You, Me and The World!

It is safe to say that the past two months have been eventful and busy! Both October and November have been filled with world events that all link with the subject You, Me and the World (PSHCE including RSE) and we wanted to share our work with you!

Black History Month

October was Black History Month!
Here at Jarrow Cross, we wanted to focus on less familiar, but significant individuals. Each class was given a black individual to research and find out more about them: what they were known for; their achievements; and any challenges faced.
Once the children had spent time in class discussing, researching and exploring the impact of each person, they then created a shared class page/fact file.
Every class page was then collected in and from this, we were able to create our own non- fiction text in the style of “Young, gifted and black”.
The title for our text is Brilliant, Bold and Black.
We felt beyond inspired by the individuals we researched.
In our celebration worship, our text was shared amongst the whole school and is now on display for people to view at their leisure.

This year’s theme was ‘Before Windrush’. The rationale behind this theme was because there is a common misconception that black people only started to travel/migrate to Britain during the Windrush period. However, it is important to recognise that there were black individuals who arrived and lived in Britain much earlier.
An example of just some of these individuals we learnt about were: John Blanke, Mary Seacole and Lucius Septimius Severus.

World Mental Health Day

Jarrow Cross held a mental health day in November due to our boiler troubles back in October!
This year’s theme was: TALK!

Juice and Jabber:
We thought there was no better way to implement this theme but to hold a ‘Juice and Jabber’ event. We took inspiration from the adult event version of ‘Tea and Talk’. As well as this, we found that last year’s ‘Speed Talking’ was a hit, so we wanted to do something similar.
We timetabled this event so each class worked with or ‘talked to’ another class from another year group. Once we got into the hall, we grabbed a cup of juice and began our jibber jabbering. We had the most amazing time where we asked ice-breaker questions and played games such as ‘Would you rather’ whist we got to know one another.
The children really enjoyed it and it has encouraged them to talk to children from different year groups much more whist they are outside on the yard!

Class-based tasks:
We listened to the story ‘Find Your Happy’ and then held discussions to address the misconception: You only have good mental health if you are happy all of the time.

We encouraged children to recognise that it is ok not to feel happy all of the time, but what is important is to develop coping mechanisms and strategies to ‘find their happy’ again.
From this, we created our very own school version of this text. The text was shared during our celebration worship and is on display to read at any time!

World Kindness Day/Anti Bullying Week

This year, we decided to merge the two events because they fit perfectly together.
We wanted to look at how these events can impact ourselves, our school and the wider world.

We decided to focus on 3 areas and their impact:

-Kindness to ourselves

-Kindness to our school community

-Kindness to the wider world: animals

Kindness to ourselves
We discussed and realised that we can often be kinder to others than we are to ourselves. We agreed that we can sometimes be harsh on ourselves and focus on what we can’t do instead of what we can do etc.
In KS1, we drew reflections of ourselves in a mirror and wrote positive qualities about ourselves around them.
In KS2, we were given negative statements and had to write advice which we would give to our friends if they said something negative to us. After we gave lots of positive responses, the teachers informed us that this was advice we could give to ourselves if we were to think negatively about ourselves.

Kindness to our school community
In KS1, we created ‘Personalised Shout Out Poems’ for each other and we all felt so happy after hearing what our peers had to say about us!
In KS2, we thought about our school anti-bullying policy and decided to create our own children’s version. This new policy is now going to be used alongside the school’s policy, be presented to our governors and shared with the local authority!

Kindness to the wider world: animals
Not only is it important to be kind to people, it is equally as important to be kind to animals. Newcastle Cat & Dog Shelter and the RSPCA sent us photographs and information about some of the animals in their shelters. We created persuasive ‘adopt me pleas’ to encourage the public to adopt them. Our writing will be posted on their social media and their website too! If you would like to read them all, visit our website under: Key information- Curriculum- Curriculum subjects – PSHCE You Me & The World – Implementation- World Events Covered.

As you can see, the children have been extremely busy and we have been so incredibly proud of their contributions and mature attitudes during all of these activities.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Elcoate