Diversity
Today, the focus for our themed week was diversity, looking at how people are different. We had two visitors to support this, focusing on visual and hearing impairment.
Firstly, we welcomed Natasha and Liz from RNIB. As our visitors are both registered blind, the children were able to find out first hand all about their life and then put themselves in their shoes.
After that, we worked with Linda Gledhill (Leeds deaf and hearing impairment team). We learnt some important messages about how to help someone if they are deaf.
- Don’t shout at them
- Stand close by
- Speak one at a time
- Don’t cover your mouth so they can see your lips
- Use sign language
We are special
Thank you for all the special objects and photos that have been sent in to show your children’s identity. As we have had so many, we’d like to keep them a little longer than this themed week so we can give the children chance to tell the rest of the class all about them.
If you do need your items back sooner, please let us know.
When talking about what makes me, me? this video generated lots of discussion and you may want to watch again with your child.
Identity
Yesterday we began our Who do you think you are? themed week by focusing on our identity, who we are, and how we are all special. We particularly enjoyed our mindfulness workshop to focus on how our emotions can relate to who we are.
Our super power of mindfulness can help us to make a better choice and control different situations.
There were lots of techniques that we can use in school and we have done already.
- Breathing hug
- Breathing tree
- Ok breathing
- Make your thumb come to life to show your emotion
- Calming bottle
- ‘I felt calm and I liked the relaxing music.’ Christina
- ‘I liked everything because I like mindfulness.’ Billy
- ‘I liked how we used the colours of glitter for the different emotions to make our calming bottle.’ Edris
- ‘I would use the bottle if I was sad or angry to make me ready to work.’ Vedant
- ‘If I shake the bottle, it will help me to be calm.’ Aadil
- ‘I liked the game where we did the secret tapping because it showed us that everyone is kind.’ Betty
- ‘I liked to show my emotions using the freeze frame.’ Tanvi
- ‘I liked to show my emotion by bringing my thumb to life as a way of telling others how I feel.’ Da’wud
It was great to see so many parents attending the workshop on Monday, too, so that some of the techniques can be used at home as well. Keep an eye out for a parent guide to support this with your child.
Today’s visitors
Today, visitors came to speak to us about sign language. Everyone learnt how to say ‘How are you?’, ‘I’m fine thank you’, ‘What’s your name?’, My name is____’, ‘How old are you?’ , ‘I am ______ years old’ and how to spell their names in sign language.
We were learning about this because our themed week is community and there are a few deaf people who live in Leeds.
Also, we were visited by members of the police who split the class in half, treating one half very nicely and the other half not so nicely: they gave one half Ribena and the other water; gave one half more talking time than the other; told one half they were cool; and gave tokens to them. This was to show that it would be unfair to treat people differently for no real reason. Hate crime is when people discriminate against others because of their race, gender, religion/belief, disability or sexual orientation.
We learnt that we are all the same and all different and we should treat others how we want to be treated.
Written by Pippa and Neive.
What does community mean to us?
As part of our Who Do You Think You Are? themed week, we have discussed what community means to us in our Living and Learning session. First, we made a mind map as a class…
… and then split into smaller groups to make our own.
- “Community is sharing happy memories.”
- “Community is our heritage.”
- “Community is where you belong.”
We look forward to welcoming our visitors through the week and learning and discovering more about our Identity topic.
We are all different
Today, we were joined by some visitors from the National Institute for the Blind.
Following our own identities activities yesterday, we now thought about how people are not all the same.
People are different in many ways and today we thought about what it must be like to be blind or partially sighted.
I was so impressed with the questions the children asked.
“How does your white stick help you?”
“Do you bump into things a lot and hurt yourself?”
“How do you manage when going on the bus?”
All the children showed empathy and were very thoughtful when listening to the our visitors.
We had the chance to look through various types of glasses and goggles.
These either blurred or blocked our vision and gave us a good idea of what it must be like to be visually impaired.
Our very own islands
As mentioned in the news post about our topic review last week, one of the things the children have enjoyed the most throughout Explorers is designing their own islands.
Our writing was inspired by a fantastic book, The Land of Neverbelieve, which resulted in some brilliant descriptive pieces about exploring this fantastical land. It is an island in the shape of a dragon (although many children believed it to be a wolf) with weird and wonderful areas dotted around: The Dark and Spooky Mountains, The Flowering Meadow, Book Mountain and many more. We decided to create our own islands which have demonstrated incredible imagination and more amazing writing from the children.
Who do you think you are?
As part of our community week and a focus on identity, Year 1 joined in a workshop on mindfulness this morning. This is something we all can benefit from. The children were taught some techniques to help when emotions or situations become hard to deal with. Today’s learning helped us to realise how there were lots of different ways we could be mindful of ourselves and mindful of others.
Ask your child about mindfulness and breathing techniques.
In class, we looked closely at who we think we are. The children came up with some great responses to this. Following that, we started some work about our own individual identities.
Some super self portraits!
Mindfulness
As part of our community week and today’s focus on identity, Y6 worked on mindfulness this morning. This is something we’ve spoken about before but today’s learning helped us to realise how there were lots of different ways we could be mindful of ourselves and mindful of others.
We also learnt about lots of techniques we could take away and use if we were struggling with situations or if we just wanted to become more mindful.
Year 6 really enjoyed this session and we discussed which things they’d like to use in class. Ask your child about what they learnt and see whether there’s anything they could use at home, too.
Takeover Day Madness!
On Friday, the teachers weren’t feeling too good so let the children take over for the day! In Year 5, Mr Catherall didn’t really do anything all day because each member of the class had a job to do. It was great fun to take over the classroom and everyone did a great job – there were plenty of laughs throughout the day, too!
