KEY INFORMATION

Recommended age group: 11–16. Select the questions to suit your students’ abilities.
Time required: approx. 30 minutes per topic but content and delivery ideas can be adapted to suit the available time.
Equipment: presentation – show each question as a slide or write it on a whiteboard/flipchart.


ACTIVITY IDEA

Use each Thought for the Day question to stimulate discussion on a topic that makes links across the three Think Real themes of fuel, recover and build healthy habits.

There are six topics:

  • What does it mean to be healthy? This explores perception of health amongst young people, the media and wider society. Students are encouraged to question assumptions and consider what they might wish to change about their own or others perceptions of ‘being healthy’.
  • #GetSetThinkReal How could social media help us to build healthy habits? This explores how students’ habits are influenced by social media and how they could harness social media to promote positive messages about health.
  • What makes a less-stressed school? This explores some of the pressures that both students and staff experience in school and how they could be changed or managed to reduce levels of stress.
  • How can everyone enjoy sport? This explores equality and inclusion and considers how different groups of people can be included in sport. Some students may also wish to explore cheating in sport.
  • When does the winning drive go too far? This explores the positive and negative aspects of ambition and considers how to re-harness that drive when behaviours become unhealthy.
  • To what extent is cheating an individual or collective responsibility? This has been offered as an advanced option with a more formal debating structure, e.g. a courtroom-style trial. It explores cheating in sport and in life.

Each is accompanied by ideas for scaffolding the discussion. These appear in the notes section of each slide. These suggestions follow the structure in the Think Real lessons:

  • Warm up: helps students to define the topic.
  • Explore: helps students to recognise potential scenarios relating to the topic.
  • Challenge: asks students to solve problems relating to the topic.
  • Cool down: asks students to identify options for their own lives – in and out of school.

MAKE IT ACTIVE

The scaffolding ideas encourage students to work in pairs and small groups within a larger group and suggest ways to make discussions less sedentary. The introductory slide notes also provide suggestions for active student-grouping methods.  

Thought for the Day could be used in whole school, house and year group assemblies or during form time. It supports schools to adopt a whole school approach to the Think Real campaign.