There is enough material in each story for a half-term’s activities.
Feedback from evaluations suggests that rushing this will limit its impact.
- Choose the story that is most appropriate for your class.
- Read the Family Toolkit so you have more information about the issue.
- Tell students that we all have different ways of thinking about things and some of these ways are helpful and some are not. You are going to read them a story that uses characters that represent positive and negative ways of thinking. Ask students if they can give you an example of a positive thought and a negative thought. If they get stuck give them examples.
- Introduce the story and tell students briefly what it is about.
- Read the story all the way through – each takes between 15 and 20 minutes.
- There are ten chapters in each story. In Circle sessions read one chapter at a time.
- In the same session, choose one or more of the activities in the Teacher Toolkit for that chapter. Circles are all facilitated according to the ASPIRE principles given at the beginning of each Teacher Toolkit. If children do not feel safe they will not learn from the activities.
- The whole session should take between 15 and 30 minutes depending on how many activities you do.
- Refer to the characters as and when appropriate at other times, e.g. what would a Common Sense voice have to say about this?
- You could ask students to make up their own stories using these characters.
All feedback welcome!