October 2022

‘Diversity and Oneness’

Year 4 created a mind map of what they thought ‘Diversity and Oneness’ means. We included lots of our school values to show how these link. We discussed our differences and how we show acceptance of others and also how we deal with positive and negative feelings around diversity.

We then found out how many countries the families in our class originate from by walking around the class, speaking to each other, and creating a mind map. We then plotted the countries onto a world map and had a discussion about each one.

Next, we shared the traditional dress that we wore to school and discussed when and where we would usually wear it. It became apparent that some cultures have more than one set of traditional dress, so we used Google to search and explore more. We learnt a lot during this session as many of the children knew how to say the name of their dress in their home language. This then led us on to discussing home languages and we all had a go at saying a sentence to the rest of the class. How amazing that some of us speak multiple languages.

We shared an extract about abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano, and discussed how his life is so very different from our own. We talked about the aspects of his life that were very difficult for him and we talked about his achievements and why he is an important Black figure in history.

Finally, we completed a piece of art work that will form part of a display – ‘Individually Unique: Together Complete’, using our newly acquired sewing skills to stitch a small square that represented our family, culture, ethnicity, faith, language or country of origin.  

September 2022

The children in Year 4 enjoyed September’s Wellbeing Day. We had a class discussion about resilience and what we think it means. We then discussed different scenarios where children hadn’t shown resilience and came up with ways that we would deal with the situation and advice we would give the children. We then talked about ways in which we can be positive and use strategies to help us to cope when we are finding it difficult to be resilient. We took part in a ‘compliment circle’ where we paid a compliment to another child in the class. We were encouraged to choose someone that was outside of our usual friendship group. We then made a ‘fortune teller’ or ‘chatterbox’ that gave the player a compliment. We talked about how to use deep breathing, counting and ‘thinking time’ to deal with situations we find difficult. We also shared phrases such as ‘you can do it’, ‘don’t give up’ and ‘you’re the best’ to say to ourselves when it is tricky to stay resilient. Finally, we had lots of fun playing games such as: musical chairs, the hula-hoop game and the trust game to build our resilience. The trust game was very hard to play and we had to show resilience and trust to ensure that we, and our partner, were successful. The hula-hoop game required teamwork and musical chairs required us to be very resilient when we were called out! We had a great day and have developed ideas and understanding of how to build resilience and cope in difficult situations.