Assemblies are a core part of the school week for lots of us – a time to join as a community, share updates, and explore topics together. Whilst teachers and SLT may often lead these sessions alone, there is great value in regularly letting the children take over! Many Picture News schools let their pupils lead news assemblies each week, using our resources to help. So, this blog shares how and why pupil-led assemblies can make a difference to your setting. Ideas for involving pupils in assemblies Passing the reins to pupils for assemblies shows them how each role and part is important in helping peers learn from the assembly topic. As a starting point, you might want to think about the different roles involved, and how you could include and rotate pupil involvement to fulfil these areas of assembly creation! · Research, Preparation and Planning To ensure a smooth-running assembly that successfully gets the message across, you’re going to need some pupils to get involved with the planning and preparation! It may be that pupils get a ‘first look’ at the Picture News pack of the week, so they can familiarise themselves with the topic, what questions and interactions they’d like to include, etc. · Presenting and Leading Think about the presenting team who will lead the assemblies. When will they rehearse? How will you support them in feeling confident to lead the session, communicating the week’s topic, and speaking clearly and respectfully? · Picture News Monitors or Pioneers You might like to assign each pupil involved in assemblies a ‘Picture News Monitor’ or ‘Pioneer’ title, showing their responsibility for helping to deliver Picture News sessions in school. Will they share Picture News stories in assembly, classroom discussions, or even extracurricular club clubs? Consider rotating these roles, involving as many children who’d like to help with assemblies as possible! Pictured: Pupils at Picture News schools running their own news sessions! What are the benefits of pupil-led assemblies? · Engagement Having their peers run assemblies is a great way to boost content engagement from pupils, both watching and presenting. It can help build interest in topic, participation, discussion and reflection from pupils as they see their peers leading and engaging with the audience. · Skill building So many skills can be nurtured from allowing children to involve themselves in assemblies. It can be a collaborative experience, building teamwork skills as pupils work together to produce an engaging and thought-provoking assembly. Workload and time management are important skills for preparing, planning/researching, and rehearsing assemblies. They can develop their confidence and self-esteem as they begin to present and participate. Active listening can be exercised as they include peers in assembly activities and listen to audience contributions. Empathy can be developed as they listen to and respond to a variety of ideas and opinions. · Inspiring peers Finally (but definitely not least!) empowering children to hold their very own assemblies is can be a fun way for them to inspire others to join in with assemblies. Their role in leading assemblies can even incentivise others, who may not have wanted to initially, to have a go too! Live events for primary children! Periodically throughout each academic year, we host online Picture News Pupil-led Assembly training sessions for Key Stage 2 children. Head to our Training and Events page here to sign up to upcoming sessions – for free! In these sessions, pupils learn how to plan, prepare and present a Picture News assembly. Training registrants also receive a pack for ‘Picture News Monitors’! Pictured: A Picture News school during Picture News Pupil-led Assembly Training for KS2.
