Go-Givers

Go-Givers Ambassadors are teachers, teaching assistants or other educationalists who have decided to share their enthusiasm for the Go-Givers programme by telling others about the attractive characters, varied lessons, context-free web tools and interactive activities available on the Go-Givers website.

Find out who they are and read about their methods and achievements below.

"I attended the presentation as the healthy schools rep and was amazed by the comprehensive resources that you have to offer. This should have a positive impact on planning and delivery of our creative curriculum and help create cross- curricular links with PSHE and Citizenship." -Go-Givers Ambassador applicant

You can become a Go-Givers Ambassador too!

Simply arrange a date for your staff meeting and download the application here.

What's in it for you?

We will equip you with a FREE 1gb USB (memory) stick containing all you need to run a staff meeting in your school or your area plus a FREE Go-Givers Guide.

Once we can see that you have carried out your training you will receive a set of Go-Givers puppets and a pack of Go-Givers lenticular cards!

You have the option of sending us evidence of Go-Givers inspired work so we can recognise you here on the website.

'I absolutely love Go-Givers and my class do as well. I have been trying to get the rest of the staff to use the site and they sometimes do. I think if I was an ambassador it would help especially with the puppets to help the younger children. I really would like to do this for the children.' -Go-Givers Ambassador applicant

'My school is always looking for exciting ways to involve pupils in PSHE and Citizenship and as a student, with ICT as my specialism, I feel this is a great opportunity to promote an exciting interactive programme through ICT to my team.' -Go-Givers Ambassador applicant

Who are the Go-Givers Ambassadors ?

• Miss A. Clark, PSHE Coordinator and Y1 teacher at Cheam Fields Primary School
   
• Jane James, PSHE Coordinator and Y5 teacher at Northleaze Primary
   
• Ruth Taylor & Janet Holden, Leading Teachers of EAL/Community Cohesion
   
• Sue Bridle, deputy head at Linwood School
   
• Ros Harkin, home school link worker
   

Sue Bridle, Deputy Head & SEN teacher at Linwood School in Bournemouth; local advisory support for PSHE

Sue’s Go-Givers journey is an inspiring one. She was introduced to Go-Givers at a Bournemouth Health & Wellbeing Network meeting in March 2011. She opted to become a Go-Givers Ambassador and we are thrilled that she did! She has become an inspirational spokesperson for Go-Givers within her school, and within the LEA.

Sue spread the word informally at her large special school rather than holding a training session. We are pleased that Sue found the best way forward for Go-Givers at her school. She told us that everyone gets something different out of it and we completely agree! She has found that Go-Givers and other Citizenship Foundation resources enliven learning for SEN students. Her valuable experience has shown that learning about and participating in society has positive impact for health and well-being.

Sue’s innovations bring the Go-Givers stories to life even further. Sue has pupils act out ‘Christmas with the Go-Givers’ using her capacious ‘story bag’ filled with the things that the Go-Givers give up to buy a present for Callum, such as Ahmeti’s bracelet and Teefa’s feathers. Her story telling skills are truly impressive. Affinity to the Go-Givers characters means that the Go-Givers puppets Sue was awarded are in high demand around the school!

In December 2011, Sue promoted Go-Givers at a local area network meeting, introducing teachers to the tools she uses for democratic decision-making, such as the ‘Ballot Box’. As children vote on the IWB, Sue uses this to prompt discussion about secret versus open ballots.  She also suggested using ‘Coming to Britain’ for its history links, and presenting a few select slides at assembly as a reminder that we are all descended from immigrants.

Sue acknowledges that topics around diversity and cohesion can be difficult to teach as they are so politically sensitive and teachers have to be aware of their own attitudes, but that the Go-Givers resources make this much easier. We hope that Sue’s story will help other teachers grow in confidence in teaching trickier topics.

Linwood School will hopefully be one of the schools to pioneer a Bournemouth & Poole Go-Givers 'Make a Difference Challenge' in 2012, a Pupil Voice project for children to devise a campaign around a social issue of their choice. We are really looking forward to seeing what Linwood will create for their project.

Ros Harkin, Home School link worker across 1 secondary school and 3 primary schools

Ros Harkin is a keen advocate of Go-Givers and has been an enthusiastic ambassador since 2010. She uses Go-Givers resources with small groups of pupils and she says these pupils are often the envy of others as they get to use the resources regularly. Her groups use the character’s blogs and Ros tells us they love it when their comments get posted on the website. She also enjoys using the puppets that she received for her ambassador work to show children how to behave in school and in her group sessions.

After receiving her Go-Givers Ambassador kit, she held a training session during in December 2010, registering 10 staff. Poor Ros had a tough time getting staff together for her training which included problems with schools closures in the snow and burst pipes. We are very pleased she persisted!

She continues to use Go-Givers resources and lessons regularly and says her biggest achievements have been with the 'Steps to success' resource even though they had to ‘cheat a bit!’ (We don’t see it as cheating Ros and we are pleased to hear you are eager to adapt our resources to suit your groups).

Ros has used 'Mum doesn't live here anymore' as a starting point for the children telling their own story. She sometimes adapts the PowerPoint so that Mum becomes Dad. She also, on occasion, changes the ending to help her children understand that not every story has a happy ending.

One lesson Ros particularly enjoys using is 'Stairs'. She uses it to introduce self belief and persistence. She follows up this lesson by using the 'Skate Park Challenge'. Once the children get a score they save it or ‘gamble it’ in their group competition.

They discuss whether it is the best they can do or if they can do better. She says one child was stuck on a score and he saved it thinking he could do no better. He later went on to achieving a massive score of 18,000. She says this was a valuable lesson in self belief as his previous, much lower score, was entered in their competition.  

We are thrilled to have Ros and board as an ambassador. Her communication with Go-Givers is always positive, bubbly and excited about the resources Go-Givers offers.

She has asked us to keep up the good work and we hope Ros continues to do this too.

Miss A. Clark, PSHE Coordinator and Y1 teacher at Cheam Fields Primary School, Sutton

Miss Clark discovered Go-Givers by word of mouth and has been an enthusiastic user and advocate ever since.  Using her Go-Givers Ambassador kit, she held a training session during INSET days in September 2011, registering 15 staff. Miss Clark told us ‘all of the teachers love Go-Givers and are very excited about using your planning and resources this year!’.

Miss Clark didn’t stop there with helping her busy colleagues.  She used the sample year group plans in the ‘Planning’ section to customise them to topics already in the calendar, such as Friendship Week and Parliament Week, when the ‘Ballot Box’ and ‘Democracy’ lesson proved popular. But Miss Clark notes that everyone knows their class best and can adapt resources themselves, for example by taking out some of the bullying aspects from ‘The Stranger’ lesson and focusing on welcoming a new person to the school. Others choose to segregate their Go-Givers usage to allotted times on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  According to Miss Clark, teaching assistants have found it particularly useful to use ready-made resources to save loads of time.

Miss Clark has found that the most effective way to engage her colleagues was not to introduce Go-Givers as something new but to demonstrate its cross-curricular potential and to be well-versed herself in the wide variety of resources so she can act as a referral for other teachers’ needs. For example, ‘Saving the Rainforest’ lesson has supported the International Primary Curriculum.

In her own Year 1 class, Miss Clark loves using her Ambassador award – a set of Go-Givers puppets! She uses them frequently in circle time to help children articulate things that are difficult to say, for instance to discuss their SEAL topic ‘Going for Goals’. Pupils talk via the puppet about what they want to get better at and then pass it around.

Miss Clark invited the Go-Givers team to run an Anti-Bullying Week assembly in November 2011. Go-Givers Programme Director Marguerite handed out paper hearts and lead the whole school through the ‘Sticks and Stones’ activity, helping children to visualise the permanent hurt caused by verbal bullying. There was a special appearance by Go-Givers characters Callum and Ahmeti! It was a treat for two Go-Givers staff to be able to see first hand the Go-Givers ethos that Miss Clark has created so effectively at her school. 

Jane James, Northleaze CE Primary School, North Somerset

Having learned about Go-Givers at a Healthy Schools meeting, one of our first Go-Givers Ambassadors, Jane James, went around to each class at the end of the academic year and used their IWB to demonstrate what was available on the Go-Givers website. The following September, the headteacher introduced it at a staff meeting and Jane launched Go-Givers more formally with the memory stick PowerPoint presentation and Go-Givers guide.  Because the school did not have an official PSHCE scheme, teachers were free to do their own planning.

In her own Year 5 class, pupils engaged with various Go-Givers topics, including diversity and cohesion. Jane selected this theme because the school is relatively racially/ethnically homogenous and she wanted to expose children to these types of differences.  She felt that there was a lot of misunderstanding from the press about immigration, about different religions and some negativity towards those from Muslim faith backgrounds. Staying true to the class charter and using the Go-Givers Ground Rules, Jane was careful to facilitate an atmosphere of respecting different viewpoints, claiming that the ‘Coming to Britain’ PowerPoint gave her guidance about how much she should intervene. The class continued with the ‘Golden Rule’ lesson, which had quite an impact on the children who realised that all religions have a common central message.

The class also used the Kindness Tree to supplement their topic by adapting the activity so that pupils could nominate their peers to be on the tree.  Pupils also drew their own personalised kindness trees with pictures of their friends and the reasons they are on the tree, such as “they cheer me up”, “they look after me” and “I know they care about me”. 

Jane tends to use entire Go-Givers lessons with their Learning Activities, even if they are extended over two or more lessons. When a topic captures the children’s interest, she is able to extend it further and fit it into pre-existing units.

Jane says Go-Givers was well received because it does make teachers’ lives easier, it is not an extra thing for busy teachers to do!  According to Jane and her colleagues, Go-Givers helps deliver cross-curricular objectives and makes PSHE less repetitive.

"Having viewed your website, I feel that the inspiration and resources available meet the target outlined on our Development Plan - develop further opportunities for understanding of different cultures and moral situations" -Go-Givers Ambassador applicant

Ruth Taylor & Janet Holden, Leading Teachers of EAL/Community Cohesion, Bury

One of the Go-Givers Ambassador major sucess stories is the outreach work of Ruth Taylor and Janet Holden, Leading Teachers of EAL/Community Cohesion in Bury, Greater Manchester.  In total, they have registered 49 new teachers between them and worked with at least 7 schools new to Go-Givers, one of which has now acheived the Go-Givers School Award.

Ruth and Janet use the training materials provided by us to give comprehensive overviews of the website in sessions with Community Cohesion Coordinators as specialist EAL teachers in the Ethnic Minority Achievement team at their central Training and Development Centre. They also work directly in schools, delivering trainings at staff meetings or delivering projects in the classroom by adapting lesson ideas/powerpoints with the children to good effect. For example, in one school, they advanced a project on children’s rights and responsibilities at the school using Go-Givers lessons to advance a school linking project already happening in that school. 

Ruth told us:

'We have just delivered a project on children's rights and responsibilities at a school and used 'The Stranger' in Year 5/6 to think about the right to be protected from discrimination, and 'You Can't Do That Here' in Year 2 when looking at the right to play. They will be delivering an assembly in January about children's rights to another primary school, with whom they were partnered with during the School Linking Network programme last year.

Become a Go-Givers Ambassador too!