P4C (Philosophy for Children)

Philosophy was introduced as new subject in 2015 at Michael Drayton Junior School: all children take part in weekly philosophical discussions and are developing skills in this area as they become more used to it! Our staff are all trained to help children to develop their philosophical thinking.

The pupils share some reading, listening or viewing with their teacher and then take some thinking time to devise their own questions. They choose a question that interests them and, with the teacher's help, discuss it together. The teacher aims to get children to welcome the diversity of each other's initial views and to use those as the start of a process that encourages children to question assumptions, develop opinions with supporting reasons, analyse significant concepts and generally apply the best reasoning and judgement they can to explore the question they have chosen.

In the longer term, the children develop skills and concepts by making connections between philosophical discussions, life and the rest of the school curriculum.

If you attend your child's 'Fish and Chip Friday' lunch, you'll find philosophical questions on the tables. We hope you enjoy discussing them! We shall be running some parent workshops in philosophy next term - look out for details in the newsletter. In the mean time, please speak to Mr Plow if you have any questions or comments!