Life Skills

Welcome to Life Skills

At Aberdare Girls’ School we have introduced a new Competence and Skills Curriculum for pupils in years 7 & 8.  In these lessons we are trying to focus the pupils on developing life skills as well as achieving academic progress and success. 

With regard to the Competences we focus on developing pupils to:

●       Be good citizens – having respect and consideration for themselves, their community and the world at large.

●       Manage their learning – learning how to learn for themselves.  Giving pupils the skills to research, develop and evaluate their own work and the work of others.

●       Manage information – giving pupils the skills and confidence to sift through information to choose the most relevant and useful information.

●       Manage people – being able to work with others, to take a role within a team and to be supportive of those around them.  We consider mutual respect and general manners and acceptable behaviour.

●       Managing situations - being able to cope with success and failure.  Helping pupils to make the right decisions and choose the best course of action.

We also want our pupils to be equipped with all the relevant skills that are required in life.  Many of these skills are transferable between different tasks and circumstances.

●       We look at Key skills such as problem solving, numeracy and literacy. 

●       We set challenges to help develop their thinking skills. 

●       We enable the pupils to develop their ICT skills. 

●       We look at general life skills such as financial literacy, ethics and voluntary work. 

●       And throughout the process we work on developing self-esteem and confidence.

Throughout each term pupils follow a specific theme.  In Year 7 the themes are Community, Fair Play and Celebration.  In Year 8 the themes are Money, Money, Money, What’s Occurring? and Wales Forever.

Pupils are taught by 4 teachers and each class covers exactly the same work – however the outcomes could be, and usually are, very different. 

There are elements from different subjects incorporated into the programme of study and the pupils are encouraged to realise the importance of transferring the skills and competences into all areas of their studies.

Throughout the year pupils log their achievements in different competences and skills to see where the greatest improvements have been made.  At the end of the year internal school certificates are awarded and these should be retained in the Pupil Progress Files.  The log will also help identify any areas that need improvement and these can be set as targets for year 8. 

Parents will have an update of progress in the year 7 & 8 reports at the end of the summer term.

At the end of year 7 the pupils celebrate their achievements by putting on a presentation of work for parents and also for the year 6 pupils coming into the school the following September.