There are a myriad of ways in which Lyfta can be adapted and used with young people, and these are just a small selection of examples. You know your students the best and should modify, adapt and differentiate any of these examples to meet the needs of your young learners.
We encourage you to adapt the lessons to suit the age and needs of your students. All Lyfta lesson plans can be edited if you have a premium subscription.
Key Stage 3 (Ages 11 - 13)
Theme: World Mental Health Day
Assembly: Emotional wellbeing
Activities: Year group 7. Each class went through the assembly. Teachers led discussion about Hanna’s job, stress and how she deals with tiredness. Classes discussed how everyone could look after their own mental health. Students then independently explored the rest of the storyworld on their laptops.
Impact: Students were engaged throughout and loved exploring the Opera storyworld. They had lots of ideas about how to look after their mental health. They enjoyed the independence of exploring and discovering at their own pace.
Theme: Perseverance and Citizenship - Tutor Time
Assembly: Finding your voice, Resilience and Adaptability and Celebrating Diversity
Activities: Year group 7-9 (and staff). An assembly followed by a series of weekly sessions designed to explore perseverance and resilience (online, during lockdown).
Impact: Although designed for students, staff also ended up participating in the activities and sharing their stories too. Habiba’s story had a particular impact, alongside ‘perseverance’ stories selected from outside of Lyfta.
Theme: Food Around the World - Spanish Class
Storyworld series: Dinnertime 360
Activities: Year groups 8-9. Students created sentences in Spanish and matched pre-taught vocabulary. Students then independently explored the 360 world with a question worksheet in Spanish as a guide. The lesson ended with reflections in English.
Impact: Students particularly enjoyed it when they were able to explore the storyworlds independently. They reflected upon what it must be like to have dinner in a home with an unfamiliar language and this led to discussion about important world issues, linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Theme: Stereotypes and Gender Roles - School-wide assembly and PSHE lessons in class
Assembly: Challenging Stereotypes
Activities: Year groups 7-10. After a whole school assembly, teachers in PSHE classrooms used Michal’s story to lead discussions around gender, misconceptions and explore stereotyping more generally.
Impact: All sessions were well received by students. Through the assembly discussion students were able to see a wider point of view. This led to an interesting discussion about the role of media perpetuating stereotypes in PSHE lessons.
Key Stage 4
When using Lyfta at such a pivotal and important Key Stage, we understand that the value is to embed and reinforce knowledge for our oldest Key Stage 2 learners. In order to balance and support young people, we encourage practitioners to use the platform in any way that can support young people’s metacognition, memory recall and long-term embedding of memory.
For example, if your students are studying the History of Medicine, perhaps a visit to a medical centre in Ethiopia will reinforce some key vocabulary and concepts. Other instances of using Lyfta for supporting Key Stage 4 work is referenced below:
Lesson sequence: Geography
Summary: Reinforcing understandings of extreme weather and natural disasters.
Lesson sequence: English
Summary: Allowing students to practise different types of analytical writing in English class, such as writing to argue, writing to persuade, writing to inform and writing to explain as well as creative writing.
Lesson: Inference skills
Summary: Denmark and Brazil. Give students real-world examples of how to make inferences and synthesise information.
Lyfta Time: #48 Marja-Leena in Finland
Summary: Finland. Meet jewellery maker Marja-Leena and learn about how she has turned a passion into a career. Support social and emotional literacy by discussing one’s passions and exploring the link to careers.
Storyworld: Finance Office
Summary: Ethiopia. Enter the financial centre of the community and find out if the village cooperative is in debt or makes money. Discover how the community decides to distribute any profits. Learn about financial responsibility and the importance of managing money.
Summary: A video of one of our PSHE practitioners discussing how valuable Lyfta has been, as well as a link to download our PSHE scheme of work.