Living and Learning: Body image and compliments
Using two volunteers, we began our lesson with a question:
Who looks the best?
This question initiated a class debate.
- ‘They both look good.’
- ‘They have different qualities.’
- ‘It doesn’t matter what they look like.’
- ‘It’s what’s inside that is more important.’
- ‘Each person is unique.’
Since body image can be linked to a person’s self-esteem, teaching children to love their body is crucial to promoting a happy and positive attitude towards life. Body image describes our idea of how our body looks and how we think it is perceived by others. This can include our thoughts and feelings about our height, weight, shape, skin, colour, and our appearance and attractiveness.
- ‘Body image is how people see you.’ – Sakina
- ‘Body image means that we are all different.’ – Priya
- ‘People comment on clothes and skin colours.’ – Emma
- ‘I think body image is the shape or form of your body.’ – Harris
The class discussed that body image often focuses on the external aspect, specifically the way we look.
Following this, the children were asked to focus on their own talents. Every one of us has a gift or passion for something. Recognising and enhancing that passion or talent is important.
This led us to thinking about how it feels to receive a compliment. The children offered positive remarks to each other. We then discussed how it felt to hear these.
In our classroom, we have some compliment slips and it’s great to see the children using them.
Orienteering
Healthy, energetic, fun, challenging, active, entertaining and satisfying are just a few of the words Year 4 used to describe their orienteering experie
nce this week.
It was great to work in the new park which is right next to our school. The children were given several different maps and had to use these to navigate around the site.
When we got back to school, the class nominated members of their teams for golden tickets.
‘I’d like to nominate…
- …Jemima because she supported another member of her team.’
- …Sami, for keeping going.’
- …Isabella for resilience.’
- …Kashif, because he was a strong team member.’
- …Leo, because of his communication skills.’
- …Felix, Because he offered to be my partner.’
- …Emma, for being so enthusiastic.’
- …Liam for non stop running.’
- …Albie for great problem solving.’
- …Musa, for pure determination.’
- …the whole class for giving it their all and working well together.’
Orienteering
Stamina
- “You had to keep on running and keep up with your partner,” said Zidaan.
- Henry said, “I’m tired because most of the time I was sprinting!”
Resilience
- “I didn’t give up,” said Gurnoor.
Teamwork
- Rabiya said: “Me and Eliza were showing each other where the points and flags were.”
- “The person who was the best at reading maps read the maps and the person who was good at running went to put the dibber in the hole,” said Eleni.
- “Kirsten and I swapped over every time we went to a station so it was fair. We were both good at map reading and running,” said Poppy.
Map reading
- Ben said, “There was a direction pointing North so you knew where you were going. If you were at the starting point and no.1 was down by the bin, you knew were to go because there was the North direction point.”
- “On the symbols, you might not have worked them out without the key at the bottom, like a green circle was a tree so the key was very helpful,” said Eve.
Remembering
- Zak said, “You were running around and you went past a few stations that you didn’t need yet so you could remember what their number was so if you got a new map, you could come back and get it.”
Overall
- “I thought it was really fun because it gave us a chance to go outside and play with our friends at the same time as orienteering and having fun,” said Evie.
Living and Learning: Hate Crime
Year 6 were a very respectful, reflective group during our visit from ‘Real Friends’ today who performed some interactive drama all about Hate Crime. The group was made up of adults who had experienced hate crime themselves at some point in life. A hate crime is when a person commits a crime that is motivated by prejudice.
We heard Olivia’s story and suggested ways that issues around what she’d experienced in her life could be dealt with if we saw something similar. Olivia has autism and she’d been bullied throughout her school career and into her adult life.
After the drama, we worked with the group to create freeze frames which displayed our emotions clearly. Can you guess what situations the different groups were asked to re-create.
All of Year 6 really enjoyed the workshop and had some brilliant comments about what they’d learnt, the message it was sending and how powerful an experience it had been.
Painting in Maths
I had a class of very puzzled children when they walked into their Maths lesson on Wednesday to find paints and paintbrushes out.
I tasked the children with creating orange which they all did confidently until I then said I wanted us all to create the same orange. This led to a lengthy debate on how we could do this and, without them even realising it, the whole class were using the sort of language we use when we work with ratios.
By the end of the lesson, we were all creating different colours, noting down the ratio of paint colours used in order to ensure somebody else could create the same colour as us. Linking this to how a company like Dulux can create the same colour paint over and over again in all sorts of different volumes, helped us understand how ratios are used in real life contexts.
My Amazing Brain
Today, we were very lucky to have a student from Leeds University come into school to teach us all about the brain.
The brain is where we do our thinking. All our senses are tied into our brain allowing us to experience the outside world. We remember, have emotions, solve problems, worry about things, dream about the future, and control our bodies in our brain. Using a model, the children studied the different sections of this awesome organ.
How does the brain communicate?
The brain is part of the nervous system. Together with the spinal cord, it makes up the central nervous system. The brain connects to nerves that travel throughout the body. Nerves from our senses (hearing, seeing, touch, etc) send signals to the brain to let the brain know what is going on in the outside world. The brain also sends signals using nerves to muscles in order to make our body move.
Year 4 made their own models of a neuron using pipe cleaners. The human body is made up of trillions of cells. Cells of the nervous system, called nerve cells or neurons, are specialized to carry messages around the body. The human brain has approximately 86 billion neurons!
Test your brains.
What does the brain do?
- store memories
- form emotions
- solve problems
- control the body
- all of the above
Which of the following is NOT a function that is controlled by the brain stem?
- breathing
- digestion
- vision
- heart rate
- blinking
Which of the following should you do to keep your brain healthy?
- eat healthily
- exercise
- drink lots of water
- do challenging activities, such as puzzles, reading, playing music, making art, or anything else that gives your brain a workout
- all of the above
How did you do?
School Savings Club paying in dates
Please note a change of day for the remaining School Savings Club paying in dates.
If your child has a School Savings Club account, we hold paying in sessions on the penultimate week of every half term.
Thursday 18 October 2018 3.15-3.45pm
Thursday 13 December 2018 3.15-3.45pm
Thursday 07 February 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 20 March 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 15 May 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 10 July 2019 3.15-3.45pm
If you are unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be paid in, to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
If you would like your child to open an account, please enquire at the office. Pupils in Year 3 can still take advantage of the £10 incentive offer.
Costumes
Rehearsals for our upcoming production, are now in full swing! This week, we’ll send home costume suggestions for some of the characters. We’d be very grateful for any help in getting these together. Please let us know if you are unable to provide items and we will try to sort this.
Many thanks in advance.
More adventures for Katie
Throughout our big topic, Katie and…, we’ve been reading many different ‘Katie’ books and finding out about her adventures when she visits art galleries with her grandma.
This time, it is our turn to create an adventure for Katie and we are basing it on one of our favourite Katie books, Katie and the dinosaurs.
Before we write our story, we’ve been focusing on using lots of description just like James Mayhew did.
We used drama to help generate our ideas to describe dinosaur world. Ask your child to tell you some of the adjectives we have used and what noun they are describing.
We’re looking forward to planning the rest of the story this week.
Spelling Practice
As there are lots of difficult words on the Year 5/6 spelling list, spelling practice is essential. Here are two good examples from our class this week.
Kai has practised the words, noting down the words he found difficult and exactly which part he was unsure of. This is a good example of really reflective spelling practice.
Amrit was really creative with his practice which will help the spellings move to his long term memory, particularly if there’s a story to go with the cartoon.
