REMINDERS

Tuesday 15th December & Wednesday 16th December - Year Four Workshop on the Romans in the School Hall

Friday 18th December - End of Term - school closes at 2.15pm

There are many stalwarts in our St Stephen's calendar but none more important than Anti-Bullying Week. Embedded in the calendar year upon year, this week sees us focus on a range of activities to enforce the anti-bullying message in our learning. This year saw us sport odd socks with pride to celebrate our uniqueness. PHSE is one of our core curriculum subjects and we weave in the anti-bullying message in our lessons throughout the year, not just for this week. Our children learn that bullying can come in a number of guises: verbal, physical, psychological and cyber. All forms are just as debilitating for the bullied and our lessons this week focussed on ways our children can deal with these problems. Being an upstander and ensuring they report any bullying behaviour to adults is key for our youngsters. Each class also made anti-bullying pledges and filled in their own jigsaw puzzle piece to show how they will personally deal with bullying. It is such an uplifting week for us - by imbuing the anti-bullying message we hope to give our children the tools to cope with this problem and quickly nip it in the bud.

Move over Miss Mizon, we've got this ...

In RE, Year Six has been looking at Remembrance and Peace. They made their own beautiful poppy wreaths and origami cranes to spread their message of peace. When it came to crane making, we soon realised some of the children were more accomplished than the staff, so they took the lead! Thank you Arlo, Naomi and Alex ...

Inspired by the ancient Japanese legend that says your greatest wish will come true if you fold 1,000 cranes, our Year Six children are working apace to make the requisite number of cranes. They have learned in RE about Sadeko Sasaki. Only 2 years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, she was not immediately affected. However, ten years later, as a direct result, she became very ill, developed leukaemia and had to stay in hospital. While Sadeko was in hospital, her best friend told her of the Japanese legend. Sadeko wished to get better so that she could run again. She started folding cranes, but unfortunately she was only able to make 654 before she died at the age of 12.

Inspired by her courage and strength, Sadeko’s friends and classmates put together a book of her letters and published it.

They began to dream of building a monument to Sadeko and the children killed by the atom bomb. Young people all over Japan helped collect money for the project. Their wishes came to fruition when a statue of Sadeko was placed at the top of the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshimo. The monument is surrounded by glass cases filled with beautiful paper cranes.