Above: A student contributes to a handprint banner raising awareness of the contributions of members of the school community

Norwood School is a small mixed community school in South East London. Previously a girls’ school, in 2007 it took its first intake of boys and is now growing into a fully mixed comprehensive and is more representative of the lively and vibrant local area.

Aims: 
The range of projects at Norwood aimed to celebrate the range of identities represented within the school by integrating teaching and learning about diversity into a series of activities which had a high profile.
The Humanities Department at the School led a number of events related to the themes of 'Who Do We Think We Are?' Concepts of shared identity were considered as part of the theme of ‘A Welcoming Community’ and a key objective was to develop cross-curricular links involving work with the school’s own EAL (English as an Additional Language) department as well as significant links with local feeder primary schools.

Activities:
A range of activities were completed across Key Stage 2 and 3 at the school, including:

The Development of a Multilingual Prospectus
This involved recording introductions to aspects of school life in a number of community languages. The footage was initially created and then collated by the EAL department in languages including Somali, French, Arabic and Polish. This information will become available as an accessible interactive multilingual prospectus.

A Web resource for students with English as an Additional Language
In Year 10 Citizenship lessons, a number of students planned an EAL website for their GCSE coursework. In a school which welcomes 40% of its students with English as an additional language each year, the aim of the project was to provide a one-stop information resource for these new students. The project was informed by first-hand experience from a number of students who had arrived at the school themselves with little or no English. Students aimed to produce a resource for their peers where they could pass on tips which would make new students at the school feel more welcome, using the benefit of hindsight from their own experiences as new students with English as as additional language. Amongst other tips, the plan was to explain essential words and phrases, but also helpful facts about the distinct nature of lessons in the school and how this might be different to what they had been used to. Students wanted to share the experience they had gained themselves first hand, in order to ease the assimilation of newly arrived EAL students directly into the school community. 

Identity Interviews
At Key Stage three, year seven students used a year six induction day to interview younger students on the theme of identity. This followed on from a project in History where year seven had investigated the roots of the British people. The year 7 ‘experts’ were able to ask probing questions of the new inductees, at the same time as welcoming them into their new school for September.  Students were proud to share what they themselves had learned in order to make newer students feel valued for their individual diverse identities. This process certainly helped the transition into secondary school for the new year 7's.

Impact:
Students were able to use activities during the week to reflect upon their relationships to each other within the school, within the local community, and also in a wider sense upon their place in the world. Events undertaken during the week have highlighted how the school is a welcoming society, and has enabled students to reflect upon how this mirrors what they like best about British society in general. 

The week’s events were by no means the end of this project, but merely the foundations of ongoing work. In the Autumn term, interviews with year six students will be used to inform a Humanities transition unit in year seven, which all students will participate in; a cultural event is being organised by the EAL/EMA department in which the 'Who Do We Think We Are?' work will be presented, and ongoing links are being built between the children of the Norwood School and the wider community. For example, as a performing arts college, Norwood has been lucky enough to welcome local performance poets into the school, who have brought their expertise into lessons where students would not otherwise have the benefit of involvement across age groups and particularly, communities. The links built with a local primary school will also be maintained and developed, and it is hoped colleagues at Key Stage 2 will be able to make use of the materials produced through this project.

Written by Ms Syeda Ali, Head of History, The Norwood School

The multilingual prospectus and web resource described in this article and developed as part of 'Who Do We Think We Are? Week 2009 at Norwood School will be available in the autumn term.

The project described in this article was made possible by a grant awarded by the WDWTWA project. Further details about future grants available to schools can be obtained by contacting the Project Officer at wdwtwa@rgs.org.