled. Time was a challenge and many students on their feedback sheets said they wish they had all day and not just 4 hours.

Impact

The impact of the Discovery Week was assessed in the following ways:

Student self-rating scores

Students had to self-assess themselves on each of the Discoveries at the start of the week and again at the end (see the scoring sheet) marking their abilities on a scale from 1 to 10. I recognised the challenge of making subjective judgements about character and I believe the process has to be an ongoing one rather than a snapshot like we did for this Discovery Week. Self-assessment is also a skill that needs to be understood, taught and developed, and so I found a questionnaire that the students could complete with their tutors on the issue of self-awareness and then encouraged them to have conversations about the topic. We told the students that over the Discovery Week, some areas might be stretched and challenged more than others and that for some of the Discoveries, the changes may happen over a much longer period of time. We encouraged them to think positively about the effort they had put in to each of the activities and how that had affected their rating.

Another self-analysis tool I used was Angela Duckworth’s ‘Grit score’ to assess students’ perception of themselves with regards to tenacity, again getting them to fill it in at the beginning and end of the Discovery Week.

I evaluated this data by looking at where there was a significant change in the number score (i.e. a change of 3 points or more) as I believe it is the change rather than the actual score that is important to review. This revealed that around half of students believed their skills in a Discovery had increased, a quarter believed it had stayed the same, and a quarter reported that their aptitude in a Discovery skill had decreased. There are some factors affecting this data such as the students did not have their previous score to hand, so may well be judging themselves differently at the end of the Discovery Week compared to the start. It’s also possible that students’ greater understanding of a Discovery led them to assess their capabilities differently.

There were some other points of interest. Teamwork showed the greatest increase, which married with the findings of a student questionnaire issued after the Discovery Week (see point 3). We also observed that 91% of students increased their Grit scores but only 45% reported an increase in tenacity. This may be because they don’t fully understand the character trait of tenacity, or that answering questions, as in the Grit score, is a better way of gaining a true understanding of progression rather than self-assessment ratings.

What was most important to us was not necessarily the score, but the conversations it provoked. If a student marked an increase, decrease or even no movement, it allowed tutors to have conversations exploring that.

In the future, we may well add some more depth to the analysis, for example, marrying the data with the students’ personality categorisations.

Tutor ratings

In order to see how accurate the students’ perceptions were of themselves, I asked their tutors to fill in their ratings for each of their tutees. Surprisingly, there was not a large discrepancy, and if anything, some students had underestimated their ability.

Student questionnaire responses

We also asked the students to complete a questionnaire at the end of the Discovery Week to capture the personal impact of the Week’s activities. These were very interesting, with many students reflecting on what they had discovered during the Discovery Week; one girl actually said that she ‘found out who she was’.  Students also had the chance to identify any student who had stood out for them during the week in relation to the Discoveries. There were some very encouraging comments and it was lovely to be able to pass those on to the students concerned.

Focus Groups and other observations

We closely observed our students with special educational needs and were proud to see that the focus on character skills enabled them to shine in ways that they would not normally do in a usual academic setting.

Although we held some follow-up focus groups at the end of the Discovery Week, we think we may run them again as they may have been a little rushed at the end of term. We will probably select students whose scores differed significantly from their tutors and perhaps also invite more input from our SEN students.

In the final assembly to the whole school, I was able to share some information about the Discovery Week and show some of the videos that the students had made. It felt as though the Discovery Framework had ‘arrived’ at Turi and this has been a good foundation to build on. Our use of the Discovery Framework in the school reward system has further improved the students’ understanding of the Discoveries, which are highlighted and celebrated through a ‘Celebration of the Discoveries’ meal. The visibility of the Discovery Framework is also being increased through signage in the classrooms.

Changes to our Rewards system

Previously, students were given ‘positives’ for things that they did well academically and for demonstrating certain character traits. We have now amended our character traits to include the 12 Discoveries.

Future evaluation

I am also looking at the link between character education and academic achievement. My research project is a collaborative one and so evaluation of the impact on the school’s ethos and culture will be gathered from all concerned parties: staff, students and parents. Such evaluations may be quite subjective in nature, but nevertheless provide good evidence of changes that are taking place.

The future

The data and observations gained are being used to guide how we move forward in embedding the Discovery Framework into who we are as a school. The Discovery Week was a great way to launch the Discoveries but now we want to make the Discoveries part of who we are. We did a SWOT analysis on the Discovery Framework which highlighted some compelling benefits to using this, but we realise we need to be more intentional and direct in doing so.

Working with the Deputy Head of Pastoral, we aim to start by making the Discovery Framework a part of our year-long PSHE programme of student development. Simple places to start include encouraging tutors to find newspaper articles which touch on a Discovery and discussing them with the class. And we have already looked at the Discoveries in a spiritual context, matching them to Bible verses. The Pastoral programme and Tutor programme are also key areas where the Discoveries will be used as the Framework for content covered.

We also want to extend the work we have already done in our Reward system by celebrating and championing the Discoveries in school ceremonies, recognising the pupils from each year group who have shown the greatest development in the Discovery skills.

We hope to achieve greater visibility of the Discovery Framework through signage, sharing photos from trips relating to the Discoveries, and having the Discovery Framework itself displayed in all classrooms. It’s also vital that we find ways to use the language in our everyday activities, encouraging teachers to highlight to students which Discoveries they are using in a lesson. The Discoveries will also be useful in recording students’ progress and encouraging deeper conversations between students and teachers on student engagement and the quality of their work.

The vocabulary of the Discovery Framework is going to be used in future report writing and also in the sporting life of the school. I suspect it will flow naturally into all aspects of school life; academic, extra curricula and Boarding and even beyond the school gates. We also intend to add it to our leadership evaluation.

We eventually want the Discovery Framework to be part of the curriculum and we are currently looking at our academic programme to consider how we allocate more time to the Discoveries. We also expect to appoint a new faculty member to drive forward character education in our school.

Our governing body is fully on board and a recent letter to parents has underlined the school’s commitment to character education. Parents too are recognising that their child’s success, and options after school, are dependent on more than their academic results.

Advice

Back to all educational insights