We’re proud to announce that Gulf British Academy has received a Bronze Award from national charity SAPERE P4C to mark our outstanding commitment to and progress with embedding Philosophy for Children (P4C) into our curriculum.
We’ve been training our staff and implementing a P4C programme across all Primary years. Our teachers use a stimulus, such as a story or photograph as a starting point for pupils to explore big philosophical concepts such as fairness, bravery, friendship, conflict and respect.
Pupils are then encouraged to create philosophical questions about the concepts before voting on one they would most like to explore. Our teachers then give them time to think and reason individually about the chosen question before exchanging ideas and opinions as a group – a community of enquiry, where children learn to recognise and explore different perspectives.
It’s an approach to teaching and learning that can enhance children’s thinking and communication skills, boost their self-esteem and improve their academic attainment.
This award celebrates meeting strict criteria and recognises the hard work of our pupils and staff in developing critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking across our school.
P4C workshop – Tools for Thinking Together
In order to take our P4C programme further, we recently invited SAPERE trainer Mr Nick Chandley of Dialogue Works to provide a Tools for Thinking Together (TFTT) workshop for our teachers.
Nick has been teaching and training P4C for many years and has been involved in a great variety of related jobs, including helping to develop What’s the Big Idea? – a CBeebies animated series about philosophy for children.
The TFTT workshop gave our teachers the versatility and confidence to deliver high-quality P4C lessons, thereby reinforcing their facilitation skills to overcome any P4C enquiry obstacles. Emphasis was also placed on developing higher order questioning and thinking skills among our pupils.
Following the workshop, Nick spent three days in school delivering several P4C lessons for staff to observe, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you Mr Nick!
P4C for parents
We have plans for Philosophy for Children for Parents (P4C4P) sessions during which parents will be able to watch and even join in with their children’s philosophical discussions. We will keep you informed!