This activity was used with children in key stage 1, year 2.

Context

The school population includes pupils from a wide range of minority ethnic backgrounds. There are no significant differences in the achievements of the different groups; with the exception that pupils who are at the early stages of learning English do not perform as well as others. With the appropriate help, however, they have been making rapid progress.

The headteacher and staff in this primary school have a strong commitment to equal opportunities. The English policy not only refers to the need for materials that offer positive role models for all pupils, but also discusses building pupils' confidence so that they can express opinions freely and respond to other people's opinions appropriately.

The school encourages pupils to recognise the diversity of language, and to respect those whose language, dialect and accents are different from their own. The headteacher firmly believes that all pupils should have the confidence to talk about issues such as racism, stereotyping and cultural difference. Opportunities for doing so are, therefore, built into the curriculum across the key stages as well as into whole-school activities such as assemblies.

Aims

• To provide a wide variety of quality reading materials, including materials that offer positive role models, value diversity and promote discussions about issues concerning, for example, gender, race and disability (an aim taken from the school's English policy).
• To plan work that builds on the children's interests and cultural experiences.

Activity objectives

• To look at information texts with particular themes, specifically, 'People who care for others'.
• To summarise a shared reading text, using language to structure a sequence of events.
• To make a class book about Mary Seacole and share this in a school assembly.

The relevant literacy strategy objectives are:

• identify and discuss reasons for events in stories, linked to plot (year 2, term 1, text 5);
• use language of time to structure a sequence of events (year 2, term 1, text 11).

Activity description

A whole-school assembly was used to introduce the theme of 'caring and sharing': the school's focus for the following half-term. The headteacher told the story of Mary Seacole, the black nurse who travelled to the Crimea at her own expense to help care for soldiers who were sick or wounded.

Afterwards, the class used the story of Mary Seacole's life as the basis for further literacy work. During a literacy hour, the children shared a text about the life of Mary Seacole. This led to a lively discussion about her earlier life, her desire to care for soldiers and her subsequent rejection by the British Army. They learnt about how the soldiers she looked after appreciated her courage and kindness, and also of her eventual death: sad, forgotten and alone.

Guided by the teacher, the class then worked together to identify and summarise the main events of Mary Seacole's life. Subsequently, in small groups, the children discussed and agreed appropriate illustrations for the selected events.

In the plenary, after the pictures had been finished, they once again recounted the story of Mary Seacole and explained why they had chosen particular images to highlight aspects of Mary Seacole's life. They produced a class book of their work, which was presented to the whole school during assembly.

Commentary

This second assembly provided an opportunity for the children to raise difficult issues. One child, after hearing the children's presentation of the story, asked: 'Why didn’t they want black nurses?' The headteacher, who was leading the assembly, talked about how black people in the past had often experienced rejection and that this was totally unacceptable.

The curriculum development work originated several years previously when the school recognised that its black Caribbean pupils were underachieving. A unit of work on black scientists was created and had a significant impact not only on black pupils' achievements in science, but also on their parents' willingness to engage more fully with the life of the school.

The school has now broadened this work and has outlined links between work on Mary Seacole and the National Literacy Strategy and history (see spider diagram, right). At the request of a parent, materials celebrating the achievements of people of mixed heritage have also recently been developed (Mary Seacole, for example, was herself born into a dual heritage, with a Scottish father and Jamaican mother).

Points to note

The text used for the work on Mary Seacole was drawn from resources developed by the school in partnership with the LEA's African-Caribbean attainment project. The folder of resources, entitled 'Inspirational Peoples and Texts from African Heritage in the Primary Curriculum', includes the biography of Mary Seacole, as well as those of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Aesop and Lewis Latimer.

The school continues to add new materials to its resource pack on 'Inspirational Peoples and Texts from African Heritage', and is working on a similar resource bank that celebrates the achievements of people of Asian heritage.