Workshops

 What percentage of your students do you think have the media literacy skills to tell if news is real or fake?

A recent UK study found that only 2% of school-aged children have the media literacy skills they need to tell if a news story is real or fake.

National Literacy Trust (UK)

Want to know more about our workshops? Check out some details of a select few of our workshops below, including lesson features, course summaries and previews.

Lesson Features:

Stage: 1 or 2, Gifted and Talented/HPGE

Workshop Type: Science/Critical and Creative Thinking

Discipline(s): Biology

Number of Parts to the Workshop: 5 parts, plus teacher resources

Course Length: 120 (Stage 2/HPGE) or 150 (Stage 1) minutes

Number of Sessions: 1 to 4

Lesson Features:

Stage: 1 or 2, Gifted and Talented/HPGE

Workshop Type: Forensic Archaeology/Critical and Creative Thinking

Discipline: Ancient History, Forensic Science

Number of Parts to the Workshop: 4 parts, plus teacher resources

Course Length: 120 (Stage 2/ HPGE) or 150 (Stage 1) minutes

Number of Sessions: 1 to 4

Lesson Features:

Stage: 2 or 3, Gifted and Talented/HPGE

Workshop Type: History/Deductive and Logical Reasoning

Discipline: Medieval History

Number of Parts to the Workshop: 6 parts plus teacher resources

Course Length: 120 (Stage 3/ HPGE) or 150 (Stage 2) minutes

Number of Sessions: 1 to 5

Jeopardy Quiz Games

Stage: 2 or 3, Gifted and Talented/HPGE

Workshop Type: Critical Thinking

Discipline: Geography, Science, History, Logic Puzzles

Number of Parts to the Workshop: 10 parts plus teacher resources

Course Length: 3 to 5 hours

Number of Sessions: 10

The Curious Case of the Hubbledy Health Crisis

Course Summary:

The year is 2100 and a delegation of an alien race - the Hubbledies - is visiting from the Sagittarius solar system. Our job is to look after one Hubbledy's health needs while they are on our planet. But it's not as easy as it sounds - they are not like humans! To diagnose and treat any diseases they might pick up we'll need to learn their unique biology and apply our best reasoning skills.

This workshop introduces students to biological concepts at age-appropriate levels, then guides them through a problem-solving paradigm to diagnose and treat their new alien friend.

Course Summary:

This resource has 10 separate Jeopardy-style quiz games and one blank template. Each board includes 5 categories with prize money of $200 to $1,000.

The resource is fantastic to use as the beginning of a new science, history or literacy unit, or as a warm-up or end-of-term activity. It offers an engaging way to grab kids' attention.

Topics span multiple disciplines and include Viking Jeopardy, Ancient Greek Jeopardy, Ancient Rome Jeopardy, Ancient Egyptian Jeopardy, Famous Scientists Jeopardy, Science Nerds Jeopardy, Famous Landmarks (Where's Waldo) Jeopardy, Brain Teaser Jeopardy, Fact or Fiction Jeopardy, Language Nerds Jeopardy.

Written in the Runes: The Mystery of Skardl

Course Summary:

Based on a Viking scenario, this forensic archeology unit introduces a fascinating ancient mystery for students to solve. Split into four parts, The Skardl Mystery is bound to engage young students. The content in this workshop plan includes;

- Engaging Viking history content

- Reasoning and informative assessment skill-based activities

- Hands-on forensic science experiments

- Coding and decoding

- A final problem-solving task to bring all newly learned skills together

Course Summary:

This workshop takes students through a step-by-step reasoning process to solve a medieval murder mystery. The lesson includes;

  • syllogisms, modus ponen and modus tollens problems

  • deductive reasoning

  • contradictive (knights and knaves) deduction and logic grids

Based on a medieval mystery scenario, students will be given evidence from a murder mystery based on a Tournament for King John, wherein the favoured Champion mysteriously dies just hours before the final event. They'll need to apply each piece of the puzzle to a logic grid make their case for the prime suspect.

Medieval Mystery - Who Killed the Champion Robert?
Jeopardy Quiz Games

What Critical Thinking Workshops offer…

Critical thinking and media literacy workshops help kids develop a lens with which they view information. Between 0 to 12 years, children receive hundreds of messages from their environment every day.

Normal developmental stages allow kids to gradually learn to recognise, understand and then later interpret and filter these messages at around 12 years.

Unfortunately, in the digital era, kids are exposed to far more content earlier and earlier, well before they have developed the skills needed to process the information they come across. This has resulted in higher levels of anxiety, social disturbances like bullying and an inability to make age-appropriate decisions based on non-age-appropriate messaging.

Research has shown that kids who receive training in media literacy and critical thought processing are better equipped to deal with media messaging, experience wellbeing benefits and show improved academic outcomes.

However teachers already have enough on their plate in an overcrowded curriculum and increasing time and knowledge demands with regard to their lesson planning. Of course, teaching kids critical thinking processes and media literacy will noticeably improve student outcomes and help teachers in everyday lessons, but without the time or resources, its simply not possible.

So, how can Well Worded help teachers, parents, students and school communities navigate an ever changing bold new world?

  • Over more than a decade working with kids on critical thinking workshops, we’ve picked up a few tips. Our workshops for teachers give practical ideas for ways they can embed media literacy and logical reasoning into their daily lesson plans without any extra work. These workshops can be done as part of staff development and are ideally paired with the Teacher Handbook (see the Resources section)

  • Kids struggle with interpreting media and messaging until high school, so the primary school years are a great time to give them extra critical thinking processes and skills. Well Worded workshops are aimed at engaging kids and sparking a desire to learn more. They are targeted to specific stage levels with hands on activities that will provide a foundation for them to filter media and problem solve both at school and in social situations.

  • Parents can play a significant role in assisting with critical thought processes and media content. Hosting a parent evening at your school can be a valuable complement to teacher and student workshops, or stand alone as part of a parent outreach program.