Trust Projects
Science Across the Hospital School – giving access to experiments to children who are at risk.
This innovative project is inclusive of Primary and Key Stage 3 pupils with special educational needs.
It will enable pupils in a 4 -19 psychiatric hospital school, to have access to practical science experimentation in a safe, but interactive, form using a planned new lab facility.
Science is taught across the school. On the Bethlem site this is primary/middle class, the secondary and post 16 class and in the medium secure site, which is 10 miles away, science is taught to a further secondary/post 16 group.
All the pupils at the school are patients with a psychiatric illness. The behaviours associated with these illnesses often meant extra procedures need to be put in place to keep the pupils safe from harm to themselves or others.
As a special school there are staff in each teaching department with significant expertise in science teaching. Video conferencing from the lab:
• Will allow staff to teach to their strengths and give pupils remote, safe access to an increased range of experiments;
• Will allow two way live communication between pupils and teachers, giving pupils the opportunity to direct, ask questions and model their own working back to the remote teacher.
Aims
To improve the access to live experimentation by pupils who would otherwise be denied:
• For experimentations with two way communication between teachers and pupils to be a regular feature of scheduled classroom teaching across the 4 units of the school
• To generalise access to the 3 units at Bethlem site to the remote (10 miles) Snowfields adolescent unit.
To foster the development of science teaching with non-specialist teachers:
• Allowing joint teaching between specialist and non- specialist teachers in delivering the science curriculum across all parts of the school
• Offering this resource to other schools and units with a similar intake of pupils.
To identify best practice in delivering virtual learning, staff involved in the project will review and consider existing practice and research on virtual learning. Considerations will be incorporated into developing operating rules around approaches which enhance the experience of young people, whilst meeting the specific needs of children and young people in hospital.
Programme
Video conferencing facilities will be installed within the school’s lab and in 3 discrete parts of the school.
Teachers will research existing practice of video conferencing
Teachers will audit their current existing skills and experience and identify continuing professional development needs.
Draw on external expertise for training, for instance Southwark City Learning Centre.
Deliver initial science experiment lessons and review with feed back from staff and pupils.
Incorporate outcomes of review into plans for future sessions.
Evaluation
• Pupil, parent, staff and multidisciplinary team qualative feedback on the provision of the video conferencing facilities. – use of individual semi-structured interviews and through the use of assessment for learning (AFL).
• Quantify the number of science sessions held across the school before and after the introduction of video conferencing facilities.
• Record the number of experimental science lessons delivered before the introduction of the facilities and compare with the number delivered after fully commissioned
• Monitor the number of experimental lab sessions received by pupils, who are ward-based, but within the school’s wi-fi, before the facilities were developed and after.
• Compare the number and type of public examinations entered by pupils over the last 2 years and following the full commissioning of the video conferencing facilities.
Additional
Outline dissemination plan:
• To offer controlled access to these facilities to other psychiatric hospital schools and units who have limited facilities or specialist science teachers.
• Staff involved in the project will report to the Governing Body.
• The projects will be written up for publication in an educational practice journal that gives significant attention to science teaching.
Make links with the National Science Learning Centre