Philosophy for Children (P4C)

Welcome to the P4C page. All teachers are responsible for delivering P4C in their classes and our subject coordinator is Mr Bernard.

What is P4C?

P4C is a way of teaching the children who attend our school, different strategies and methods of undertaking class debate and discussion and also a way of equipping them with a variety of different skills to take part in cross-curricular lessons.

Why at Thorpe Lea?

We want the children to really engage with what they are learning and think deeply about the subject they are studying. Are they asking the right questions and can they then use the information they have learnt, to influence their thoughts and ideas further?

What skills do they learn in P4C?

• They learn to learn
• They enhance their speaking and listening
• They think about their thinking time
• They  think about taking turns and when to be patient
• They develop their conversational skills
• They have positive body language
• They develop respect for differing opinions
• They make connections with ideas and concepts
• They become more observational and develop memory skills
• They develop their questioning skills
• They are to reason more
• They reflect more
• They collaborate more
• They develop their social and emotional skills
• They improve their literacy skills
• They develop their citizenship skills

When is P4C run?

Each class has it embedded into a weekly standalone session, however, the teachers will also weave it into other lessons, taking advantage of topics where a debate/discussion really fits into the subject they are looking at.

An example of this is in Year 5, where they study the book 'Robot Girl' by Malorie Blackman and in many of the lessons, there are discussions about what it means to be a human and what would the children do if presented with a moral dilemma? In the standalone P4C session to, they were asking about whether we as a society can trust Artificial Intelligence, or not.