An update

[Peter Muir]

Here at Discovery College we have a small group of students working through the Award.  They have been involved in working with others since the latter stages of last year, and how some recent presentations on Understanding others.  Some interesting discussion was presented and discussed.  Knowing that the students involved were busy every lunchtime with other clubs, music lessons, sport team training, I have tried to reduce face-to-face meeting time by putting greater emphasis to online discussions on the IGC Award site on our school moodle platform.  When the students do contribute, it has provided some fruitful discussions.  I do need to remind them to be active in the online forum (much like I need reminding to contribute here....).  I like the way that it complements our face-to-face meetings.
I'm currently in discussions with our Head of Humanities to tie in some of the units in Year 8 or 9 with the content of IGC.  Some of the units they are already doing fits in nicely with IGC Award content. With only a little tweaking, the units will be more in line with the award without compromising subject aims.  We want to do this to get more kids involved - I've found that many are simply too busy!  There will, of course, still be a need to complete activities outside of these humanities units.  All should be ready to kick off next August.