Newsletter May 2009
Contents
Welcome
NEW Online shop
From good to outstanding
NEW Insight series
Raising money for charity
Spring sale
Register With Us
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 Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter
We are pleased to highlight the new in this newsletter - new online shop, new resources, and a new regular feature on sharing good practice with VisionWorks. Let us know your experiences so that we can share them with everyone else. We are confident you will be pleased when you include our materials in your planning for September.
Best wishes,
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NEW Online shop
You can now buy all of our programmes and other useful
resources for lessons and assemblies online. We are constantly updating and
adding to our product range, so it is worth a regular visit to the website and
shop.
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From good to outstanding
 Great news! Our longest standing pilot school, The Corsham
School in Wiltshire was outstanding in its recent OFSTED report. We are
particularly excited by the Grade 1 for Personal development and wellbeing
as this is the school that has been trialling VisionWorks for 6 years.
The report tells us "Students are open, friendly, welcoming
to visitors and excellent ambassadors for their school. They develop
exceedingly well spiritually, morally, socially and culturally, as exhibited by
their thoughtful responses in discussions and their considerate attitudes
towards each other and adults. Racial intolerance and bullying are rare. "
Student evaluations indicate that VisionWorks
effectively engages them in reflecting on their feelings and developing their
ability to handle stressful and difficult social issues. 95% of Year 7 students
think that VisionWorks helps them make friends and helps them recognise and
deal with their feelings.
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NEW Insight series
The Insight series is a collection of short programmes, each
4 - 6 units, designed to help students explore key is sues. Titles currently
available are:
- Managing
Emotions
- Bullying
- Communication
- Peer
pressure
- Family
break-up
These programmes come with full teachers' notes and can be
used in tutor time or as part of PHSE lessons. They offer a flexible modular
way of introducing meaningful solutions to key issues. New titles will be added
to this list so keep visiting us at www.vision-works.net
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Sharing good practice: Raising money for charity
As a Year Learning manager, I wanted to reinforce the
principles my students were learning in VisionWorks. I set eight tutor groups a
challenge: for each group to raise a hundred pounds for charity in a year. They
could do it any way they liked.
I
wanted to encourage the students to look beyond themselves. It wasn't just
about seeing others worse off than themselves but realising they could make a
difference. And I wanted them to see the power of collaboration and goal
setting.
The ensuing months saw cake sales, sponsored silences, car
washing, sponsored fun-runs - you name it and the students were doing it. They
all did something as a whole group but many students were raising money in
small groups both at school and at home.
After group discussions and suggestions, students voted for
the charity they wanted to support. They chose Cancer Research. We kept a
totaliser in the hall. Every week in assembly we looked at our progress. The
moment we passed our target was a great one but no one realised this was to be
less than a third of our total.
We raised not £800 as I had hoped, but £3,000. And the
combination of VisionWorks and charity work had shifted the ethos of the year
group.
Janet Grant
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Final week of our
spring sale
Act NOW to take advantage of our 50% sale that ends April
30. You can buy the KS2 programmeMy World for only £250. Discovering Me, the programme for PRUs, costs £375 until 30 April. Full details are on
our shop.
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Register with VisionWorks
If
you haven't already registered you're missing out on a host of downloadable
resources, assembly ideas and sample modules from our programmes. Register at www.vision-works.net
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If you'd like to find out how VisionWorks could work for you call Sue Allen or Ruthie Alexander Morgan on 01249 409001, email sue@vision-works net or ruthie@vision-works.net or visit our website www.vision-works.net
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