World week in Year 5!

This week, we had the opportunities to do lots of fantastic activities as part of World Week. We celebrate the world we live in, our diversity and recognise the importance of looking after ourselves and others around the world. The following activities spread out across the week made for an extremely fun, engaging and thought-provoking week:

1. The week began with spirituality day and we discussed the refugee crisis all over the world but with focus on the crisis in Eastern Europe with Ukrainian refugees. We talked about the loss of human dignity and we wrote a letter to the Prime Minister explaining the problem, urging possible courses of action and suggesting why we have a responsibility to care about refugees all over the world.
2. The was followed up with a breathing workshop, led by holistic therapist, Amy Brooks, because slow, calm, deep breathing can help us relax, manage stress, relieve anxiety, and get a good night’s sleep, among many other things. Breathing also helps quiet the mind in preparation for meditation. It is a useful tool and life strategy for supporting our mental health.
3. Being online means being able to connect with the entire world and this week, we thought about the messages we send to each other online. We decided that we must ask ourselves the following questions before we send anything: Am I jealous? Is my message helpful? Am I following the crowd? Would I say this to their face? Why am I posting this?
4. Continuing with the focus on online safety, we took part in a MIND workshop about social media and followed up with an activity designed to identify how applications and websites are designed to be persuasive and influence people’s choices. We wanted the children to think about the effects persuasive design can have on them as users (e.g. pop ups, streaks, time limited discounts, autoplay etc.)
5. This year’s Children’s Mental Health Week theme was ‘My Voice Matters’. We discussed the difference between our needs and our wants, and considered how we feel when our needs and wants are met versus how we feel when they are not met. The important question though was ‘what really matters to you?’ We thought about the things that are really important to us and each of us had the opportunity to role play those things that really matter. When we performed our role plays for each other, the audience had to guess what it was that really mattered to the performers. There were some really interesting and mature suggestions such as friendship, family, love, belonging etc. Below this post is where you’ll find pictures of the role plays
6. To finish a wonderfully busy week, we learned about the value of diversity within our communities. We discussed our differences and why we celebrate being different to each other.