How to set about planning values teaching into your lessons
Now you want to start planning some values
interventions into your teaching.
How do you set about it?
The following is a set of guidelines to help you. There are also some
specific lesson-plans that you can refer to, in order to see how some
actual lessons have been set up. You will also be referred to some of these
at specific places in the guidelines given below.
Two key points:
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values are generally already present in the curriculum - this
means simply making explicit what is often implicit |
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Our experience has been that
the curriculum is full of opportunities to include values interventions,
regardless of the subject you teach. Good teachers will be including
some aspects of this in their work already. The purpose of planning
interventions is to make the values more explicit, where they are
already implicit in the scheme of work, in lesson planning, and in the
process of teaching. Teaching values is not necessarily about teaching
about different things, but about teaching in a different way. |
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Values can be communicated in the classroom in three main ways -
through content, process, and application. |
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The content of the
lesson can be used to draw out a particular value. In this case it is
the specific subject matter which can be used as a vehicle for
emphasising the value. This may well be subject matter that you were
going to use anyway, or it may be necessary to extend the "normal" work
a little in order to provide the necessary material. E.g. in a
science lesson about blood , the resource used in the lesson goes
beyond what is immediately required by the national curriculum in order
to specifically refer to a racially sensitive situation that produces an
emotional response, and hence discussion concerned with racial issues.
In language lessons it was sometimes necessary to come out of the target
language in order to discuss aspects of the values more fully.
In many cases it is the actual process of the lesson that can
be used to create the necessary interaction with the value in question.
E.g. in a
Geography lesson, running a simulated public inquiry, the importance
of valuing others is brought out during the public meeting, where pupils
have to listen carefully to each other and ask questions appropriately.
In many subjects the content of the curriculum is applied to other
aspects of life. For example Technology is used or applied in almost all
aspects of life. |
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The "How to" Guidelines
The following guide shows an effective route to help you to plan and
deliver values within your subject. There are 8 elements:
- Awareness of your own school's values
- Schemes of Work
- Using your Imagination
- Develop ideas & strategies for inclusion
- Learning objectives
- Lesson Plan Design
- Implementing your lesson
- Recording and assessment (evaluate lesson/series of lessons)
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1. Awareness
of your own school's values |
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Each school will have its own set of
values. You need to be fully aware of these before you start. These
might already be expressed within a 'Mission Statement', school rules or
your school may have a fully worked out policy on values. If your school
does not have a clear set of values this is the first stage that needs
to be addressed with whole school involvement.
The involvement of the whole school is illustrated by steps one and two
of the
6 step Management Process diagram here.
Some possible values might include:
- Fairness/justice
- Looking after possessions/environment/stewardship
- Respect for others/ valuing others
- Faith in God
- Valuing ourselves/doing our best
- Service to others
- Forgiveness
- Trust
Once your school community has a clear position on the values that it
thinks are important, they will need to be available in words which
pupils (and staff!) can understand. It is vitally important that the
school community as a whole can support the values which have been
chosen. This is so that the values used in your teaching can
legitimately be described as your own values. Once they have been
established you can start planning to include them in your Schemes of
Work. |
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2. Schemes
of Work |
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As indicated earlier, it is likely that
schemes of work will naturally have places in which values can be
included. The more you look, and become familiar with teaching values,
the more opportunities you will find. A
diagram shows how the school's values interact with SOW's within the
NC.
Most Schemes of work will include cross-curricular strands, eg.
Citizenship, ICT, PSHE. Values can be incorporated in the same way, by
including this as an aspect of what is already taught.
Look at your scheme of work for each year group and identify places
where one or more of the school's values could be included in your
lesson(s). Decide how you want to play this. Values could be covered in
different subjects, or once by each subject in each year or on a few
places in the year, depending how appropriate you feel it is. It would
be difficult and time consuming to try to cover too many interventions
at once. |
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3.
Using your Imagination |
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Now begin to use your imagination to
identify appropriate ways for inclusion of the values. Where do values
naturally occur? Where are values naturally encountered in this SOW?
When you know how many and which values you will look to include in
your part of the syllabus or scheme of work you can identify which
particular lessons you want to use to deliver the values. Look for
lessons that will lend themselves to opening up questions, thought or
activities that have a potential for an effective encounter with one of
the school's values. |
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4. Develop
ideas & strategies for inclusion |
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Decide whether you will be including the
value as a process, content or application within the lesson. Look at
some of the ideas and lessons that have already been
tried in your subject. Visit the web to look for material which
might be useful. You may well be able to use or modify material which
has already been published, e.g.
Charis materials which are resources promoting moral and spiritual
development in English, French, German, Science and Mathematics.
Most importantly, do not overlook material that you already use. Very
often a values lesson is more a matter of using the same material in a
different way, rather than necessarily starting completely from scratch.
For example, it is impossible to study North American Indians without
discussing issues of fairness, or the to consider fossil fuels without
understanding the effects of their use on the environment. |
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5. Learning
objectives |
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You will now need to decide on the
learning objectives for your lesson. Obviously these will need to
include objectives for the subject as well as for the values
intervention. You will need to be particularly clear about the values
objectives since these will, initially at least, be comparatively
unfamiliar. Which values are you using? How do you want to get these
values across? Do not be over adventurous in the first instance. Usually
only one or possibly two values should be tackled in one lesson
initially. It is best to be specific in your choice of values and try to
stick as for as possible to your choice. You will inevitably find that
the values overlap with one another, and you may well find that
discussion in the classroom leads you into areas that you were not
expecting. This should be fine as long as you start from a clear vantage
point. You will also need to decide how explicit you want to be with the
pupils about the values. We found that it was most effective to be very
open about the values, explaining to the pupils at the beginning of the
lesson which value was being tackled. |
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6. Lesson
Plan Design |
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The examples given here are clearly only
one layout for planning lessons and are designed to stand alone. You
will want to write plans which form a part of your schemes of work. You
may well want to indicate how the lesson links in with other similar
themes such as SMSC, PSHE etc. |
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7. Implementing your
lesson |
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Now its time to get on and do it. As with
any new approach, you may not feel that you are fully prepared for what
is going to happen, but you will find that it is very rewarding. If
possible have someone observe a values lesson. It is usually worth the
extra stress of having another teacher in the room to get useful
feedback about how the lesson went. |
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8. Recording
and assessment (evaluate lesson/series of lessons) |
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review 11 & 12 & unpack. Poss. include
specific objective egs in 7. |
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