Cathy Flynn, Early Years Advisory Teacher, takes a look at how Rachel Atwood from St Barnabas School has used Digitalbrain polls as part of the PSHE programme.

Digitalbrain – using polls in PHSE

Would you like to find out pupils’ views on particular issues, but not sure that the ‘hands up’ method always gives you accurate or true responses?  Then the potential of the poll facility in Digitalbrain could provide the answer you are looking for. 

Using Digitalbrain to create a poll gives you an opportunity to collect information about general trends or find out views from teachers or pupils, anonymously.  You can create a poll about a particular issue or topic (for example healthy eating, bullying, school council issues) to which pupils can then select their responses from a given list.  The responses from everyone who has completed the poll are automatically collated and presented as percentage responses, without identifying individuals.  An example of the way responses are presented from a question in a poll about bullying is shown below:

One teacher who has used Digitalbrain polls successfully in the curriculum is Rachel Atwood from St Barnabas. As part of a PHSE discussion about friendship and social issues with her Year 3 class, Rachel wanted to find out how the pupils felt about the friendships they had developed and how their understanding of bullying had developed during the lessons.

In planning the activity Rachel thought that creating a poll for the pupils to complete would be a really effective way of gaining honest feedback from the pupils as their responses would not be identified individually, but presented as a whole group.  She thought that the presentation of the responses in this way also would allow them to be shown to the whole class without being personal and would enable her to discuss problem areas if they arose.  She created a poll consisting of seven questions each with a range of possible responses, and for some questions, an opportunity for pupils to select more than one response if they applied.

Having successfully completed the poll for one class and discussed the responses, the teachers at the school are now considering creating another poll for Key Stage 2 or possibly the whole school on PHSE.  They are also considering creating a poll about what the pupils think about their school for use in their SEF form.  Rachel felt that the success of using the poll facility was that “It is a great way of really finding things out anonymously!”

If you are feeling inspired and thinking about creating polls in Digitalbrain, links to Digitalbrain help files about creating polls can be found by logging in to Digitalbrain, clicking on help > contents > staff > Discussions and Polls  > How to create an online poll.  To make the poll accessible for pupils you will need to ensure it is placed in the school Digitalbrain webspace, rather than staff webspace, as children would not be able to access it from there.