Lyfta impact: Lampard Community Special School

Student using Lyfta

We had the pleasure of meeting headteacher Jennie Harvey, and James Adams; the teacher leading on Lyfta, to discuss the ways in which they are using the platform and the impact they are seeing so far.

We learned more about the school which also operates in an area of high deprivation with 55% of children eligible for free school meals. The school body is almost exclusively white and the children have very little experience of the world beyond their immediate environment. Few children at the school have ever left North Devon, and many have never seen a beach, despite the school being located just 10 miles from the coast.

"Lyfta is a tool we are using to widen their horizons… so they can access the world."

JAMES

TEACHER AT LAMPARD COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Lampard has started to use Lyfta to help to broaden their students' experience of the world and different ways of living, and to support their personal development curriculum. It also supports their Empower curriculum which is 'broad and balanced and EMPOWERs students to become increasingly INDEPENDENT; to be more EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATORS; and to have EMOTIONAL WELLBEING – so that they are prepared to meet the world beyond Lampard' and where 'real-life contexts underpin everything we do.' (source: School Website).

Kicking off with Lyfta live lessons

Student using Lyfta

Lampard school began their journey with Lyfta by joining live lessons delivered by the Lyfta team. These sessions bring together classrooms and learners from across the UK for an exciting shared experience. One such live lesson took place during the Men's Football World Cup and featured the storyworld 'Eyes on the Ball' from the Kids' Cup series. Experiencing this storyworlds from Norway was the first time many of the children had heard a foreign language spoken, which in itself promoted lots of discussion.

Being part of the live lessons with other classes from a range of settings from across the UK, and seeing the diversity of classrooms and students taking part was also a huge learning opportunity. Being part of these sessions has helped expand horizons and has helped learners feel they are able to take part in a bigger community beyond their own classroom and area.

More recently students joined a live lesson in the countdown to Earth Day and have been consequently dreaming up inventions inspired by the story. Many of the students have submitted work for the #EarthDayInventor competition.

Revisiting people and places in the storyworlds

James noted how, as students become familiar with the platform and process, there has been a correlated increase in learner engagement in the classroom.

He shared how it has been particularly effective to revisit storyworlds and films multiple times. In subsequent visits, students are able to recap certain themes, explore different aspects of the spaces and films and make completely new observations. This supports findings from one of our other impact case studies from the Rivermead Inclusive Trust, where Lyfta has also been used to reinforce learning and help students understand more abstract concepts or words in a SEND context.

"The ability to return to stories in consistent ways supports students' processing subconsciously."

JAMES

TEACHER AT LAMPARD COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Using Lyfta for Personal Development

Erkan in storyworld Dogs' Best Friend

A particularly effective experience recently was an exploration of Dogs' Best Friend featuring Erkan from Turkey. Erkan lives alone and has few friends, but he has found his calling, feeding stray dogs and cats.

Some of the school's students with ASD don't have, or necessarily want, human friendships, but they very much value their connection with animals. Using this storyworld, and discussing Erkan's life, has been extremely useful to explore the theme of kindness in the world and how this doesn't just have to be human to human. Stories like this, where students can draw on similarities to their own feelings, or reflect on how they are different are very valuable.

"For some autistic young people, they might not want human friends and everyone thinks everybody must have friends in order to be happy… but although they might not get anything from human friendship – they can get it from animals.

It [seeing the storyworld] makes them feel that.. it's ok for me to feel like this. And that's what we say to them, but the wider world doesn't seem to understand that that is how autism can present."

JENNIE HARVEY

HEADTEACHER THE LAMPARD COMMUNITY SCHOOL

How Lampard have adapted the approach for the needs of their learners

Pre-teaching vocabulary and the themes that will be explored has been vital in supporting their students. This approach helps learners to focus on the experience at hand and access the materials much more effectively without distraction.

Teachers explore a vocabulary bank with students ahead of the Lyfta session and talk about the questions likely to arise from the films and spaces. This is really effective to help students know what to expect and helps prevent them becoming fixated on a certain aspect or question which can act as a barrier to learning.

The lesson builder feature on Lyfta, which enables teachers to change the questioning and prompts that appear on screen and guide the experience, means practitioners can adapt these prompts, from the existing lesson plans, with their specific class' needs.

Next steps

The school's mission and curriculum is all about providing an equitable offer. They want all learners to be able to access the same opportunities. Lyfta is providing a powerful tool in the school to help this.

As the use of the platform is further embedded across the school, the hope is that shared discussion will be sparked between students across the school. The hope is that the themes and people encountered during Lyfta sessions will be discussed in the playground and across year groups as we have seen in other schools using Lyfta.

"I'd like to see everyone accessing and talking about Lyfta."

JAMES

TEACHER AT LAMPARD COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Conclusion

This is another case study that highlights how Lyfta can support teachers in special schools to effectively broaden their students' experiences of the world and give them access to people, places and perspectives they might not otherwise be able to access. We also continue to work with teachers across different learning pathways at Swiss Cottage School Development and Research Centre and Rivermead Inclusive Learning to better understand impact and effective practice in these unique educational settings.

We are excited to see where Lampard goes next with their Lyfta journey!

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