Pick a card, any card...

In the schools we have visited, staff have been really enthusiastic about the ‘summiteer skills’ and all agree on the value in teaching them. The problem is, that with a full curriculum, they don’t always have time to deliver the summiteer skill lessons. This has really played on our minds, as we truly believe that children benefit hugely from practising these skills. As a result, we have been trying to come up with a viable solution which overcomes this time barrier.

As with all the best ideas, the answer presented itself after a few glasses of wine on Christmas day (always got our Steps 2 Summit heads on!) A little set of novelty crackers which contained riddles, jokes and conversation starters got us thinking.

What if we could use something similar in the classroom as a way of explicitly teaching our summiteer skills? A teacher could simply whip out a card at any point of the day, read it to the children (without previously having seen it) and do it! It would need to be resource and preparation free, yet still give children a purposeful discussion/task to explore that skill. How hard could it be?

It turns out, quite hard! We won’t bore you with the details but the outcome is a pack of 52 cards for kS1 and another pack for kS2.

• There are 6 cards for each of the 8 summiteer skills.
• There are 4 Joker cards which give you the opportunity to get outside and add to your journey up the mountain.
• They require no resources.
• They require no preparation.
• They can be done in any setting.
• They can be used at any time of the day or year.

You’re welcome! We’re going for a lie down now; our work here is done!