| On Tuesday 2nd March, ASDAN re-launched its successful Stepping Stones award for primary school children, to meet the new government requirements for personal, social and health education (PSHE).
CBBC presenter Johny Pitts joined schoolchildren in Southwark to re-launch the revised Stepping Stones programme, which includes topics such as healthy eating, tobacco awareness and relationship education, and which helps prepare children for the transition to secondary school.
The Stepping Stones course gives children the chance to be rewarded for all of the amazing things they do both in AND out of the classroom that so often go unrecognised – such as helping mum and dad decorate a room at home or raising money for charity.
Stepping Stones students carry out fun challenges, covering topics such as how to live healthy lives, have happy relationships and understand about money and finances.
The course is done alongside normal school work but is very different as it puts the children in the driving seat, letting them choose which challenges they want to do, depending on their interests, without their teacher telling them what to do.
Stepping Stones helps children grow into independent, confident students while picking up really important skills like problem solving and teamwork.
ASDAN’s Stepping Stones programme has been revised to be one of the first primary school courses to meet the requirements of the new PSHE curriculum, which is likely to become compulsory in all schools from 2011.
Johny Pitts, who recently presented ‘Help! Teach Is Coming To Stay’ for BBC One, said:
“I’m bowled over by some of the projects I’ve heard about today – from working with the police on traffic speeds and road safety awareness, to getting involved in Fair Trade, to bringing together the community for a big litter tidy up. You just learn a lot about how the world works and what every single person can do towards making a difference.
It’s like I learnt when I was presenting ‘Help! Teach Is Coming To Stay’ - you should never underestimate what children can achieve!”
Here are some of the comments from pupils at Epping Upland C of E Primary School who have been trying out the course:
“Everyone thinks the challenges in Stepping Stones are really good”.
“You get to learn a lot about teamwork. We designed it together, wrote the recipe out in Literacy and did a poster in ICT. We displayed the results in a graph.”
“You learn about stuff in a fun way!”
“I really enjoy doing the Stepping Stones challenges ‘cos you can mix them up and make them more fun.”
ASDAN is an educational charity specialising in practical learning with 30 years’ experience developing courses for young people. It is one of the country’s leading skills-based accreditation bodies.
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