Learning objectives

Learning Objectives are essential to classroom activity and help articulate what students should be able to do after any lesson. A crucial planning tool for our speakers, they also provide a central point of collaboration between our work and your needs.

Every session we run has two types of learning objectives: short-term and long-term. Our short-term objectives are often practical and outline what students can be expected to do immediately after a session. Our long-term objectives focus on areas of development and opening up ideas for further research to students. These objectives help align our work with broader topics that relate to social justice and inclusion.

All of our objectives are devised for specific cohorts and can differ widely depending on students’ ages, the topic at hand and the school’s specifications.

Here are some example learning objectives:

• Year 11 talk on anti-racism:

  • Short-term: To be able to explain what white privilege means

  • Long-term: To be able to recognise racial micro-aggressions and call them out

• Year 8 talk on misogyny and language:

  • Short-term: To be able to identify sexist language

  • Long-term: To be able to adapt language where necessary

dialogic model

Human cognition can broadly be divided into working memory and long-term memory. Working memory can store limited information for a short period of time. Long-term memory, however, is underscored by understanding and embeds information for much longer periods of time.

The ‘use it or lose it’ theory demonstrates how our brains forget information unless regularly re-enforced. Using the dialogic model, we can help students re-enforce new information long after our session has ended.

When discussing new topics, we embed our theories and explanations in real-life examples and invite students to share their own experiences too. Collaborating with them to explore these topics helps align our messages with existing parts of their knowledge. This means that once our session ends, they’re able to apply what we discussed to other aspects of their life, re-enforcing new information themselves.

The gradual release method helps this process by shifting the responsibility of learning from our speakers to your students. Whilst we outline key theories and explain topics thoroughly, encouraging students to respond to prompts, ask questions and come up with examples themselves provides them with autonomy to lead themselves by the end of the session.

A key feature of our dialogic model is an open Q&A session at the end of workshops. This is a chance for students to build on topics covered and prompt new discussion points. In previous sessions on rape culture, students have brought up topics of chivalry and asking girls out in the Q&A section. During workshops on consent and boundaries, students built on discussions of individualised self-care to talk about how most self-care packaging for girls focused on beauty.

Sharing experiences with students and encouraging them to engage personally with the material helps embed new information and provides them with the tools to re-enforce it.

challenging misconceptions

Our speakers are well-placed to engage with students’ misconceptions. As young people ourselves who are largely self-taught on these topics through academica and experience, we can identify and empathise with uncertainties.

On every workshop plan that is shared with teaching staff, there is a section on challenging misconceptions. We design our services to directly engage with student needs and work carefully to minimise blindspots. Once likely misconceptions are identified, we devise methods to address them effectively - whether it be as simple as explaining a term, or as creative as demonstrating a key concept through a group exercise.

The topics that we work on are largely not covered by UK curriculums and we recognise that for many students our workshops might be the first time they are having these conversations. Our speakers are always willing to share their own experiences and mistakes and offer an empathetic space to grow collectively.

inclusion

Inclusion is central to school communities and the work that we do. We understand that true inclusion looks different for everyone, and champion accessibility in everything we do.

In our everyday practice, we provide trigger warnings before talks and before relevant sections. Our policy on trigger warnings can be read at greater length on request.

We also support giving responsibility to students to regulate their emotions with regards to any topic we discuss. Before any discussion, we offer students the opportunity to leave the room for a breather if they need - whether it’s to get a drink of water or simply step out for a bit. Not only does this allow students to feel safe in our space, it demonstrates to them that we are collaborators, not lecturers.

Linguistically, we are considerate and purposeful. Unless informed otherwise, we do not assume anything about a cohort’s background, identity or experience. We ensure that we are specific about our language to reflect the wide diversity of students.

Examples of this can include using the phrase ‘socialised as women’ rather than ‘women’ when discussing behaviour typically associated with femininity. It can also involve being specific about the issues we are discussing; ‘people of colour’ is a less relevant phrase than ‘Black people’ or ‘Black communities’ when discussing BLM, for instance.

We are always striving to better our inclusivity and work closely with our advisory team to do so.