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Part of Surrey Square Primary School’s vision is to ‘Build a better world for children & others. Headteacher Matt Morden tells of their journey using SuperKind to provide the framework to their community projects.
I discovered SuperKind on Twitter in a bid to find a resource that would help strengthen and refine our curriculum offer.
I was struck by the breadth of resources on offer and felt that SuperKind had all the resources needed to execute school social action projects, in one place. Our community projects team and I particularly liked the idea of engaging our students with the UN Sustainable Development Goals as we felt it helps children realise the extent to which they can contribute towards a global movement.
At Surrey Square Primary, we are proud to be ‘More than a school’. We are committed to supporting our families and community and we strive to balance academic learning with developing well-being, relationships and values that reach far beyond the National Curriculum. Part of our school vision is to ‘Build a Better World’, and SuperKind helps us to do that! Our work is underpinned by our 6 core values – responsibility, respect, enjoyment, community, perseverance and compassion. Each value is represented by a fictional character – Col Community wears a tag that says ‘Small But Mighty’.
What have you used SuperKind for?
We’ve always had a strong commitment to campaigning for issues that directly affect our families and feel this is part of our duty as a school. Historically these campaigns have tended only to involve children and families directly affected by the issues. Upon noticing that our campaigns not only resulted in important changes within communities, but they also empowered our children and families to see the difference that they can make, we wanted to make campaigning more of a universal offer.
SuperKind has been a game-changer for our community projects this year. It’s so simple to navigate, empowering our staff to delve deeper into global issues and discover impactful solutions and actions. It has helped us make social action and community projects a curriculum offer, so that every child at Surrey Square Primary School is empowered to take action for causes that they care about – whether that be rats in flats, overuse of electrical appliances, or the resultant pollution of disposable face masks.
SuperKind has been a game-changer for our community projects this year."
How did you introduce SuperKind to your students?
SuperKind was introduced to students through their class-based community projects. One afternoon a week throughout the Autumn term was dedicated to these projects.
We introduced the children to the idea of social action through SuperKind’s introductory video. The students then embarked on a SuperKind journey from learning about a handful of UN Sustainable Development Goals, to drawing inspiration from real change-makers worldwide, to following toolkits for how to take action.
Children were given different levels of autonomy depending on their year group – those in the youngest year groups were given three UN Sustainable Development Goals to choose from, where those in Year 6 were asked to independently browse SuperKind to choose a cause they cared about – but crucially, regardless of children’s’ ages, the causes they chose to support and actions they took were entirely pupil-led.
Once the classes had decided upon their actions, staff came together in a ‘Project Tuning’ meeting where each class teacher presented their action idea and staff were invited to feedback. This helped ensure that our social actions were as meaningful as possible!
We are looking forward to presenting our social actions at a community evening in February where each class will have a stand and an opportunity to share their actions with parents and families.
What are some example community projects that you have taken?
During the pandemic our students were concerned by the amount of waste and pollution that was being caused by disposable face masks.
Focussing on what they could change, our students set out on a mission to change our school approach to masks. Where we had previously been handing out disposable masks to visiting parents, our students’ campaign aimed to reduce disposable mask usage by encouraging parents to use reusable masks. Each year group took a different approach – from making videos on how to make masks using reusable materials, to writing informative newsletters to parents. Each week in assembly we shared reduction statistics that helped show the amazing impact of the children’s’ actions.
More recently our Year 3 students sought to passionately address a pervasive pest problem in their homes. Aware that they couldn’t personally eradicate rats from all houses, they decided to make the council listen to their needs and help! The students wrote letters on rat shaped cards and bundled them off to the council, so that when the council opened the box the rat shaped letters would fall onto their desk! They did a wonderful job of catching the council’s attention who eventually came to school and allowed our students to read their letters aloud, ultimately bringing about positive change.
We’re truly grateful to all at SuperKind for creating such an accessible and impactful resource.
