Schools are not just places of academic learning, they are environments in which children learn valuable life lessons and where they experience the things that will shape them as adults. Teachers and parents alike have strong views on what these lessons and experiences should be, but what do the children themselves value?
TES surveyed 2,500 primary children - from across the maintained, independent and alternative provision sectors - to find out what they believe every child should have done at school before the age of 11.
Pick up the 22 July issue of TES for a free giant poster for the classroom of the 100 things they chose, which looks like this:
And here’s the list in full:
- Call a teacher mum or dad
- Make good friends
- Tell the teacher to “chill out”
- Get covered in paint/mud/chalk
- Laugh hysterically when someone farts
- Take part in a school production
- Have a water fight
- Go swimming
- Be made to sit next to your enemy
- Forget your homework
- Have a nickname
- Do something silly and realise a teacher is standing behind you
- Laugh so much that drink comes out through your nose
- Throw a paper plane
- Fall out with a friend
- Take part in a sports tournament
- Draw a face on a rubber
- Go on a school trip
- Get a certificate
- Get told off
- Experience other schools
- Learn how to get on with everyone
- Invent something
- Make a fool out of yourself/embarrass yourself more than once
- Work with children from older year groups
- Grow some flowers or vegetables
- Fall off your chair when you swing on it
- Learn to feel confident in front of your class
- Be a leader of a group
- Feel like you can trust someone
- Raise money for charity
- Have a party in school
- Run a stall at a fair
- Teach part of a lesson to your class
- Make a best friend
- Take part in outdoor learning
- Forget you have homework until the day before it’s due
- Deal with a difficult situation
- Watch a film in class
- Have a pyjama day
- Take part in a class assembly
- Tell a joke
- Ride a bike and take cycling proficiency
- Pretend to be the teacher
- Have a huff and get in a mood
- Be in the local newspaper
- Kick the ball over a wall
- Fail so that you can improve on your mistakes
- Feel happy and safe
- Eat school chips
- Have a class pet
- Go to an after-school club
- Play “Heads Down Thumbs Up”
- Find out that you are good at something
- Find out about different cultures
- Be caring
- Discover your favourite author
- Take part in a special event
- Attend a school disco
- Create an exploding volcano
- Be part of a team
- Be inspired by a teacher
- Have a play day
- Make a card for a special person
- Fall asleep in a lesson
- Call a male teacher “Miss”
- Run round a corridor corner only to smash into a teacher
- Lose an item of clothing that does not have your name stitched into it
- Hatch chicks in an incubator
- Get to see inside the headteacher’s office
- Read a book on the grass on a sunny day
- Be kind to someone who needs a friend
- Run around in the rain
- Play conkers
- Make a daisy chain
- Listen to a ghost story
- Visit Santa in his grotto
- Go pond dipping
- Dress up for World Book Day
- Try different types of food
- Learn to skip
- Learn basic first aid and how to dial 999
- Film and edit a movie
- Have a pen pal
- Graze your knee in the playground
- Eat your lunch in the rain on a school trip
- Freak out when the fire alarm goes, secretly hoping it’s actually the real thing
- Help younger pupils at school
- Make up a dance routine in the playground
- Have your parents come to visit the school
- Get to spin on the teacher’s chair
- Be sick in the classroom
- Laugh during sexual health lessons
- Have a wasp in the classroom
- Come into school with a new haircut
- Forget to write your name on your work
- Be sad to leave
- Learn to look after yourself
- Throw a custard pie at a teacher
- Giggle
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