Examples & Case-studies » Schools & Young People
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Overview

Ketso is being used in schools from primary level to independent work in sixth form projects. It is also being used to engage with disengaged youth in learning and skills programmes outside of school.

This section includes:

The use of Ketso for supporting student with learning disabilites is described here.

You may also wish to look at the work that Widening Participation teams in Universities across the country have been doing using the Ketso kit to engage with pupils schools across the UK. Click here.

Introduction to Ketso in Schools

The Ketso team has worked with a range of schools, including Abraham Moss in Manchester (workshops around sustainability for Geography Key Stage 4) and in schools across Harrogate area, where teams of students used Ketsos in the AMP competition  to develop entrepreneurial ideas for raising money for Water Aid.

At Bouroughbridge High School, we have run two workshops around Study Skills, for GCSE and A Level students. This introduced students to key skills and resulted in teams of students producing posters to display what can be done to help them learn.

Ketso has been used as a revision aid in teaching in University classrooms, and has a great potential for interactive revision in schools.

Planning extended projects

Students have found this workshop plan for developing a dissertation or extended project useful in their independent work- as evidenced in the following quotes:

"Ketso really helped me to organise my extended project - it put everything into perspective and made me realise how focused my topic and research must be. It was great to see all of my ideas and resources listed in front of me and to be able to move them around to create more structure. It also really helped to hear other people's views on my thoughts and ideas - it gave me new insight into perspectives I would never have considered before. My project now has a very clear direction and I will continue to use Ketso throughout the year to evaluate my progress and ensure that I stay on track."   Shannon Bird, A level student

"I found the Ketso workshop to be very useful in helping me plan my dissertation. I had never been to a Ketso workshop and only had a brief idea of what it was, but as the workshop progressed, the results that I got from my own ideas and my peers' help were amazing. Before the workshop I had only had the title of my dissertation, minimal planning research and very little idea of what to include. Kesto helped me map out how to start my dissertation, different topics and subtitles that could be included in the project and also the draw-backs that could minimise the reliability of my work and research. Personally, the workshop helped me immensely in planning my work, and gave me a clear direction for my project. I would greatly recommend the Ketso kit as well as the workshop to anyone." Vanessa Nhara, A level student

Working with disengaged young people

Katie Stevens, Health and Well Being Project Manager at Groundwork South West

Groundwork South West have been working with young people aged 15-16years old who have been excluded from school following bad behaviour or low attendance. The children attend a Youth Centre 4 days a week and partake in lessons in which the children will gain the equivalent of 4 G.C.S.E’s. Groundwork South West are delivering the community aspect of their work, focusing on the key skill of ‘working with others’. The young people struggle to focus on an activity for a length of time and find it difficult to engage with the adults teaching them to put their point across in a non aggressive way.

We have used the Ketso Kits with the young people to highlight their thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of attending the programme. They were also asked to put down challenges that they thought would hinder their attendance or behaviour on the programme, and then discussed ways of overcoming these challenges. Using the Ketso Kit as a tool for this activity was useful in engaging with the young people and allowing them to write down ideas that they may find difficult to voice in a group situation. The activity was useful for the young people to understand their peers’ views on how they were feeling about the programme.

Ketso in personal tutoring

Ketso has been used in personal tutoring to great effect. In one example, the young boy is a reluctant writer. Normally the tutor writes down his ideas so that they can carry on the discussion, otherwise he loses concentration.  With the ketso kit, he loved writing down initial ideas under headings the tutor had determined and set out on the branches, This enabled a critical discussion of the novel as well as the tutee being able to see links between the topics.

The pupil said he enjoyed the session, especially being able to move around the table and not being stuck rigidly in a chair. As this student is better at explaining ideas orally, he was able to use this skill as well as writing using Ketso. He even asked for an extra tutoring session to complete the Ketso. He said that it felt like it was valuable work, compared to when he does similar work on sugar paper, that just gets thrown away at the end. The Ketso ideas felt more permanent.

The tutor commented:
“With Ketso I have just had the most productive and positive tutoring session ever.” Claire Mahony

Ketso with primary school children

Ketso has successfully been used in widening participation activities at the University of Manchester with year 6 primary school children. Following a tour of the campus, the children worked with Student Ambassadors using Ketso to explore the following questions:

  • What do you already know about being a student? (What is good about being a student)
  • What’s negative about being a student?
  • The students swapped tables to develop solutions to each others' problems.

The themes covered were:

  • Social opportunities/making friends
  • Studying
  • Living
  • Jobs/careers/future

Examples of the problems and solutions developed included:

  • Partying too much and losing all your food money - Meet people other ways than just parties
  • Having no friends - Because there are so many people you will make friends; Be yourself, go to lots of clubs
  • Not getting the job you want - You don’t need to keep it forever and you can just keep looking.
  • Getting lost - Ask a teacher or an experienced student
  • Money and debt - Save up, get p/t job, spend money wisely
  • Getting lost - use a map, choose smaller Uni
  • Scared of cooking for self - Cookery lessons

Written feedback from the students was very positive – with all of the students saying ticking ‘liked’ or ‘liked a lot’ for using Ketso.

Whilst using Ketso with primary school children is a new area for us, we feel it has a great potential, as suggested by the following quote:

"Ketso is  a highly versatile, visually appealing and engaging resource for schools. The colourful and tactile nature of the kit makes it very attractive for children of all abilities and ages. As well as being used by teachers with their classes across a range of curriculum areas and situations, e.g. Literacy, Geography, Science, PSHCE, project and group work, revision exercises etc, it could also be used by the school for staff meetings and INSET days, therefore providing value for money from a kit.  I would highly recommend it for the primary age range." Deborah Wetherall, Primary School Teacher