The Darwin Growth Curriculum - Our Darwin Values and Our Darwin Awards

Every child in the Severn Bridges Trust experiences our Darwin Growth Curriculum. The Trust aim is to ensure every child reaches the highest academic standards they are capable of alongside providing the opportunity to grow, develop and evolve into citizens of the future. Severn Bridges Multi-Academy Trust has developed its curriculum to promote the essential skills children can apply in a range of ways in school to help develop perseverance, resilience and ability to meet new challenges.

The Curriculum is supported by the Darwin Values Award where children are encouraged to build the values in life that support all the experiences they meet in school and as they approach the transition to Secondary School. The Trust has developed a set of characters that epitomise in a child friendly way, the values children need to employ in school. The table below shows how each character represents the skills the children will need. The Award also promotes the British Values taught within the curriculum. 

Each half term we focus on one Darwin Value. During the first week of that half term children will participate in a Darwin activity. Mrs. Benge launches this activity during a whole school assembly and children spend time in classes thinking about the value and completing the activity with their friends.

Our Darwin Value for this half term is Bouncebackability

To introduce our Darwin Value Mrs Benge shared a story in assembly...

Rosie Revere Engineer

Young Rosie is confident and creative but gets hurt when well-meaning adults laugh at her inventions.
Once she learns that mishaps on the road to invention don't mean she's a failure, she regains her belief in herself and is back at work, building gadgets and gizmos and following her dream to be "a great engineer." 

This story is a great example of Rosie showing 'bouncebackability' and our children also showed this when they became 'great engineers' too.

Our Darwin Value for this half term is Empathability

Our Darwin Value for the first Autumn half term was Changeability

Mrs Benge introduced the first Darwin Value of the year - Changeability. She talked about how change can affect us all differently and the fact that we have all gone through a lot of change already, especially over the last two years. She read the story ‘The Secret Sky Garden’ in which the main character makes a change that brings a lot of joy and positivity.  We talked about how Funni felt and why the change was needed.

After the story every child in school created a flower each and we have created a beautiful garden display in the hall.

This display is emphasising how making changes that can bring joy to others and make a positive impact. 

Our Darwin Awards

The award is about teaching children to care for themselves and each other, to learn to care for the school and local community and respect the global environment.

It gives children the opportunity to develop and evolve into citizens of the future.

The award is split into the following categories;

Volunteering

Physical

New skills

Residential, Expedition and Environment

Community and Charity

Personal Skills and Future Wellbeing

As each child progresses through school they will move on to different levels of the award, these are:

Penguin Award  -  Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception)

Iguana Award  -  KS1 (Year 1 and Year 2)

Galapagos Award  -  Years 3/4

Beagle Award  -  Year 5

Bronze/Silver/Gold  -  Year 6

At the end of each level the children will be presented with a prize and a certificate.

Children will bring their prize home and their certificate will go in their Darwin Values portfolio which they will add to throughout their journey through school. At the end of Year 6 they will be presented with their portfolio before moving to Secondary School.

Below are a copy of each tick list your child can work through during that school year to achieve the award. Children need to complete the majority of the objectives to allow them to achieve the award.

Some of the criteria are things that can achieve at home. Its great to hear and see what children have been up to and what they are doing to work towards their Darwin's award so please send in photographs to your child's class email address. 

Photographs will be added to their Darwin awards portfolio.

Some examples might include...

- litter picking in the local community.

- Fundraising for or raising awareness of a charity.

- Caring for a sibling or a relative.

- Attending an out of school sports club or achieving a prize/certificate whilst attending this club.

- Learning a new skill at an out of school club.