School Culture: The Hidden Curriculum

Walk into any truly excellent school and you can feel it almost immediately — a calm, orderly atmosphere that hums with an exciting, vibrant sense of purposefulness just under the surface. Students carry themselves with poise and confidence. Teachers talk about their work with intensity and professionalism. And despite the sense of serious business at hand, both teachers and students seem happy and confident rather than stressed. Everyone seems to know who they are and why they are there, and children and staff treat each other with the respect due to full partners in an important enterprise.

Sociologists recognized the importance of school culture as early as the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that educational researchers began to draw direct links between the quality of a school’s climate and its educational outcomes. Harvard researcher Ron Edmonds, often regarded as the father of the “effective schools” movement, included “safe, orderly climate conducive to learning” on his influential list of school level factors associated with higher student achievement. “The school’s atmosphere is orderly without being rigid,” he observed, “quiet without being oppressive, and generally conducive to the instructional business at hand.”

Yet despite its importance, organizational culture is possibly the least discussed element in practical conversations about how to improve student achievement. Perhaps that is because factors such as strong leadership, close monitoring of student progress, a common and coherent curriculum, and teacher collaboration all seem like pieces of the puzzle that educators can directly affect. On the other hand, even the synonyms we use to describe a school’s culture — terms such as “atmosphere” and “climate” — make it sound more like an environmental condition than an educational one. And much like the weather, school culture seems to exist beyond direct human control.

But educators in highly effective schools, especially those that serve large populations of disadvantaged students, do not seem to regard the organizational culture as beyond their control. They talk about it and work on it as if it were a tool they can shape and wield to achieve outcomes they desire. Gaining a deep understanding of what a strong, positive organizational culture looks like and how it works can help educators become more thoughtful about developing one.

More than “safe and orderly”

Too often, educators interpret the effective schools research to mean that the school’s climate should be safe and orderly — and only safe and orderly. Few would argue that those attributes are unimportant. Beyond the ethical responsibility to provide children with safe surroundings, such conditions help protect instructional time from needless interruptions and distractions. But discussions of school climate that begin and end with classroom management and student discipline miss an important part of the puzzle. A truly positive school climate is not characterized simply by the absence of gangs, violence, or discipline problems, but also by the presence of a set of norms and values that focus everyone’s attention on what is most important and motivate them to work hard toward a common purpose.

Analyzing an extensive body of research on organizational culture, leadership and change experts Terrance Deal and Kent Peterson contend that “the culture of an enterprise plays the dominant role in exemplary performance.” They define school culture as an “underground flow of feelings and folkways [wending] its way within schools” in the form of vision and values, beliefs and assumptions, rituals and ceremonies, history and stories, and physical symbols.

According to Deal and Peterson, research suggests that a strong, positive culture serves several beneficial functions, including the following:

• Fostering effort and productivity.
• Improving collegial and collaborative activities that in turn promote better communication and problem solving.
• Supporting successful change and improvement efforts.
• Building commitment and helping students and teachers identify with the school.
• Amplifying energy and motivation of staff members and students.
• Focusing attention and daily behavior on what is important and valued.

Russell Hobby of Britain’s Hay Group suggests, “Viewed more positively, culture can also be the ultimate form of ‘capacity’— a reservoir of energy and wisdom to sustain motivation and co-operation, shape relationships and aspirations, and guide effective choices at every level of the school.”

One useful concept for understanding how culture performs those functions comes from sociology. W.I. Thomas, a pioneer in the field, observed that individuals consider something he called “the definition of the situation” before they act. To take a very simple example, many people answer the telephone differently depending on whether they are in a professional or casual setting. Very young children impose their own self-centered definitions on most situations, but society gradually suggests or imposes other definitions.

Some schools allow individuals to decide their “definition of the situation” mdash; what the organization is about and how individuals should act in it. Effective schools, however, suggest a clear, common “definition of the situation” for all individuals, sending a constant stream of unambiguous signals to students and teachers about what their roles and responsibilities are. The school does that through its organizational culture.

In some high schools, for example, the organizational culture defines athletic success as paramount. In others, especially where peer cultures predominate, norms and values push social popularity as sacred. And in others, academic effort and excellence are revered or at least valued highly enough to compete for students’ attention amid many other claims on it.

The instructive role of school culture is not lost on effective leaders. John Capozzi, the principal of Elmont Memorial Junior-Senior High School near Queens, New York, explains, “In addition to [a] close emphasis on classroom instruction, we have what we call our ‘hidden curriculum,’ which develops personal relationships between faculty and students and deliberately works at developing character.”By identifying school culture as his “hidden curriculum,” Capozzi acknowledges that like the academic curriculum, the elements of school culture can be identified and taught. Elmont’s 2,000 students, most of whom are African American and Latino, produce impressive outcomes. Ninety-seven percent of entering ninth graders graduate on time with a regular diploma, and 88% of its 2005 graduates earned a prestigious Regents Diploma.

At University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts, students begin learning the “culture curriculum” even before the first day of school. Entering seventh graders are required to attend a three-week August Academy. “It allows students a chance to meet their teachers, meet their peers, and experience school a full three weeks before the school year starts [and] provides them with a comfort level,” says Principal June Eressy. “But the most important thing is they get to understand the culture of the school. They get to understand that we are serious about education and that we are serious about them going to college. They need to start thinking about it now to get where they need to be.”

Teachers at University Park’s August Academy accomplish that goal through a combination of overt messages and subtle lessons that emphasize not only academics but also the values and behaviors the school expects of students. “We work on interdisciplinary units during that time,” Eressy explains. “I wanted the kids to be reading a book they could finish in three weeks, because in my experience a lot of urban kids don’t finish what they start, so I want them to learn right from the get go: ‘You start it, you finish it.’”

University Park establishes a “definition of the situation” that tells students they are capable young people who will work hard and go to college. The results are impressive. Although three quarters of University Park’s students are low income, compared with only about 30% statewide, 90% of the school’s 10th graders scored proficient or advanced on the Massachusetts mathematics assessment in 2005, beating a statewide 29% by a huge margin. And all of its students get accepted to college, with most going on to four-year institutions.

Still, although many effective schools couple an ambitious academic ethos with warm, caring, and supportive relationships, Eressy warns that schools too often focus on nurturing alone. “There are too many schools that have succeeded in building warm and caring and nurturing places for kids but have failed to translate that into a culture of high expectations,” she says. “That doesn’t do the kids any good.” Research bears out her assertion. A large study of middle school climate involving 30,000 students in Chicago Public Schools found that social support has a positive effect on academic achievement but only when coupled with a climate of strong “academic press.”

A school’s culture sends signals not only to students but also to staff. Teachers and school leaders also must work to build positive norms related to their own work. According to Robert Marzano, this part of a school’s culture has to do with professionalism and collegiality — whether teachers believe and act as if they can achieve positive outcomes for students and whether they support each other, working collaboratively to achieve common goals. In a study of social relations in Chicago elementary schools in the 1990s, Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider found that one powerful factor affecting school improvement was whether staff in the school trusted each other. Marzano advises schools to take a proactive approach to establishing a professional culture — defining norms and expectations clearly, creating governance procedures that give teachers an active role in decision making, and ensuring that teachers can engage in meaningful professional development focused on improving classroom instruction in the subjects they teach.

Building a strong culture is not an overnight task. According to Bryk and Schneider, “Relational trust is not something that can be achieved simply through some workshop, retreat, or form of sensitivity training, although all of these can be helpful. Rather, relational trust is forged in daily social exchanges. Trust grows over time through exchanges where the expectations held for others are validated in action.” Creating and maintaining a strong culture — for students and teachers alike — also depends on their understanding of “the definition of the situation” defined earlier. “For relational trust to develop and be sustained,” say Byrk and Schneider, both staff and students “must be able to make sense of their work together in terms of what they understand as the primary purpose of the school: Why are we really here?”

Top 5 Bulletin Board Ideas

Bulletin boards are not just for show, they can be interactive and informative too.

No classroom would feel complete without at least one bulletin board to display student work or learning concepts. Bulletin boards are commonly used as ways to show off student work or convey class information, but they can be so much more. Bulletin boards should be educational, fun, and in alignment with the content that is being taught in the classroom. Here are some ideas to get your classroom looking great on the first day of school.

The Different Types of Bulletin Boards

A bulletin board can provide information, motivation, and assistance to both you and your students. Bulletin boards generally fall into two main categories: ones that are seasonal and ones that can be used year-round. Year-round boards usually display content that does not change like a calendar, schedule, or timeline. Seasonal boards, on the other hand, are changed periodically and may be related to a theme or concept that reflects the curriculum being covered in class. Underneath both of these categories are several varieties of bulletin boards: teacher-made, student-made, collaborative, informational, interactive, and decorative.

A Blank Board is an Opportunity

A blank bulletin board in the classroom gives your students the opportunity to create the type of classroom that they would like to spend time in.  During the first week of school, you can tell students that they are going to be placed in groups of four or five, and that each group will be responsible for designing and decorating one section of a bulletin board; each group can be given a theme or concept that they are supposed to convey. This activity does several things: it builds relationships between students, allows them to be active participants in the classroom, and lets you observe their interactions, motivation, and potential behaviors. A sense of community is an important part of a healthy learning environment.

Bulletin Boards and Goal Setting

One way to use a bulletin board is to track student progress. You can design a bulletin board with a game board, doors, or some other interactive activity. As students reach educational goals, they can move two spaces on the game board, or ‘unlock’ a secret door. This is a great way to motivate students to memorize math facts, complete a poem about a particular subject, or meet a reading goal. Students will be able to see the progress they’ve made, which will give them a sense of accomplishment. However, this should always be a positive experience. If you feel that displaying students’ individual progress might make them feel self-conscious, adjust your board accordingly.

Let the Bulletin Board Teach Students

Information about synonyms and other parts of speech are often displayed on classroom bulletin boards. A way to make this type of board more interactive is to have students add to the information throughout the year. For example, you can have a board with a heading that says “Synonyms made my writing more interesting” and two subheadings, with one that says “I could say…” and the other that says “Or, I could say this…” Under the ‘I could say’ column could be a list of common words such as happy, sad, and ugly. Under the ‘Or I could say’ column students could provide a string of synonyms such as exuberant, elated, despondent, or repulsive. Students should be encouraged to add to the board whenever they come up with new synonyms. One could apply this to other parts of speech; students could add examples of metaphors, similes, or onomatopoeia.

Research-Based Bulletin Boards

Research-based boards are great to use in place of learning centers. Every few months or so you can put up a new set of questions regarding a particular topic relevant to your classroom curriculum. For example, during Black History Month you could display pictures, letters, speeches, and interesting facts about influential African Americans.  You could also provide task cards, or research questions and materials, for students to use to find out more about a person or event. This idea could be used for Women’s History Month, President’s Day, for research on space exploration, explorers, or inventors. This type of board could also be set up in the form of a mystery, in which the students would have to ‘hunt’ down clues to determine an answer.

Interactive Bulletin Boards

There are many ways to make a bulletin board interactive.  For example, you can set up a bulletin board with pockets containing numbers on one side, and several math sentences (or equations) in the center. Have about four to eight ‘sentences’ available for students to solve. At the beginning of each week, place numbers in different pockets in the equation, so students will have to move numbers around and use their math skills to determine missing components of the math sentence. They will be finished once all eight equations are complete. Perhaps the students who finish all eight equations get a sticker or something even better, like EXTRA CREDIT! What follows are some more bulletin board ideas.

Socratic Teaching

The oldest, and still the most powerful, teaching tactic for fostering critical thinking is Socratic teaching. In Socratic teaching we focus on giving students questions, not answers. We model an inquiring, probing mind by continually probing into the subject with questions. Fortunately, the abilities we gain by focusing on the elements of reasoning in a disciplined and self-assessing way, and the logical relationships that result from such disciplined thought, prepare us for Socratic questioning. 

Thankfully, there is a predictable set of relationships that hold for all subjects and disciplines. This is given in the general logic of reasoning, since every subject has been developed by those who had:

• shared goals and objectives (which defined the subject focus)
• shared questions and problems (whose solution they pursued)
• shared information and data (which they used as an empirical basis)
• shared modes of interpreting or judging that information
• shared specialized concepts and ideas (which they used to help them organize their data)
• shared key assumptions (that gave them a basis from which to collectively begin)
• a shared point of view (which enabled them to pursue common goals from a common framework)

Each of the elements represents a dimension into which one can delve in questioning a person. We can question goals and purposes. We can probe into the nature of the question, problem, or issue that is on the floor. We can inquire into whether or not we have relevant data and information. We can consider alternative interpretations of the data and information. We can analyze key concepts and ideas. We can question assumptions being made. We can ask students to trace out the implications and consequences of what they are saying. We can consider alternative points of view. All of these, and more, are the proper focus of the Socratic questioner.

As a tactic and approach, Socratic questioning is a highly disciplined process. The Socratic questioner acts as the logical equivalent of the inner critical voice which the mind develops when it develops critical thinking abilities. The contributions from the members of the class are like so many thoughts in the mind. All of the thoughts must be dealt with and they must be dealt with carefully and fairly. By following up all answers with further questions, and by selecting questions which advance the discussion, the Socratic questioner forces the class to think in a disciplined, intellectually responsible manner, while yet continually aiding the students by posing facilitating questions.

A Socratic questioner should:

a) keep the discussion focused
b) keep the discussion intellectually responsible
c) stimulate the discussion with probing questions
d) periodically summarize what has and what has not been dealt with and/or resolved
e) draw as many students as possible into the discussion.

Teaching Tactics that Encourage Active Learning

Use the following tactics during class to ensure that students are actively engaged in thinking about the content. Students should be called on randomly (using the deck of cards method for instance) so that everyone participates. When students do not know when they will be called on they are much more likely to remain alert and engaged in the learning process. Students should be routinely called upon to:

1. Summarize or put into their own words what the teacher or another student has said.
2. Elaborate on what they have said.
3. Relate the issue or content to their own knowledge and experience.
4. Give examples to clarify or support what they have said.\
5. Make connections between related concepts.
6. Restate the instructions or assignment in their own words.
7. State the question at issue.
8. Describe to what extent their point of view on the issue is different from or similar to the point of view of the instructor, other students, the author, etc.
9. Take a few minutes to write down any of the above.
10. Write down the most pressing question on their mind at this point. The instructor then uses the above tactics to help students reason through the questions.
11. Discuss any of the above with a partner and then participate in a group discussion facilitated by the instructor.

THE LEADERSHIP TRAP

Are you a high-performing leader working full tilt to make your dreams come true? And have you ever been weighed down by any of the following experiences?

• You’ve been thrown for a loop—by the actions of others or by your own mistakes—and the resulting snafu was surprisingly gut-wrenching.
• You’ve tried to control your upset at being thrown—but, instead, you’ve become even more upset and diverted your attention from moving forward.
• You’ve brooded over your tangles, berated yourself for falling short, and at times even wondered whether you might be undermining your own effectiveness.

If these uncomfortable experiences sound familiar, you may be ensnared — as I’ve been ensnared — in “the leadership trap.”

This thought piece examines the trap and how to unlock it. I aim to spark a dialogue about the “pain of leadership,” a taboo topic for many leaders who believe that admitting psychological discomfort, even to themselves, is a sign of weakness.After all, aren’t you supposed to be a strong, larger-than-life hero?

At its heart, the leadership trap is this: To shine as a leader, you seek to control your distressing thoughts and emotions in order to steer clear of feeling (and looking) weak. Running away, suppressing your feelings, and hiding are common methods of control. Yet the more you struggle to control your insides, it turns out the more you undermine your outsides—your ability to build trust and take charge as a leader. The more you bury your stress, for instance, the more stressed and reactive you become.

To unlock the leadership trap, I contend that you must do the opposite of what we all have been taught. You first must be willing to accept your psychological pain, rather than trying to get rid of it as if it were the enemy. You may not want your heavy thoughts and feelings, just as you may not want to lug valises on a voyage, but you need to welcome them as a natural part of being human, make room for them, and willingly bring them along on your journey. Far-fetched as it may sound, to perform better as a leader, you need not first feel better.

I propose that you can escape the leadership trap by developing a new toolkit of mental skills and attitudes—drawn from Eastern wisdom and Western psychology—for working with the pain of leadership. You can learn to—

• Pause, step back, and observe your aches, rather than plunge into your internal tangle and become completely entwined in it.
• Accept your troubling feelings as perfectly normal and get on with your work, rather than deplete your energy (and time) in a vain struggle to feel better first.
• Concentrate your attention on what you can control—the appropriate expression of your feelings and, most important, your actions in pursuit of your values.
• Develop the poise to take effective action despite intense personal discomfort.

Empirical research suggests that this toolkit can enhance your performance—and well being—as a leader. But you be the judge. Just imagine, for example, being blindsided by the following dramatic confrontation, which of course could never happen to you! It provides a taste of the tools in action when under the gun.

Fifteen minutes before an end-of-year faculty meeting, your secretary delivers a letter—signed by almost half your faculty—criticizing your performance as the new principal. You are stunned, flummoxed, and furious, given the school’s progress and all your hard work. Feeling bopped in the belly, but determined to stay in your job, what would you do?

Would you stew over how this mess ever happened—rehashing the year, blaming the faculty, maybe second-guessing your own actions? Would you struggle to control your emotions by bottling up your fury? Would you impulsively explain yourself to faculty members, while giving short shrift to their perspectives? In other words, would you automatically “scratch your itch”—by getting caught up in your obsessing, tuning out your pain, and reacting reflexively? Might not these common reactions make things worse?

Instead of immediately scratching, suppose you remember first to pause and observe your itch—and then think through what to do. You might take a few deep breaths and silently ask yourself: “What’s going on inside me right now—my feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations?” Not trying to shed or judge these experiences, but noticing and allowing them, you might reply to yourself: “Something inside me is furious—and that’s okay; what is, is.” Suppose by accepting your experiences, you avoid getting hijacked by them, and can move forward despite your turmoil. Suppose you also can regain enough poise to develop a balanced plan for responding to the letter—e.g., listening carefully to the faculty, adding your perspective, addressing frayed feelings, and deciding on next steps together. Might not this “mindful” response make more sense?

Unlocking the leadership trap is about freeing yourself from a flawed self-control agenda designed to dodge the thorns of leadership. It’s about making room for the rose inside you to flower amidst the thorns. It’s about changing your relationship with pain by becoming more comfortable in your own skin. It’s about exercising control in the outside world, where values-driven action can advance your dreams. It’s really about discovering the secret to fully flowering as an authentic, take-charge leader: A Liberated You.

So, what do you think? Have you experienced the “pain of leadership”—and how have you dealt with it? Do the ideas of a “leadership trap”—and the suggested approach for unlocking it—ring true for you? Stories are welcome.

Education Technology Horizon Map

 

At the end of the Clinton administration the US Department of Education funded a project with The Grove and The Institute for the Future to create a Storymap of the Educational Technology Horizon. Technology research from IFTF was blended with input from two focus groups with educational thought leaders to create this map. It's not readable here, but is an example of the kind of map that a group will use to learn about a new field, by reading over the various areas of information and discussing key questions. The map was designed in layers. The silhouettes along the bottom represent various classes af stakeholders. The next layer of roadways are the various technologies, grouped in five categories. They were definited in a border area to the right. The bubbles above the horizon depict storyies about possible uses of these technologies. Half the bubble is a real story and the bottom half is a projection of what is possible. These were organized around "free play," "group exploration," "individual instruction," and "orchestrated learning," corresponding with four learning arenas identified by the Institute for Research on Learning. This map is available through The Grove store. I led the project, facilitated the thought leader gatherings, and was a lead conceptual designer along with the Grove and IFTF team. The final map was created in Adobe Illustrator by Tiffany Forner on The Grove staff.

Curtsey : http://www.davidsibbet.com/

Primary School Teacher

Primary school teacher  : Job description

Primary school teachers develop schemes of work and lesson plans in line with curriculum objectives. They facilitate learning by establishing a relationship with pupils and by their organisation of learning resources and the classroom learning environment.

Primary school teachers develop and foster the appropriate skills and social abilities to enable the optimum development of children, according to age, ability and aptitude. They assess and record progress and prepare pupils for examinations. They link pupils’ knowledge to earlier learning and develop ways to encourage it further, and challenge and inspire pupils to help them deepen their knowledge and understanding.

Typical work activities

Primary schools in England and Wales are usually divided into the Foundation Stage (ages 3-4, nursery and reception), Key Stage 1 (ages 5-7, years 1 and 2) and Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11, years 3-6). Lower primary usually refers to the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 and upper primary is Key Stage 2. In England there is sometimes a middle tier, so that children go to a primary school up until the age of 8 or 9 and then transfer to a middle school until the age of 12 and then move to a secondary school. In Scotland, primary school classes are organised by age from Primary 1 (age 5) to Primary 7 (age 12).

Typical activities are broadly the same for all primary school teachers and include:

• teaching all areas of the primary curriculum;
• taking responsibility for the progress of a class of primary age pupils;
• organising the classroom and learning resources to create a positive learning environment;
• planning, preparing and presenting lessons that cater for the needs of the whole ability range within their class;
• motivating pupils with enthusiastic, imaginative presentation;
• maintaining discipline;
• preparing and marking to facilitate positive pupil development;
• meeting requirements for the assessment and recording of pupils’ development;
• providing feedback to parents on a pupil’s progress at parents’ evenings and other meetings;
• coordinating activities and resources within a specific area of the curriculum, and supporting colleagues in the delivery of this specialist area;
• working with others to plan and coordinate work;
• staying up to date with changes and developments in the structure of the curriculum;
• taking part in school events and activities which may take place at weekends or in the evening;
• liaising with colleagues and working flexibly, particularly in smaller schools;
• Working with parents and school governors (in England, Northern Ireland and Wales) or School Boards (in Scotland) to maximise their involvement in the school and the development of resources for the school.

Top ten exam tips

When you take an exam, you are demonstrating your ability to understand course material, or perform certain tasks. The exam forms the basis of evaluation or judgement for your course of study. There are many environmental conditions, including your own attitude and physical condition, which influence how you perform during exams.

These suggestions may help:

1. Come prepared; arrive early for exams. Bring all the materials you will need such as pencils and pens, a calculator, a dictionary, and a watch. This will help you focus on the task at hand.
2. Stay relaxed and confident, remind yourself that you are well-prepared and are going to do well. Don’t let yourself become anxious; if you feel anxious before or during an exam, take several slow, deep breaths to relax. Don’t talk to other students before an exam; anxiety is contagious
3. Preview the exam, spend a short period of your exam time reading through the paper carefully, marking key terms and deciding how to budget your time. Plan to do the easy questions first and the most difficult questions last. As you read the questions, jot down brief notes indicating ideas you can use later in your answers.
4. Answer the exam questions in a strategic order, begin by answering the easy questions you know, then those with the highest point value. The last questions you answer should :
   • be the most difficult,
   • take the greatest amount of writing, or
   • have the least point value
5. When taking a multiple choice test, know when to guess. First eliminate answers you know are wrong. Always guess when there is no penalty for guessing or you can eliminate options. Don’t guess if you have no basis for your choice and if you are penalized for guessing. Since your first choice is usually correct, don’t change your answers unless you are sure of the correction.
6. When taking essay exams, think before you write. Create a brief outline for your essay by jotting down a few words to indicate ideas you want to discuss. Then number the items in your list to indicate the order in which you will discuss them. Make sure you do this rough work on the answer paper, as it may generate marks for you, if you do not complete your written answer.
7. When taking an essay exam, get right to the point. State your main point in the first sentence. Use your first paragraph to provide an overview of your essay. Use the rest of your essay to discuss these points in more detail. Back up your points with specific information, examples, or quotations from your readings and notes. Do not waste time restating the exam question.
8. Reserve 10% of your exam time for review. Review your exam; resist the urge to leave as soon as you have completed all the questions. Make sure you have answered all the questions. Proofread your writing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Check your calculations for careless mistakes (e.g. misplaced decimals). Match your actual answers for calculations against quick estimates.
9. Analyse your exam results, each exam can further prepare you for the next. Decide which strategies worked best for you. Identify those that didn’t work well and replace them. Use your exams to review when studying for final exams.
10. Remember to switch your mobile phone off in the exam.

Self Awareness: Behaviour that hurts: What makes me angry?

  Purpose of activity: To help children understand how anger begins.

Life skills: Self-awareness, critical thinking, creative thinking, coping with stress and emotion,

communication and inter-personal relationships.

Important points: What makes people angry differs from person to person. People need to understand what makes them angry and can learn to control their anger.

Materials

Large sheets of paper, Marker pens or crayons

Steps

1. Divide group into groups of five or six.

2. Ask each group to sit in a circle. Begin the activity by saying the phrase…'Mr Nje gets angry when someone calls him stupid names'. Ask one child in the circle to repeat this phrase and add another reason why Mr Nje asks angry. The next child in the circle repeats these two and adds another and so on until all the children in the circle have added a reason. (This is an adaptation of a memory game!).

Other 'anger' ideas are:

·       when someone shouts at him

·       when someone steals something from him

·       when people ignore him

·       when someone pushes into him on the

3. Ask children to think back to the last time they got angry. In pairs, ask them to describe this to a friend without saying names and without saying what happened when they got angry, like this: I got angry yesterday when someone pointed at me and laughed at my clothes.

4. Ask each child to describe their partner’s reason for getting angry. Write these on a flip chart.

If an idea is repeated, do not write it twice but put a tick next to the first reason.

5. Ask children to think of the two reasons that that mad them the angriest. Each child comes up to the list and (with the help of the educator if necessary), places a tick beside each of their two top reasons.

What makes me angry?

Examples from a group of working children in Delhi…

When I cannot sell my coconuts

When my mum hits me

When I don’t have time to play, as I have to spend all my time working

When I have too much work

When someone beats you

When someone harasses us while we are working When someone teases you or uses bad language When I don’t want to work but I have too

When someone steals the materials we have collected for selling

Final discussion:

Is there anyone that does not ask angry? Can you solve problems well when you are angry? What is good about being angry? What is bad about it?