Philosophy4Children Blog: November 2009

A Children's Conference!

Dot Lenton on 18 November 2009 at 15:56

At the meeting of The Association of Philosophy for Children last week, at Hanford Hall Primary School in Ipswich, it was agreed that we should organise a conference for children from Norfolk and Suffolk schools who had been using philosophy in the classroom! One suggestion is to hold it in Norwich! This would give a real boost to the children and schools who had previously taken part in the Thinking Schools, Thinking Children initiative held in Norfolk in 2000. Suffolk schools are excited about the project and are going ahead with a Newsletter, as well as starting a website. Watch this space!

Philosophy4Children meets TeachFirst!

Dot Lenton on 5 November 2009 at 21:39

Barbara and Dot had a fascinating evening with a group from TeachFirst in Piccadilly discussing Challenging Issues. Our secondary colleagues were exploring ideas relating to academic argumentation. Katherine Richardson shared some of her recent research with the group. She demonstrated that the method of using clear argumentation in the development of reasoning in the classroom has a strong impact on children's ability to become engaged with their learning. This is a subject that is dear to the heart of Philosophy4Children. As she spoke the correlation with the work that we do with our primary colleagues was very apparent. The group willingly became involved with an experiential session with us (shortened from two hours to about twenty minutes) and had a very positive discussion about "Willy the Champ" by Anthony Browne. 

The discussion was relayed to Twitter users through @Teachfirst.