Communication and Active Listening regularly come up as targets for our learners to help them succeed at school and in life.
Developing our skills
Active Listening
The Big Picture curriculum enables us to focus on the development of these key skills in a supportive and threat free environment.
We always like to celebrate the work of our learners. This display is work produced by the first cohort to join us earlier in the year. You can see the variety of interests and passions that they have and the quality of what they have produced.
At the back of Big Picture Doncaster is a patch of land that has had various uses over the past couple of years. Our latest cohort of learners (advisory name “Assassins!”) have decided to get to grips with it and turn it into a garden space. They have visited Bentley Urban Farm next door for ideas and have plans for different areas of the space and how they might be used.
Sonny gets to work
Community is key at BPD!
Ajay and Alfie put their backs into it
This is a mammoth task, but we don’t give up
The starting point
The old pond
One section of the garden will be for growing plants and vegetables, and another will be developed as a seating area. The team also found an old bath that had been sunken into the ground by some former Big Picture learners and have decided that rather then use this as a pond this time they would like to dig another one and make use of the bath for compost.
As you can see from the pictures clearing the space was a challenge in itself but one of our Habits of Work and Learning focuses on taking on challenges and the Assassins rose to it without a problem. The teamwork shown by the group was also a real indication of how they are working as a community.
It was very overgrown
No worries for our hardworking assassins!
Sonny’s Salt Jar story…
Today we have been making Salt Jars. Learners think of memories and choose a colour for that memory. In order to make the salt jar by colours. For my jar I chose purple because my nan really likes it, yellow because we go on holidays together and got for a walk in bright yellow sun, and green for when I used to take my dog for a walk with my step grandad. I made it by getting salt and chalk and rubbed the chalk into the salt on to a piece of paper. When the salt was the colour of the chalk with no white in it you put it in the jar. Then you do it again to add other colours in.
Working in their new advisories, learners wrote questions on paper aeroplanes and then launched them into the air to share questions and queries and then to share information and answers with each other. This enables learners to build community and develop a sense of participation as all are involved, all have questions and crucially all have answers. Learning can come from many sources, and a really rich one is the experience of others.
KODAK Digital Still Camera
KODAK Digital Still Camera
Learning Through Interests doesn’t mean narrowed experiences. This project on The Red Arrows included numeracy through fuel capacity and distance, geography exploring locations, art and DT through model making, and careers.
