Updating our lessons to stay up to date

In the world of RSE/RSHE, things are adapting and changing so quickly with new topics and concepts surfacing every week. We have taken the opportunity over the summer holidays to make 6 major updates to all our 140 lessons in the Life Lessons Library. These are the 1 hour lessons that make up our spiral curriculum of lessons that meet your school’s statutory requirements for RSHE.

You can find all lessons linked from the curriculum document or within the Life Lessons platform. Here are the 6 updates that PSHE leads and teachers of RSHE need to know.

Update 1: Improved teacher guidance

Our teacher notes, designed to be read before delivering the lesson, now have a new format. We have included a new key icon which indicates that the slides with this icon have important information. If you are running out of time to deliver a lesson you can just focus on the key slides. This is helpful if you have to condense a lesson into a 30 minute tutorial time. 

Update 2: Updates to optimise classroom discussion

While discussion is essential during RSE lessons, often the conversation is cut short due to time. Our lessons now have fewer videos and in some cases we have split longer lessons into two parts to create space for vital  discussions during the lesson.

We have also updated our reflection slides with specific questions linking to the discussion that follows. The improved reflection slide structure supports behaviour by allowing students to focus ons pecific questions in silence before partaking in the discussion. 

Update 3: Updates to help teachers manage classroom behaviour

We have updated all our lessons to include a “ground rules” slide which can be updated or replaced with your own school’s version. Our discussion and video slides also now include a “respect” icon designed to remind students to consider the guidelines and respect each other, their teacher and the people they see in the peer-led videos. 

Update 4: Updates for focus and pupil outcomes

Our lessons now include printable activities sheets which are useful for all learners, especially SEN and EAL students. They can also be useful if a supply teacher is delivering the lesson for additional support or structure.

Every lesson now includes an “Objectives” slide for students to understand what topic they are learning about and the skills they will be working on. Additionally, each lesson starts with a “Do Now” slide and ends with a “Review” slide. 

Update 5: Refreshed activities

Our lesson activities have been refreshed with new creative ideas and a much nicer look. Faces of the young people from our videos are carried throughout and we have provided more scaffolding of tasks through sentence starters and examples. 

Update 6: Improved planning and transparency

The final updates are centered around helping with your planning for any potential Ofsted inspections. On the curriculum overview document you can see a lot of additional lessons across most year groups. By clicking onto the year groups tab you can see a detailed breakdown of each lesson including:

  • Including objectives and outcomes
  • A breakdown of discussion questions and videos featured in the lesson
  • A diversity flag – useful for faith based settings

Future Updates

We won’t be making other major updates to the 1 hour statutory lesson library again this academic year so you can safely adopt these changes without fear of more lesson changes coming.

There are other updates in the pipeline but they won’t affect lesson format. Watch this space!

Finally, please let us know your feedback so we can continue to develop our materials in line with what works for you and your pupils. Email your feedback to support@lifelessons.co.uk