P4C (Philosophy for Children)
Mrs Savill leads our Philosophy for Children curriculum.
At Katherine Semar, P4C gives children a unique space to develop their speaking, listening and thinking skills. We use our philosophy lessons to teach oracy which is our ability to communicate effectively using spoken language. This means having the ability to:
- express yourself effectively and with confidence
- speak eloquently, articulate ideas and thoughts
- influence through talking and to listen/respond to others
- have the vocabulary to say what you want to say
- structure your thoughts so that they make sense to others These are all skills that we teach explicitly and practise in P4C.
Approaching the National Curriculum in a philosophical way means looking beneath the surface, beyond the facts, to the questions and concepts that interest children, young people and teachers. Philosophy calls on imagination and reasoning and puts these capacities to work exploring values, assumptions and vital concepts like justice, truth, knowledge and beauty. A philosophical community of enquiry provides a forum where adults and children can search for meaning together. Children become reasonable in both senses of the word — they are adept at reasoning and they are open to the reasoning of others.
“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE
We are proud to have achieved our Silver P4C School Award in 2020 and are now working towards the Gold Award.