Teach Together English at Lonesome Primary School
Wimbledon High School have partnered with Lonesome Primary School for the Teach Together English project. The programme gives our students the unique opportunity to initially, be taught how to teach by Wimbledon High staff, before heading out to one of our partner schools, in this case, Lonesome Primary. It will follow the very successful model the science department have delivered over the last two years called ISSP, however, the range of subjects is much more diverse. The Teach Together programme benefits not only our state partner schools, but also WHS students. We have seen a growth in confidence in personal delivery and a more thorough understanding of students from different backgrounds.
Aims
Year 5-6 Debating:
- For Year 5-6 students to understand the structure and skills of a formal debate
- To increase students’ verbal confidence & listening skills.
- To nurture pupils’ ability to think logically, evaluatively and persuasively about controversial motions.
Year 2 Spelling:
- For Year 2 students to improve their spelling of Year 1-2 common exception words.
Background
The Teach Together project as a whole commenced in September 2017 at Wimbledon High School whereby we reached out to a number of schools to invite them to collaborate with us. Our goal is to ensure our students here at Wimbledon High learn valuable new skills for their own personal development as well as the partnering schools benefiting from having our students teach them subjects in a fun and innovative way.
Resources
One member of teaching staff is involved in leading the Teach Together English programme in partnership with Lonesome Primary.
Impact
The Wimbledon High girls have learned to: Plan debating sessions that attempted to retain pupils’ attention for a full session. Some were very proactive in bringing key ideas to sessions that they researched online and colourful pens. Having 1 week in WHS and 1 week in Lonesome helped us to create more thorough, usable teaching resources. This preparation was quite difficult for the girls, who had not necessarily debated themselves since Year 8 English lessons.
They have also learnt how to empathise with students from a different background from themselves and form positive relationships with them as role models. They were impressively mature and warm, building strong rapports with many of the pupils.
Managing challenging behaviour and encouraging positive engagement amongst students has also been a key skill learnt on this programme.
By the last session, 1-2 pupils from our partner school were impressively articulate in expressing ideas persuasively.
Pupil Involvement
9 girls from Sixth Form are involved from Wimbledon High School. There are 12 Year 5-6 students and 8 Year 2-4 children involved from Lonesome Primary.
Frequency
The Teach Together project runs for a total of 20 weeks from September through to Easter. This opportunity will be on offer every school year for the forseeable future.