In 2018, William Barnes Primary School began to look at ways in which we could deepen and broaden the citizenship education that we offered our pupils and to ensure we are actively ‘preparing all our children for life‘. A life beyond our school, into the community and beyond and helping them to understand how they are connected to their world on a local, national and global scale.
We are committed as a school to developing our children into becoming confident, proactive members of their local community, who understand how their actions do and can have an impact on a local, national and global scale.
We want our children to understand their place within a multicultural Great Britain and to be understanding and interested in cultural diversity.
We made contact with DEED – the Global Education and Learning Center for Dorset and organised training for staff to develop their understanding of global issues and cultural diversity. Mrs Gilham then went on to gain her Global Teachers award.
We began our journey by choosing to focus our efforts on three of the United Nations Sustainable development goals and used resources like the following to launch our goals with the children:
Malala introducing the The Worlds Largest Lesson
We looked carefully at our curriculum to decide where we could develop our classroom teaching cover development education and continue to develop our curriculum using progression guidance from:
The Oxfam Education for Global Citizenship guide for schools.
Global Learning Action Plan 2022-2023
Global Learning Action Plan 2021-2022
Global Learning Action Plan 2020-2021
Global Learning Action Plan 2019-2020
Click on each tab to see our school initiatives towards each goal
- Working towards becoming a ‘Plastic Free School’ by petitioning the milk provider to stop sending plastic straws, then moving to glass bottle deliveries and reusable cups (School Council Initiative)
- Terracycle boxes for recycling lunchbox rubbish and household items. (School Council Initiative)
- Clothes bank in the school carpark to recycle clothes and raise money for the school.
- Supporting the COP26 Climate Action conference in Glasgow, each class decided to make a pledge to support the campaign #Do1Thing to contribute towards the local, national and global efforts towards reducing the human impact on the climate. Some of these actions have included reducing paper waste, turning lights and projectors off when not in use and reducing laminating.
- Eco-warrior lunchtime club learning about sustainable lifestyles
- KS2 Plastic pollution – save the oceans campaign.
- NEW FOR 2022 School Council led composting initiative following our annual Dorset Council recycling team visitor.
- The Eco Warrior Team have conducted an Environment Review and taken the findings to Mrs Wrixon and the Governors. Click here for the full review.
- Climate Pledge letter to parents
- Visit from a world class athlete each Spring Term
- Take part in the annual FairTrade fortnight learning
- Take part in Children’s Mental Health Week 2022 and use some of the resources with each class. https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk
- Use a set of beautiful, new books from the local library that cover issues that affect many of our children (such as talking about worries, ways to reduce anxiety etc) and use in classes during story time as appropriate.
- Support the wonderful https://www.thekidsareallbike.com/ initiative run by our School Governor Mr Sweetenham.
- Year 2 Visit to Wessex Water to learn about water conservation and recycling and water availability in different parts of the world.
- Whole school World Water week assembly
- Mindfulness Day
- Collection for the Vale Pantry Food Bank and for Save the Children Afghanistan appeal as part of our Global Learning about issues around food poverty locally, nationally and globally. (TBC)
- Year 6 annual fundraising event for the Malala Foundation – supporting access to Education for girls
- Spring Term Global Learning letter to parents
- Vale Pantry collection letter
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- Each class chose an endangered animal from the Born Free Foundation and focus on becoming a specialist in this animal and their struggles to survive.
- Year 6 Born Free fundraiser event – whole school ‘Spots and stripes’ day with learning about the Born Free foundation.
- School Council supporting the town council with replanting grass verges with wild flowers.
- Forest School curriculum for all William Barnes pupils as well as an after school club.
- All classes focusing on Living Things in Science/Geography learning,
- NEW FOR 2022 Our Eco Warriors have planted trees as part of the Queens Canopy Platinum Jubilee 2022. Click here for the link
