Philosophy for children

Miss McSorley, one of my  relatively new members of staff and Year 2 teacher has started to trial and develop the idea of Philosophy for children in lessons. It delighted me when she approached me to say that this was something she was interested in developing as it has for some time been something that has fascinated me too.
Miss McSorley has carried out a trial set of Philosophy sessions with a small group of our Year 5s and is starting to integrate philosophical thinking into the topic planning in Key Stage 1. She accessed some weekend training last year via the P4C cooperative (Philosophy for Children) and has shared the basics of philosophy in teaching and learning with us as a staff.


P4C sums up on its website that:


The basics of philosophy for children are straightforward. Children, or older students, share some reading, listening or viewing with their teacher. The children take some thinking time to devise their own questions. They choose a question that interests them and, with the teacher's help, discuss it together. The teacher is concerned with getting children to welcome the diversity of each others' initial views and to use those as the start of a process of that involves the children questioning assumptions, developing opinions with supporting reasons, analysing significant concepts and generally applying the best reasoning and judgement they are capable of to the question they have chosen.

In the longer term, the teacher aims to build the children's skills and concepts through appropriate follow-up activities, thinking games and the orchestration of connections between philosophical discussions, life and the rest of the school curriculum.


I would like to share some images that I captured in Miss Pensom's Year 1/ 2 class which shows how philosophical thinking is starting to become an important part of children's learning in topic lessons. Here we see the children initially questioning what it would be like to live as apart of a tribe in the Rainforest. The learning also promotes wonderful, discussion and collaborative opportunities.

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING EMBEDDED INTO OUR LESSONS....