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iTeach BJR is a grade 8 to 10 school with 320 students from low-income backgrounds in the Yerwada region of Pune. Students taking admissions to our school in grade 8 come in with 5-6 years of gap to grade. Instead of always trying to bridge the gap, we aimed to get 75% of our students into the top colleges of our city after their grade 10. Hence, we designed a three-year strategy to achieve it. Building essential skills was a key component of our strategy to ensure our students get to and through top colleges in the city.
Overall impact
Over the year, students reflected on which steps they were for various essential skills, making them more aware of what excellence in essential skills looks like, where they stand, and what their next steps can be to improve. Students are having better discussions and coming up with solutions through mutual discussion. Students are seen delegating the work to their peers, understanding the value of a team and how the space should feel and look. Students express themselves freely, and others respect their feelings, whether bad or good. Students have much more empathy, leading to a decent cultural shift in school and making it seem happier. Students themselves quote what they have learned, ask the right questions, and stop the problem immediately. They can focus on their studies rather than getting overwhelmed by their emotions. Empathy, support, and happiness have increased. Students can now differentiate their feelings from those of their friends in different situations, which helps them support their peers accordingly.
Keep it simple
The essential skills are cited as part of the school’s strategy for supporting students to succeed. The Skills Leader has written a vision statement to share the aims of the programme with all members of the school community. The skills are visible to all thanks so posters displayed around the school. The dvisory class in the school timetable was changed to the skill builder class, which was run once every week. . Students receive merits for effort and progress in the skills so they know that they are valued and rewarded.
Start early, keep going
Out of the four grades we cater to in our school, three of them had Skill Builder classes in their timetable. This includes the ‘bridge year’ where students catch up any missed learning to prepare them for secondary school, and essential skills have supported their confidence and overall development. Grade 8 and grade 9 also have regular timetabled Skills Builder lessons. All teachers advisors followed the lesson plans made by the skills leader and executed them in class with their advice.
Measure it
As the program ran in the second half of the year, we started with a mid-year diagnostic to gauge students' current essential skill levels. Subsequently, teachers collected data after unit 3 to see the progress made in two months and then again at the year's end to see the progress. The data for every student was a combination of 3 data points - their reflection on how often they follow a particular step, the advisor's understanding of how often they follow a specific step, and a student council member's observation. The average of these 3 data points was considered to assess the student's level for every essential skill. The assessment matrix has proven to be a accurate way to gain a holistic view of students' understanding.
Focus tightly
The Skills Leader made lesson plans based on the diagnostic data collected. The lesson plans all followed the structure of explaining the step, teacher modelling, student practice and teacher feedback. The Skills Leader also observed some lessons and provided thorough skill specific feedback to teachers.
Keep practising
Essential skills are referenced as part of 4C Challenges. Every week, students were given a design challenge to solve by making a design and model of the object in question in their advisory groups, practising skills such as teamwork, leadership and listening in the process. This reinforced the skills for students and allowed them to see their relevance in different subject areas. Students also have the opportunity to take part in hobby clubs. Every week, students learn a hobby of their choice in school. Some of the clubs were Dane, singing, chess, photography and more. Next year we would like to integrate the language of the essential skills more within these clubs.
Bring it to life
All school subjects have a project component, which sits separately to curriculum learning but counts towards the final grade of that subject. This was a great opportunity for students to use their skills for real world experiences. We also ran the ‘start up success’ Challenge Day. This took place across five weeks, allowing students to apply the skills they have learned so far and enhance them in a relevant project within their advisory groups.
What's next
To continue to embed the skills moving forward, we would like to make the links between essential skills and out of class activities more explicit for students. This could be done through using self reflection resources as part of extra curricular clubs, and integrating skill icons with subject lessons so that students can clearly see the wider relevance of these skills.
