Crosby High and TEECH

It all started with the need to do a project around ‘Enterprise’ as part of a Rich Task or cross-curricular topic, but some of our Year 9 pupils like to do things a little differently these days.  They wanted an enterprise that was about doing something for others.  Their research led them to the TEECH shoebox appeal, and things snowballed from there, which happened to be appropriate this Christmas.

Five pupils set about collecting shoeboxes, deciding what should go in them and costing them.  That was the easy bit.  It was at this point that they realised that unless they were going to pay out of their own pockets, they would need to raise some funds to pay for the contents of the boxes.

Luckily, other pupils in Y9 had also begun enterprise projects, and they were all planning to make money by selling items for Christmas.  These generous people all volunteered to give their profits to fund the shoeboxes – it truly was their own idea.  So the whole project was brought together in a coffee morning for parents.  The parents bought the gifts and the money raised went towards the shoeboxes.

In addition, the five pupils who were working on the shoeboxes used an assembly at school to ask fellow pupils to pay a pound to take part in a mufti day.  The funds raised also went towards the shoeboxes.

In terms of their curriculum, Y9s covered areas of the Opening Minds curriculum relating to citizenship, researching information and working in teams.  They used money skills for maths, as well as sorting and estimating size – everything had to fit the boxes.

They used the Internet and other ICT skills, including making an advert for their product, which formed part of their assembly.  They developed literacy skills - writing for a purpose and presenting their project.

 All in all, they had a thoroughly good time, with the added bonus that someone was going to benefit from their hard work.

Crosby High Specialist Humanities College is an 11-16 school for pupils with multiple learning difficulties.