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SIX steps or FOUR phases? Promoting children’s participation in YOUR classroom

When I worked with the Child to Child Trust (1989-1996), alongside other great people in the field, I helped to design what was known as ‘The Six Steps’. The point of these Six Steps was to link children’s learning with how they lived their daily lives with their families and friends as part of the process of learning. The idea being to interrogate health practices not in theory, but in practice, and identify what we are already doing and find what needs to be done in order to improve these practices.

For example, improve a diet WITHIN the potential of the actual setting. It’s a process that’s designed to go to and from the ‘Learning Place’ and the ‘Living Place’ as part of the process of learning. Somewhat to my alarm, the Six Steps became more and more talked about and part of a brand and seemingly ‘set in stone’ as THE way to do children’s participation in health. But this was never the intention. It was merely a mental model to help teachers and others learn key principles and skills that could then get adapted and repurpose for the context.

Over my 33 years working in this niche, I’ve learned that you cannot squeeze a new approach into a context, but that educators and managers can take key principles and learn new skills and adapt these to your own setting… often slowly and learning as you go.

I once was pleased to learn a new way to teach children how to write cooperatively and attended a workshop and it them took me a good six months to develop my way of doing it. I think that learning any new approach is just like this and takes time. An educator needs to build their confidence when trying new classroom methods.

As the years passed, I became increasingly concerned that the Six Steps were not being successfully applied in practice.

So… and although this sounds simple (it wasn’t)… I developed these FOUR phases instead.

  1. Teach and Understand;
  2. Find out More;
  3. Plan and Take Action; and
  4. Reflect.

It’s a pared down model and have used it on many occasions and gone back to teachers’ years after introducing it to them and they still remember it. The other thing I like about it is that these FOUR phases – are not ‘steps’ at all. Life is rarely a linear progression – instead consider they are at four corners of a box. Progress around the box can be around the edges or between two points and back again or even diagonal.

A bit more on each of the four phases below.

1. TEACH AND UNDERSTAND (in the classroom)

  • Teachers choose and then teach one or more health messages linked to a health topic.
  • Teachers use simple activities, drawings, and storytelling to deepen understanding of the topic.
  • Teachers teach children one or two simple questions to introduce the topic to their families.

2. FIND OUT MORE (in the family and community)

  • Children discuss the health topic with their friends and/or family members.
  • Children observe and find out more about what is happening in their own homes and community.
  • Children find out more by asking others e.g., neighbours or friends.

3. PLAN AND TAKE ACTION (in the classroom and then the community)

In neighbourhood groups with a nickname (like a colour or an animal) select and a boy AND girl as elected leaders, think about, discuss and create an action PLAN with three parts:

  • What can we do alone to help ourselves?
  • What can we do alone to help others?
  • What can we do together to help others?

THEN

  • Children spend one or more weeks TAKING ACTION!
  • Children meet and talk about their actions and what happened.

4. REFLECTION and RESULTS (in the classroom)

  • In the classroom, the group leaders REPORT the results of the actions they took.
  • The group CELEBRATES what was achieved.
  • The groups REFLECTS:
    • What worked well and why?
    • What can be improved?
    • What next?
    • A new topic or more actions on this topic?

Our simple toolkit linking each phase to one of five health topics: Nutrition, Malaria, Immunisation, Caring for Babies and Handwashing can be downloaded below. It’s available in English and Portuguese.