Designing TV!

My name is Jo and I am a special needs teacher at the West SILC (Specialist, Inclusive, Learning Centre) in Leeds. I feel it is really important that our students have the opportunity to engage in as many different activities and experiences as possible and so I applied for a team of our students to attend the BBC Outreach & CBBC Schools Challenge event at the Leeds City Museum. I wasn’t sure what would be involved but knew our students would enjoy it if it had anything to do with television!

I was very pleased when I found out our school was one of the ones chosen to attend the event on 26th June. I got in touch with Nicola Crowther (Senior Project Manager at BBC Outreach) to explain that all of our students had a statement of SEN (Special Educational Needs) and would need extra support on the day. Nicola was very helpful in explaining how the day would work and to let us know that we would have additional support from BBC volunteers throughout.

I told the chosen group of students that they were going to a BBC event and they were very excited and couldn’t wait for the day to arrive.

On the day itself we turned up at the Museum and things did seem a little bit daunting at first as there were lots of other teams there. We had a designated table to sit at, were given refreshments and then got started with a questionnaire about our favourite TV programmes.

Nicola started the day by explaining the objectives for the event and by introducing all the different BBC staff who were there to help the schools. We were told that for the purposes of the Challenge we were part of the CBBC creative development department and our job for the day was to come up with a fantastic new idea for a CBBC TV programme (plus online feature for the website). We had lots of different tasks to complete as part of the Challenge but luckily we had Dan Flint from BBC Children’s there to help us. The first thing we did was come up with a team name - ‘The West SILC Superstars’. Next we had to choose a genre and a target audience for our programme and we decided on a sport/science theme and called it the 'Sweaty Sporty Family Challenge'. The students were keen for the show to involve the whole family competing in a sport against another family (and of course getting sweaty in the process – hence the name!).

We worked together to create a visual representation of our idea and then to pitch our idea to the CBBC Dragons (like Dragons’ Den). I helped some of our team to present on the stage and I have to admit that even I was nervous! The Dragons were impressed with our idea (especially the name) and gave us some really good feedback. One of our students received a special award for being an ‘Outstanding Individual’ – it made his day and he was very pleased with himself - and all of the pupils were given a certificate for taking part.

It was a fantastic day and I was really proud of our students. They all said how much they had enjoyed themselves and we celebrated what they had achieved in our school assembly.

It was an amazing experience for our students to be involved in and beneficial to them in lots of ways but particularly for their social skills, self-esteem and team work. I have to say a big thank you to the staff from the BBC (particularly Dan and Nicola) for including us in the day and being so helpful and accommodating.

*BBC Outreach works with communities and provides volunteering opportunities for BBC employees. During this event fifteen teams of pupils from schools across Leeds were given the opportunity to become members of the CBBC creative development department for the day. The Challenge involved several key tasks, from choosing job roles at the outset, to pitching their ideas to CBBC ‘Dragons’ at the end. The feedback from all those involved was extremely positive and the winning team have been invited to attend a special preview screening of a CBBC show during the summer.