I Am What I am?

We used Gloria Gaynor's song to launch our topic, asking the children to consider who they are. There was a lot of discussion around how they look and what is important to them. They came up with the idea that image is important to them and talked about confidence, self-esteem, and emotions. They were really excited about this topic!

Animate a Name - Scratch

Origins and meaning of a name

We asked the children to compare the two elephants. What was the same and what was different. We then gave them a variety of images with flowers and asked them to pick out their top three. They had to decide as a group. Each group selected a different three flowers. Everyone agreed they were all flowers but they liked different things about the look of them. One group chose all yellow flowers, another chose all red flowers. One chose flowers they knew the names of and another group chose flowers they had never seen before. Which is your favourite and why?

Next we shared images of dogs and asked the children to create a diamond nine of their favourite dogs. This produced  lively discussions and pupils had to collaborate and compromise  to create the diamond nines. Each group had selected different dogs and enjoyed comparing the order of them. One dog was omitted from all groups and we talked about the reasons why they had left him out and how this may make the dog feel? 

Children were then asked to reflect on the session and write down why they think they were asked to carry out the activities. We had some fantastic responses. 

Children drew an outline of a body and labelled outside what others see about them, but filled inside how they feel about themselves,  things that we cannot always see. 

 Everyone in Year 4 was asked to complete a Self Image Questionnaire and then we  analysed the results. 

As part of our mental health week activities we asked the children a question. 'Is it important to be happy?' Followed by, 'Can you always be happy?' Their next challenge was how to support children who are not feeling happy.  We explored lots of different strategies recommended by COSMIC KIDS. The pupils were asked to create a leaflet to give support to other children with their mental health and help control their different emotions when they are not feeling happy. Try to include some useful websites or contact numbers.

You can talk to us about anything, call us on 0800 1111 or chat to us online.

https://www.childline.org.uk/

https://cosmickids.com

The ELSA room will love to have these for supporting our children when they are not ok. We have given copies of the year 4 leaflets to our ELSA ladies. 

Inspirational Quotes

Anti-Bullying Ambassadors

We have been working with Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s Community Safety Team. We have been involved in an Anti-Bullying project where we have looked at reducing bullying in schools. The Community Safety Team have created an anti-bullying ambassador programme for Year 4, who have been educated around bullying and how to be “anti-bullying buddies”. As part of this programme, they have created posters to display around school and written play scripts about what bullying is, what to do if someone’s being bullied and how to be kinder, etc. 

In order to spread awareness and inspire all of our students to "Be a Buddy, Not a Bully," they have also taken the time to share them with students in the school. The Safety Team's Shaia and Ginny have expressed their admiration for the work done as well as the attitude, behaviour and conduct of our Year 4 cohort. They have been a pleasure to collaborate with, and they will now be used as a model by the authority to spread the word about anti-bullying ambassadors and how they can lessen bullying in our RCT schools.

Presenting our Anti-Bullying posters to Year 1.

Anti-Bulling Playscripts

Exploring Disabilities : My Disability and Me!

The children watched the news report, and after each interview with the four children we stopped the recording and discussed the difficulties each child faced, the disability they had and how we thought we could help them. The children were fascinated by the resilience and determination each of the children in the film had shown and were inspired by them.  They were not surprised to hear the children had won a BAFTA! A special film award. 

Agony Aunt!  

Can you help children with their problems? What advice can you give to overcome them?  

Gender Stereotyping!  

We were given 40 different toys and asked to sort them anyway we wanted to. Some of us sorted into wheels and no wheels, others did animals,  cars and other. One group even did like or dislike. Next we were given images of each item to see if we changed our way of grouping. This was where some of us started talking about girls toys and boys toys. Do you think there should be toys for children based on gender?  Our teachers then showed us a Newsround report about Tescos who were sorting their toys according to Gender. We then decided to explore different websites that sell children's toys to see what the top 10 boys toys were and the top 10 girls toys were. Do you know Tescos do not categorise toys based on gender anymore. If you try to search for it on their website, it says, 'no results'. 

Redraw the Balance

Mrs Scott and Miss Jones asked us to draw people in different occupations and give them a name. We drew a firefighter, a jet pilot, a surgeon, a nurse, a teacher and a truck driver. Do you know in both our classes, most of us drew the firefighter, jet pilot and truck driver as male and a teacher and a nurse as female. the surgeon was more of an even split. We talked about how we had gender stereotyped the different occupations and thought about other jobs that we considered to be male or female. We had a great discussion about this! We were surprised when all the jobs in the video were  women who had these jobs! 

We invited Detective Chief Inspector Edmunds into school to talk to her about working as a senior police officer. Many of us drew a police officer as a man and when we collected data on our Dream Big Day, some of us wrote police man not police officer. Sometimes we stereotype jobs in our own heads without even thinking about it.  We thought about questions we wanted to ask her before she came in and then held a Q and A. It was really interesting and we learned lots about her role and what it is like being a woman in a male dominated environment. 

RVE

It's okay if You're Not Feeling okay  

During Expressive Arts this term we have explored the powerful combination of benefits for mental, emotional and even physical well-being. We have discussed and learned how dance/movement helps us release pent-up emotions like anger, sadness and joy. Individually and in groups we have choreographed some moves to a range of songs.