International Day of Friendship, also known as International Friendship Day, takes place annually on 30th July. As this typically falls in the UK summer holidays, you may want to celebrate a little earlier!

What is International Day of Friendship?

The UN General Assembly announced this special day in 2011. It’s based around the idea that friendship between individuals, cultures and countries can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities.

JUMP TO A SECTION:

• Teaching resources
• How to help pupils with SEND make friends
• Books about friendship
• Three important lessons about girls’ friendships
• Helping children who find friendships difficult

Unusual friendships KS2 activity

This article from children’s magazine The Week Junior features a heartwarming story about an unusual friendship between orangutans and otters at a Belgium zoo.

Use the story and accompanying activity sheet to explore the story with your class.

KS1 ‘friends’ acrostic poems

This free KS1 poetry resource pack will give your students the chance to write an acrostic poem all about friends. The teaching notes will also help you lead a class discussion on friendships and what makes a good friend.

KS1 book topic

The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas is a simple story about friendship and emotions. Use this free page of activity ideas to explore the book with your KS1 pupils.

KS1 ‘What makes a good friend?’ activity

Use these KS1 friendship resources from Plazoom to discuss what makes a positive friendship. There’s a card sorting activity, then follow this with a short writing activity.

BFG lesson plan for International Friendship Day

Does how someone looks always match what kind of person they are? Explore this topic with your class with these free Roald Dahl activity cards and lesson plans for KS1 or KS2. Then learn how to write interesting characters in your own stories.

How to help pupils with SEND make friends

Negotiating friendships can be tougher than many academic challenges for children with SEND, explains educational consultant and author Liz Gerschel. But there are ways to make it easier for everyone…

It’s playtime in a primary school: laughter and activity, games and chat. Watching particular children, you see that their attempts to interact with their peers are largely ignored or rejected, not with open hostility, but with indifference.

Many pupils with SEND experience this painful social rejection, lacking the skills to interact with others, communicate effectively and form friendships.

“Watching particular children, you see that their attempts to interact with their peers are largely ignored or rejected”

We are not talking here about deliberate bullying, just the casual exclusion of children who don’t seem to ‘fit in’. It is still hurtful to the recipient and destructive to the social fabric of the school.

For children with speech language and communication difficulties, playtime can be particularly isolating and unhappy. Research evidence suggests that communication difficulties have considerable impact on children’s ability to form friendships, on their self-confidence and on their self-esteem.

Many want to join in with their peers, they just don’t know how to do it. Their social interactions frequently end in frustration and disputes.

The DfE has suggested that the lack of positive friendships is an ‘at risk’ factor for developing mental health difficulties.

Social isolation and friendlessness may also affect learning and attainment, and have a negative impact on adult life. So, what can we do to improve social inclusion?

Introducing a ‘friendship group’

Vicky Absalom, is a SENCO in Tower Hamlets, east London, in a primary school where core values are communication, community, wellbeing, health and a growth mindset.

She introduced a ‘Friendship Group’ to improve social interaction for two Year 3 boys with moderate learning difficulties.

Following an action research model, she observed the children at play, and talked to them and to the midday meals supervisors (MMSs).

The children used ‘Talking Mats’ with clear visual symbols, to express their views. This proved to be a powerful starting point, with pupils sharing strong opinions and showing a willingness to engage.

Both pupils found it difficult to join in a conversation or game. They felt that they were not understood by others. Pupil A declared simply that he ‘had no friends’. Pupil B said that he didn’t like noisy children joining in his games.

“Both pupils found it difficult to join in a conversation or game”

Observations revealed that Pupil A interacted inappropriately with his peers, grabbing at them or shouting at them in close proximity. Pupil B remained largely alone, once briefly joining in a running game but without making eye-contact or conversation.

Neither pupil appeared to understand the social skills needed to build friendships. Pupil B didn’t seem to value friendships or see his peers as potential friends.

The MMSs added that Pupil A made teasing comments, did silly things that others told him to do and then got into trouble. Pupil B was withdrawn and unwilling to speak.

Developing social skills

So what to do? Vicky’s aim was to develop social skills in these two, explore the qualities of friendship with them and enable them to put their new learning into practice in the playground. And she wanted the boys themselves to monitor progress.

Selecting and modifying materials from ‘Talkabout Relationships’, she and the speech and language therapist devised a twice-weekly programme led by the SALT and a teaching assistant (TA).

Reasonable adjustments accommodated the children’s difficulties with working memory, attention, auditory processing and self-regulation.

Role play, group writing tasks, turn-taking, sentence starters for spoken language and visual supports involved pupils in practical and enjoyable activities. Each boy had a book with clear visual reminders of the learning, to refer to between sessions.

What makes a good friend?

Both pupils demonstrated in sessions that they knew some of the qualities of a good friend and what they could do to be a good friend. For example, Pupil B said he needed to tell others what he was feeling.

After eight weeks, there were some playground successes. Pupil A thought other children understood him better although his friendships hadn’t improved. He described wariness between himself and his peers and he hadn’t considered letting other children join his game.

“After eight weeks, there were some playground successes”

Pupil B was willing to let other children play with him – even noisy ones. Both children identified continuing difficulties with joining in with someone else’s conversation or game and talking to new people.

Nevertheless, playground observations showed significant improvement in Pupil A’s purposeful play, including a full ten minutes in a shared game with peers, facilitated by a nearby adult.

There was no inappropriate social interaction or physical aggression. He was, in fact, interacting successfully with his peer group. Pupil B smiled at a MMS and responded to her question, although he still played alone.

The MMSs suggested that they play group games and used the visuals and verbal cues with which children were familiar, as reminders.

The school has introduced keyrings with visual reminders of what to do to be a good friend as prompts for children and staff. More opportunities to relate the learning directly to the playground, such as through problem-solving in ‘real-life’ situations, are helping to further develop and embed skills and build confidence.

Peer group work

Class teachers, TAs and MMSs have an important role in identifying and modelling social skills and demonstrating respect, care and kindness.

Training and peer support will offer staff opportunities to share good practice and hone their skills. The context for inclusion must be dynamic.

Important as it is to empower those children with SEN to develop skills to join in, equally critical is work with the peer group, so that they do not reject such attempts and are willing to initiate inclusion themselves.

Undertake regular reviews, involving the children, of playground and classroom practice. This might lead to you introducing modifications such as paired and peer work in the classroom, more structured games or reconsidering the transition to larger playgrounds.

Also make sure to include curriculum initiatives that focus on developing social skills and understanding friendships in PHSE, circle times or buddy systems.

Ultimately, it’s the inclusive and supportive ethos of a school that enables children to take ownership of their relationships, self-refer for difficulties and feel confident that help is available, that will make a significant difference to the inclusion of all children.

Liz Gerschel is an educational consultant who has trained school leaders and staff for over 30 years, and co-author of The SENCo Handbook (Routledge, £24.99). She currently teaches the NASENCO course, which she helped develop for the IoE UCL. Vicky Absalom is one of her students.

More books about friendship for International Friendship Day

We know that children don’t fully develop skills like empathy until later in life. This is why there are so many stories on friendship and how to treat people aimed at young children.

International Friendship Day, then, is a great opportunity to share some of these amazing books with your children. Here are our picks for some top tales that touch on various aspects of friendship that kids will love.

Little Puppy Lost

Holly Webb (Little Tiger Press, paperback, £6.99)

This is Holly Webb’s debut picture book for a younger audience. It tells the tale of a puppy who manages to become separated from his young human when he’s taken to the park for the first time. He’s then befriended by a lonely but streetwise cat, discovers his inner courage, and eventually finds his way home.

Bugs in the Garden

Beatrice Alemagna (Phaidon Press, hardback, £6.95)

This charming little book is about a group of bugs who decide to leave the security of their blanket home to explore the big, wide garden. They want to look for new friends but in the event they’re too scared to approach any of the creatures they come across. This is a great circle-time read.

Penguin and Pinecone

Salina Yoon (Bloomsbury, paperback, £5.99)

Penguin is an earnest little fellow who always wants to do the right thing. So when he realises that his new friend, Pinecone, can’t thrive in the cold, he reluctantly packs up his sledge and takes him back to the warm forest where he belongs.

Harris the Hero

Lynne Rickards (Picture Kelpies, paperback, £5.99)

When Harris the puffin flies off in search of adventure, he’s not expecting to take part in the rescue of a baby seal who has drifted too far from his rocky island home. Nor is he expecting to meet a companion with whom he can set up a nest of his own. This book’s gentle message is about how helping others can often have unexpected benefits.

Marmaduke the Very Different Dragon

Rachel Valentine (Bloomsbury, paperback, £6.99)

Marmaduke isn’t how dragons are “supposed” to be. He’s shy, with enormous ears, sticky-out scales, and wings that he never even opens, because of how dramatically different they are. He feels rejected. But that’s only until he meets Meg, a princess who is also nothing like what’s expected of her royal position.

Specs for Rex

Yasmeen Ismail (Bloomsbury, paperback, £6.99)

It can be difficult for children when they suddenly become aware of a small but very obvious difference between them and their peers. For example, they might wear glasses while none of their friends do.

This story follows Rex’s first day at school with a pair of specs that are not only new, but also big, round and red.

Olive and the Embarrassing Hat

Tor Freeman (Brubaker, Ford & Friends, paperback, £6.99)

In this funny and touching tale, Olive the cat is given a ‘friendship hat’ by Joe the turtle; but it’s so ridiculous that all her other friends laugh at her when she wears it.

Should she take it off and risk upsetting her chum? Or ignore the teasing because the gift was given with love?

Grrrrr!

Rob Biddulph (HarperCollins, paperback, £6.99)

Journey into the woods to meet a bear who is convinced that being first is the most important thing there is. Fred works hard to be a champion in every competition, and he has the medals to prove it. He’s too busy training to have any actual friends, of course; but he has cabinet full of trophies, and that’s surely better, right?

Imaginary Fred

Eoin Colfer and Oliver Jeffers (HarperCollins, hardback, £12.99)

Many youngsters will know exactly what it means to have an imaginary friend. But what must it feel like actually to be one?

That’s the intriguing question explored in this magical book. Fred goes in search of a playmate after having been dropped by yet another chum who has found someone ‘real’ to replace him.

I Don’t Want To Be A Pea!

Ann Bonwill (Oxford University Press, paperback, £5.99)

It’s very easy for good friends to become comfortably locked into complementary roles. But it’s important not to take each other for granted. Hugo and Bella discover this when an invitation to the Hippo-Bird Fairytale Fancy Dress Party forces them to reassess their relationship.

Have You Seen Elephant?

David Barrow (Gecko Press, hardback, £10.99)

A friendly elephant who is very proud of his hide-and-seek skills attempts to conceal himself in a succession of ludicrously inappropriate locations, given his size.

Is the young boy who is supposed to be finding him incredibly unobservant – or touchingly kind in pretending not to notice his hefty chum? Would your little ones ever pretend in order to make a friend feel better?

Lion and Mouse

Catalina Echeverri (Random House Children’s, paperback, £5.99)

Lion and Mouse are best friends. But eventually the big cat’s habit of boasting about how much taller, stronger and louder he is drives his tiny but faithful friend away.

It’s only when he finds himself facing a fear that mere physical bulk isn’t enough to vanquish that the pair are reunited.

Two Little Bears

Suzi Moore (Bloomsbury, paperback, £10.99)

One of them lives in the green mountains, and the other in a frosty snowscape – yet little brown bear and little snow bear have much in common; and when the pair finally meet, a wonderfully natural friendship develops.

Can I Tell You a Secret?

Anna Kang (Hodder Children’s, hardback, £11.99)

Secrets are a thorny issue in any educational setting, and perhaps especially so when the children involved are of an age when they are probably still struggling to understand the idea of boundaries at all, let alone their own, and others’, right to privacy. This book brilliantly unpicks these issues through Monty, a little frog with a big secret: he can’t swim.

I Wish I’d Been Born a Unicorn

Rachel Lyon (Maverick Arts Publishing, paperback, £6.99)

Making friends in new places can be difficult – and it’s all too easy to imagine, when things aren’t going well and we’re feeling lonely or left out, that if only we were bigger, or better looking, or just different, then of course everyone would immediately start to like us. This endearing tale of a hygienically-challenged horse gently explores the fallacy of this assumption.

Three important lessons about girls’ friendships

We need a better understanding of why best friendships sometimes run into problems, explains Dr Ruth Woods…

Best friendship has had a bad press in the last few years, criticised by some headteachers as encouraging possessiveness, ostracism, and considerable distress, especially among girls.

Some schools have gone so far as to discourage best friendships, or at least to encourage children to ‘all play together’ instead of demonstrating selectivity.

“Some schools have gone so far as to discourage best friendships”

Yet most of us have seen a more positive side of best friendship, and research backs this up.

So rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, we need a better understanding of why best friendships sometimes run into problems.

I spent over a year at a primary school in London, observing girls’ friendships wax and wane, and learned three lessons from them about what can go wrong.

Lesson 1: social status

Best friendships tend to work better between girls with similar social status.

Peer groups are usually hierarchical, and high-status children are more sought after than their lower-status peers. This was the downfall of Navneet’s best friendship with new girl Zena.

As Zena settled into the school and became more confident, her status rose above Navneet’s. Other high-status girls were increasingly seeking her out.

Navneet responded with threats and ultimatums in a vain effort to secure her best friendship — but her efforts were in vain. Zena was eager to expand her horizons, leaving Navneet resentful and unhappy.

Similar dynamics can develop if both friends have a similar status, but one wants to rise up the hierarchy. If girls have, and accept, similar standing in the peer group, their friendship is likely to be more successful.

Lesson 2: safety net

Problems are less likely for children who have the safety net of additional friendships at school.

Best friends often expect each other to be available to play together every day at school — understandable, since children are just as sensitive to loneliness as adults, describing it in adult-like ways from a young age.

School playgrounds are not nice places to be on your own – highly visible, with little to do that does not require playmates. No surprise, then, that ‘besties’ think that they should always play together – but this can mean that they don’t develop other friendships.

“School playgrounds are not nice places to be on your own”

This is a problem when best friends need a break from one another.

They might have an argument, or one might want to play a game that the other doesn’t enjoy. It’s much easier for a girl to walk away from her best friend if she knows there’s someone else she can play with.

A girl without a safety net faces isolation without her best friend, so may feel the need to maintain the friendship at all costs – even if that means acting possessively or acquiescing to unreasonable behaviour.

Lesson 3: sharing enemies

Girls often expect their friends to share their enemies.

Anjali and Kirendeep were good friends. Occasionally they argued, and when they did, they expected their friends to side with them, polarising the whole peer group into two gangs.

Zena, who was normally friendly with both Kirendeep and Anjali, ‘broke up’ with Anjali and all those in Anjali’s gang, to side with Kirendeep. Later, she ‘made secret friends’ with them at the back of the canteen, out of sight of Kirendeep.

On another occasion, all the girls sided with Kirendeep, leaving Anjali ostracised.

Thanks to their expectations of shared enemies, a simple dispute between two girls could be amplified enormously. This creates situations in which ostracism and deception flourish. While this expectation was not confined to best friendships, it certainly made disputes between best friends more difficult to resolve.

Issues to focus on

My time observing girls’ friendships in the playground taught me that it’s not best friendship itself that’s the problem. Rather, it is best friendship accompanied by social status differences, lack of safety nets, and/or the expectation that friends should share enemies.

These are the issues upon which schools should focus if they want to reduce the problems associated with best friendship. Of these, the most obvious and important one to act on is to develop children’s safety nets.

Schools should provide excellent ‘safety net’ provision in the playground, using a variety of measures such as:

• buddy benches
• organised activities which children can join
• incentives and rewards to encourage children to act spontaneously as buddies

You can also challenge girls’ assumption that friends should share enemies. Finally, you may be able to reduce status differences by teaching children assertiveness and consensus decision making skills.

Dr Ruth Woods is a lecturer in psychology at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and the author of Children’s Moral Lives (£31.99, Wiley Blackwell).

How to help children who find friendships difficult

When pupils arrive at school, that day’s lessons are the last thing on their minds.

Instead, their first thoughts are more likely to be: ‘Where are my friends? What will we play at breaktime? Will I have someone to sit with at lunch?’

Having a circle of friends who they can be themselves with is the most important factor in making kids want to go to school, according to research.

However, your experience probably already tells you that some classes have more meanness, exclusion and cliquiness than others, and teaching distracted, unhappy children only makes your job harder.

What the research says

So it may help to be armed with some of the social science research on children’s social relationships. When researchers ask school children which peers they like the most in the class and which they like the least, studies find startlingly consistently results.

The children who get the most likes and fewest dislikes are the 15% classed as ‘popular’. Then there is the ‘accepted’ band, about 45%. They have a group of good friends, but they are not as sought after as the popular children. Few people intensely dislike them either. This is the solid core of the class.

Controversial children

For the rest of the classroom, it’s not so easy. Studies have found that roughly 20% are ‘controversial’ children. Some of their classmates really like these kids, but some intensely dislike them, maybe because they are hyperactive, unpredictable or disruptive.

Then there is the ‘invisible’ 10%, children who social scientists term ‘neglected’. These children are ignored by their peers, possibly because they are socially anxious or lack confidence.

The final piece of the puzzle is the final 10%, described as ‘rejected’ children. These are kids who are disliked by a lot of their classmates, have no friends, and few people want to risk being seen with them.

Children may fall into this group if they have learning or communication issues which mean they don’t pick up on social cues very well, or have missed out on learning social skills at home. They can try to cope by either giving in and trying to disappear or by becoming aggressive.

Read Newcomb, Bukowski, and Pattee’s 1993 research on children’s peer relations for more on this.

Needs of the group

So why do these bands form? And how does it help for teachers to recognise them? The answer is that as part of our survival mechanism, the needs of the group always come first.

As child psychologist Dr Michael Thompson explains in his book Mom, They’re Teasing Me:

“Any class is a drama that requires different characters. The hierarchy and the roles are ‘assigned’ by the universal forces at work in the group.

“Many different roles are needed in group life, and the scripts are given to children based on their temperaments and their willingness to play the role.” 

I believe that when we recognise how classrooms fit together, we have a better chance of helping those scraping along the bottom.

After all, when a child struggles with maths, we take steps to make sure that this deficit doesn’t cause them too many long-term problems.

We may take them aside and show them how they can get better. Do the same with social skills by showing children how to decode social cues and look for how their behaviour is viewed by others.

Blurring the lines

You can also help blur the lines between the bands. For instance, it’s probably already obvious who the ‘rejected’ children are in your classroom. They consistently don’t have friends and almost always end up sitting on their own.

But studies have found that when teachers change around seating plans, or give children the chance to do non-competitive, non-academic activities where they can chat, like small crafting circles, the least popular children are more liked by the end of the year.

It gives young people opportunities to get to know each other outside the pigeonholes they have put each other into.

It’s just one of the many things I suggest teachers can do to encourage a more harmonious classroom. By looking out for the different roles that children assume in the classroom, the good news is that we can help to break down the hierarchies that cause children so much stress and upset.

Tanith Carey is the author of The Friendship Maze: How to Help Your Child Navigate their Way to Positive, Happier Friendships (£10.99, Summersdale).

The post International Friendship Day – How to celebrate in school appeared first on Teachwire.

Many students can remain stubbornly difficult to get into school, which the pandemic and its aftermath has only made worse. The MIS provider ESS SIMS recently carried out a survey that found a worrying decline in post-COVID attendance, with around 80% of heads stating that absenteeism was presenting a problem for their schools (and those in urban environments rating the problem higher than their rural counterparts).

Only 53% of independent schools pointed to absenteeism as being an issue for them, suggesting that the links we’ve seen between economic inequality and absenteeism still remain. Judging by the survey’s responses overall, it seems that urban schools with a high proportion of students on free school meals were those contending with the most difficult absenteeism challenges.

In January 2022, the DfE launched a consultation on four proposals for supporting schools, trusts and LA with attendance issues – including the introduction of statutory guidance for managing and improving attendance; setting standards for LA attendance services; issuing fixed penalty notices for incidents of school absence; and bringing academy rules around granting leave of absence in line with those of maintained schools.

In a response issued last May, the government indicated that it intends to proceed with all four.

Start with the person

Whatever form those new government measures take, now is the ideal time to review how your school currently approaches the issue of absence. Much of what we do is more about working with people, rather than the content of our subject. We can only teach meaningfully if we have engaged students present who are in a position to learn.

“Much of what we do is more about working with people, rather than the content of our subject”

With many persistently absent students, the causes of their low attendance will be broadly known. Whether you have a grasp of those causes or not, though, make time for a review. I myself only recently discovered that one of my students, who had been struggling to attend classes and concentrate when present, had lost her father and told nobody. Needless to say, supporting a grieving teenager calls for a very different approach to supporting a lazy one.

The details in that case came to light during a careers meeting. Providing students with opportunities to consider their later lives in personal, non-threatening spaces can give you the chance to learn more about their unique situations.

If prior behaviour management strategies or school counselling have been unsuccessful, then support with a more practical focus can really help, since the active focus will be on real-world considerations, rather than emotional ones.

School clubs

When addressing persistent school absence among younger students, we’ve seen some success by getting them involved in after school groups, such as sports and drama clubs. These have allowed them to mix and make friends across year groups, and see themselves and others in a different light outside of the classroom.

What the careers meeting and after-school club successes demonstrate is the important of connecting with students and what’s important to them. By making attendance the sole focus of our interactions with students, we risk giving them a predominantly negative experience of conversing with staff, which could compound the situation even further.

At the same time, we must also consider practical issues – particularly given the increased costs of paying for food, travel and uniform compared to just a year ago. As the aforementioned research makes clear, the more disadvantaged a student’s background is, the more likely it is that they’ll be serially absent.

Lazy stereotypes

What we mustn’t do, however, is fall back on lazy stereotypes of unengaged parents and disaffected young people. Such factors may well be involved in some cases – but what if they’re not? What if there’s a simple solution to be had by providing some form of practical support?

“What if there’s a simple solution to be had by providing some form of practical support?”

The Glasspool charity trust operates an essential living fund, which is open to any legal resident anywhere in the UK. There are also a number of community and religious groups who can offer support locally. Contact any such groups near you and see if they can be enlisted to help ensure that your pupils are having their basic needs meet. After all, if a young person isn’t already warm, regularly fed and clothed at home, how readily will they apply themselves to the task of learning?

Another consideration in some urban areas is the targeting of vulnerable young people by organised gangs. If there’s a risk of gang influence affecting students at your school, you may be able to seek help from the award-winning, anti-youth violence charity Power the Fight.

Engaging families about school absence

Don’t forget that families can provide insights you won’t get directly from students themselves. When approaching families, always do so with a warm, positive attitude. Let them know that you’re interested in the whole person and how the school can help. It’s vital to remove any sense of shame or judgement.

Many parents I’ve spoken to feel that schools have something of an ‘us and them’ approach when meeting them. Without open dialogue, it won’t be possible to build a meaningful relationship. So however ‘bad’ you perceive someone’s parenting to be, suspend judgement now.

“Many parents I’ve spoken to feel that schools have something of an ‘us and them’ approach when meeting them”

Find out how a parent or carer sees their child. What do they love about them? What do they find frustrating? When did the current issues start? Was there a slow build-up, or some catalyst that suddenly made things worse?

What does the student do in their free time? When they’re not at school, who are they? What do they love, and what are they good at? Conduct yourself as if you know nothing and want to know everything. You may be surprised at what you end up discovering.

When the time comes, discuss with home what might be considered ‘positive attendance’ as a starting point. A persistently late student could actually be achieving quite a lot just by getting to school at all. Acknowledge and verbalise this positively first; then seek to improve on it.

We can’t accept absences from school, but we can mix the support and discipline we respond with. If a student responds to a firm hand, then by all means use it. But in my experience at least, many more will respond better to more personal approaches.

School absence among teachers

Absenteeism among teachers can have a similarly huge impact on a school’s culture and continuity – here’s how to tackle it…

Make your school a great place to work
Be positive, welcoming and open. Publicly acknowledge staff achievements, encourage training, find out what progression aims staff have and find ways to help them. Make colleagues feel seen and valued.

Find out why staff are off
For this, you need a confidential, ‘tell all’ system. In person, make it clear that you want to know what, besides illness, will affect staff attendance. Inviting everyone to then later use anonymised forms to comment freely may well prove quite the eye opener…

Employ in-house cover
This is often cheaper than sourcing personnel from a supply agency. It will also allow your supply staff to build relationships with students. Ensure their contracts allow you to redeploy them for different duties at times when no staff cover is needed.

How many sick days can you afford to cover?
Compare your last three years of school absence data – though you may need to control for lockdown-era irregularities. Is it a comfortable margin? If not, get insurance.

Hannah Day is head of art, media and film at Ludlow College

The post School absence – Where did all the students go? appeared first on Teachwire.

Healthy Eating Week, run by The British Nutrition Foundation, is all about supporting and promoting healthier lifestyles.

What is the theme for 2023?

This year’s theme is ‘For Everyone’. With the cost of living crisis affecting the affordability of healthy food, this year’s focus is on providing free, evidence-based support and advice for everyone.

When is Healthy Eating Week 2023?

This year it takes place between 12th-16th June 2023.

Official resources

Register on the official Healthy Eating Week website to receive a free downloadable activity pack and resources to sue in school. There’s a primary school assembly to join in with, and a secondary school recipe competition too.

Primary lesson plan

In this free lesson plan from the Royal Horticultural Society children will learn that fruit and vegetables are a vital part of a healthy diet. They’ll also find out about the fruit and veg we grow in the UK, and how to plan a school veg garden.

Design a lorry competition

To celebrate the countdown to the Paris Olympics in 2024, Aldi, Team GB and ParalympicsGB have asked young people aged 5–14 to design a lorry that will inspire people to enjoy healthy, sustainable food.

Three winners will see their designs on an Aldi lorry and there’s lots more prizes up for grabs, too.

There’s also lots more resources for schools on the Get Set Eat Fresh website.

French UKS2 medium term plan

This six-lesson French plan, which comes with assessments, discussion notes and worksheets, will help children learn vocabulary about food and drink, and also gets them to think more about healthy eating.

Primary food projects

With busy primary teachers in mind, Food – a fact of life is a set of six food projects, one for each year of primary school.

Each project delivers learning about healthy eating, cooking and where food comes from, in an exciting food context. The download contains everything you need, including lesson plans, presentations, activity sheets and more.

Early Years resource

This free Early Years resource from Plazoom uses engaging images of different foods to teach children which foods are healthy and which should be eaten less often.

Play an online game

Cookin Castle is a simple online game that teaches primary age children about healthy, balanced diets. They’ll learn what the main food groups are and what kinds of foods they should look to eat.

Secondary PSHE and nutrition activity

This PSHE and nutrition activity for KS3 and 4 will only take 15 minutes and is perfect for tutor time. Pupils will think about how they can make small health tweaks to become healthier and happier.

The post Healthy Eating Week – Resources and ideas for celebrating in school appeared first on Teachwire.

The winning hand-drawn designs will be featured on real Aldi lorries that will travel across the country for everyone to see!

The competition, which is open until Friday 23 June, is part of Aldi, Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s award-winning school initiative, Get Set to Eat Fresh.

Get Set to Eat Fresh encourages pupils to develop a love and curiosity about healthy and sustainable food, and give them the knowledge and skills they need to cook nutritious and low-cost meals for themselves.

Fantastic prizes

Designs will be judged by a panel featuring representatives from Aldi, Team GB and ParalympicsGB, and Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including weightlifting silver medallist Emily Campbell and judo gold medallist Chris Skelley, who will select one winner for each of England, Wales, and Scotland.

As well as getting to see their lorry design come to life, the first prize winners will also win £1,000 for their schools, £100 Aldi vouchers, a goody bag from Team GB and ParalympicsGB, and Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes will visit their school to share the good news!

Runner-up prizes are also available in each of the regions, with the pupils in second place winning £750 for their school, along with a £50 voucher and a goody bag, while those awarded third place will receive £500 for their school and a £25 voucher.

“The Design a Lorry competition is part of our collaborative efforts with Team GB and ParalympicsGB to promote healthy eating among young people.

“We’re looking forward to receiving a diverse range of entries and are excited for participants to learn more about the advantages of eating a nutritious diet through the competition.”

Jemma Townsend, marketing director, Aldi

Inspire healthy eating

The Design a Lorry competition is part of Aldi’s partnerships with Team GB and ParalympicsGB. It also forms part of their long-running Get Set to Eat Fresh education programme, which aims to inspire young people aged 5–14 to eat healthily and has so far reached over two million children across the UK.

The competition is supported by new Get Set to Eat Fresh resources that offer curriculum links to art, design & technology, PSHE/health and wellbeing and sustainability.

Teachers can introduce the Design a Lorry competition through dedicated, flexible lesson resources, including a video with athletes Emily Campbell and Chris Skelley.

The lesson plans includes a series of adaptable activities, such as a fun food quiz to understand what healthy, sustainable food means to their students and exploring how to use Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes’ success to create change.

“We’re really excited to be bringing our Design a Lorry competition with Aldi back for a second year!

“It’s a great opportunity for school pupils to get involved with, helping to inspire them to feel passionate about fresh, healthy food by bringing it to life in a creative way.”

Tim Ellerton, commercial director, Team GB

Don’t miss out!

A previous competition to Design a Lorry for Aldi took place in 2021 and had over 24,000 entries.

This year will be even bigger and better, with individual winners from England, Scotland, and Wales, so be sure your pupils don’t miss out on all the fun, while they are learning more about how to eat healthily and sustainably!

Alongside the Design a Lorry competition, Aldi, Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s Get Set to Eat Fresh programme offers a series of teaching resources to educate children about nutrition and build their love and curiosity about healthy, sustainable food.

It can be accessed at www.getseteatfresh.co.uk.

“This competition offers a great chance for students to be recognised for their creativity, whilst also encouraging and motivating them to eat healthily.

“We’re proud to be involved and can’t wait to see the final designs.”

Jenny Seymour, commercial director, ParalympicsGB

Browse resource ideas for Healthy Eating Week.

The post Design your own Aldi lorry to inspire healthy eating – and win up to £1,000 for your school! appeared first on Teachwire.

From EYFS to KS3, this super prize bundle covers a wide range of topics to support your students and will provide a valuable resource for use in your classroom and library. The chosen books:

• will help children to understand and recognise their feelings
• include activities to calm and unwind
• feature insightful guides exploring friendships and social media
• will empower children of all ages to express and manage their emotions and develop a range of social, emotional and life skills

Visit usborne.com/mentalhealth to explore Usborne’s full range of books supporting mental health.

2023 also marks Usborne’s 50^th birthday – 50 years of creating brilliant books for curious children of all ages. To discover more just look for the Usborne balloon and visit usborne.com

The post Win a bundle of books from Usborne appeared first on Teachwire.

30 Second Briefing

The North London Waste Authority Education Hub brings together internal and external resources aiming to encourage waste prevention education within primary schools.

The Hub features a host of engaging resources varying from videos to lesson guides, assembly plans and handbooks, organised under six categories: ‘the journey of waste’, ‘food’, ‘clothing’, ‘composting’, and ‘take action for the environment’.

1. Why is this resource suitable for busy primary schools?

North London Waste Authority (NLWA) carried out research in 2022 with Keep Britain Tidy which set out to identify priority areas of interest and gaps relating to waste prevention education in north London.

NLWA brought together a selection of fantastic resources to enable teachers to either utilise existing lesson plans on the topic or use the resources to design their own lessons – it really is simple!

2. How does the Hub fit with the national curriculum?

The resources on the Hub have strong links to the national curriculum, including English, science, geography, citizenship, and art and design, making it easy for teachers and home school tutors to integrate environmental and waste prevention education into the syllabus.

3. What’s on the Hub?

The Hub contains lesson plans, videos, activities, workshops, and assembly plans on a wide range of subjects around waste prevention and sustainability.

For example, one lesson could be on the history of waste within the UK, and another could assist pupils in delving into their bins to find out what is being disposed of within their school – a great interactive task that encourages children to realise the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling waste.

4. What if there isn’t anything on the Hub that’s right for my school?

Simple – let us know! We’ve designed a feedback form for schools to tell us if something is missing, or if you feel that something else needs to be included.

We will regularly check the feedback and update the Hub accordingly.

5. Where can I access the Hub?

Visit nlwa.gov.uk/education-hub.

The post 5 reasons to try… North London Waste Authority’s Education Hub appeared first on Teachwire.

What is Pride Month?

Pride Month is all about celebrating LGBTQ+ culture as well as looking back on the struggles and rights violations that LGBTQ+ people have faced, and still face today.

When is Pride Month UK?

Pride Month 2023 takes place in June, both in the UK and all around the world. June was chosen as this was the month when the Stonewall uprising took place in 1969.

JUMP TO A SECTION:

• Primary resources
• Secondary resources
• More resources
• Set up your own Pride Group
• Bring LGBTQ+ role models into the classroom

Primary resources for Pride Month 2023

Create an LGBT-inclusive primary curriculum with Stonewall

If you’re looking to create an LGBT-inclusive primary curriculum, Pride Month 2023 is a great time to start. This free Stonewall guide can help.

There are also some excellent additional free-to-download PDFs available, such as this guide to working with parents, this framing inclusion through rights resource or this resource for schools with faith values.

Check out all the resources available here.

Proud to be Me! KS1/2 assembly and lesson ideas pack

Are your pupils proud of who they are? Use this assembly resource from Plazoom to explain what Pride Month is. Children will learn about celebrating love and accepting that everyone is different.

Explore how pupils in your classroom are different and celebrate these differences. You can also give pupils the opportunity to think about what makes them proud of themselves.

Resources from The Proud Trust

When talking to young LGBTQ+ people, The Proud Trust found that, often, at no point during their growing up were LGBTQ+ people ever visible or discussed.

This then meant that they lacked the language and terminology to help them understand and describe who they are. So if you don’t want the same for any children in your school, give these helpful resources a look.

Happily Ever After is a twist on a traditional fairy tale. It enables you to explore same gender relationships and equal marriage for KS2 pupils. The digital download contains everything you need to positively teach about same gender relationships and equal marriage with your class.

Alien Nation is a fun exploration of gender, gender expression, gender roles, and an explanation of different gender identities. The five lesson pack for KS2 contains everything you need to positively teach about trans, non-binary and cis lives.

Use them during Pride Month 2023, or any time, to cover these important topics in your classroom.

Families – LGBTQ+ Pride Month KS2 discussion and writing pack

This resource pack from Plazoom explores families and how all families are founded in love, no matter what they look like.

The activities will teach pupils that family units can vary. It covers blended families, single-parent families, families where parents are the same sex or families that have a mum and dad.

Children will draw pictures or create family trees showing who they live with. Then you can discuss images that challenge stereotypes of what a family should look like.

Nicola Adams KS1 resources pack

Use Pride Month 2023 to introduce KS1 pupils to sportswoman Nicola Adams. This resources pack from Plazoom looks at her achievements and how she is an inspirational person within and beyond the LBGTQ+ community.

Pupils will have the opportunity to develop comprehension skills using the questions linked to the biographical text. They will also consider how she has inspired others.

They will go on to discuss who inspires them, with opportunities to write about who is inspirational in their own lives.

Gender diversity lesson plan

This KS2 lesson plan from GIRES (Gender Identity Research and Education Society) is called Peter’s Story.

The core of the short story is Edward Lear’s famous ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ poem. The subtext is that the central character has a parent who has transitioned to live as a woman.

It helps young children better understanding gender diversity just as they should understand race, ethnicity and religious beliefs.

Secondary resources for Pride Month 2023

Read inspiring LGBTQ+ books

Make sure your library shelves are as inclusive as you’d like your school to be, with these empowering LGBT books..

Create an LGBTQ+ inclusive secondary curriculum

Bring LGBTQ+ inclusion alive and celebrate difference in your school classroom with this inclusive curriculum guide from Stonewall.

Learn how to embed inclusion into every area of your curriculum. This includes everything from choosing inclusive set texts in English to using LGBTQ+ inclusive statistics in maths.

Celebrate LGBTQ+ contributions to media, music and fashion

This free resource from the Proud Trust recognises and celebrates the lives and accomplishments of LGBT people in the fields of photography, film making, TV, music and fashion, whether that’s in front of the camera or behind the scenes.

Explore LGBT+ themes in film

Into Film developed this assembly for LGBT History Month. It can easily be extended and adapted into a lesson plan for Pride Month 2023 too.

Through the questions, issues and ideas raised in a selection of films, this assembly supports young people to discuss the impact and limitations of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act as the first step on the continuing journey towards equal rights for LGBT people.

There are also links to more Into Film resources for LGBT+ movies like the exceptional Carol and Tangerine.

More Pride Month 2023 resources

LGBTQ+ women and sportspeople

Also from Stonewall, these resources, tailored to KS1, KS2 and secondary, focus on the lives and work of some courageous LGBTQ+ women. You can download them as a lesson pack or as a home learning pack.

Want to use sports as an entry point during Pride Month 2023? These lesson packs for primary and secondary will help you explore and celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport.

LGBTQ+ identities

This resource sheet on LGBTQ+ identities from Out in Education provides handy definitions on sexuality and gender. It goes on to explain how these should be seen as useful guidelines or starting points. In reality, identity is more fluid and complex.

It goes on to provide a more accurate model, and talks about ‘coming out’ and the use of pronouns.

Gender explained using continuums

This excellent infographic is part of a post called Breaking through the binary: Gender explained using continuums. You can download it as a PDF.

It’s packed with information on gender and is broken into three categories: identity, expression, and sex. As the post explains, “It’s less ‘this or that’ and more ‘this and that’.”

Supporting transgender kids in school

Use Pride Month 2023 to learn about how best to support trans children in school. The article includes advice from experts in the field, as well as case studies from parents and pupils.

You’ll also find lots of helpful resources and videos (such as the one above) too.

Set up your own Pride Group

Drama and personal development teacher Alison Ollett makes the case for why every school should have its own Pride Group…

LGBT+ is a hot topic. It’s on our TVs, in our social media feeds, in the headlines. But venture into many school settings, and you’d barely know that LGBT+ students and staff even exist.

That was certainly the case for me and my school of 1,700+ children, but in 2016 everything changed. That was the year in which I took on responsibility for LGBT+ inclusion at my academy.

From the very start, it’s been my intent to embed a whole academy approach. I wanted to ensure all of our students can fully develop their unique characters.

We’ve sought to champion LGBT+ inclusion in the years since. This includes updating academy policies, delivering staff training and developing a robust anti-bullying programme.

We’ve also organised academy-wide awareness events such as a LGBT History Month and School Diversity Week.

Through this work, we’ve been able to make effective changes that have had a positive impact on our students, while also developing a culture of acceptance – one in which diversity isn’t just acknowledged, but rightfully celebrated.

Setting up our Pride Group

It was at the height of the pandemic, when we were predominantly teaching remotely, that I started realising just how important the work we’d been doing really was.

A group of LGBT+ students reached out and requested that we develop an online Pride Group. They were missing the sense of community and support they’d had pre-lockdown.

I sent an email invitation out to all students, and thus Plume Pride was born. It’s our very own student-led LGBT+ and ally group and has since grown to over 60 student members.

The group currently holds weekly in-person meetings, arranges special one-off evening sessions and has an online team who are always available to students for assistance and sharing topical news.

Our Pride Group offers a safe space for students that enables them to meet with peers and seek support from staff.

Since the regular meetings began, many of our trans students have been able to start their social transition. Many of our LGBT+ students have received support when coming out to friends and family, navigating potentially challenging conversations and building crucial relationships with their parents and carers.

The group also provides family support, through which our staff can sit as student advocates in parent/carer meetings, in cases where conversations surrounding young people’s gender identity or sexual orientation can prove somewhat difficult and challenging.

Representation matters

One of the main lessons I’ve learnt from our Pride Group is how much representation matters. According to research by Just Like Us, pupils attending schools with strong positive messaging about being LGBTQ+ exhibit drastically better levels of wellbeing compared to other settings and feel safer. This is regardless of whether they happen to be LGBTQ+ or not.

Our Pride Group regularly meets at Friday lunchtime. Admittedly, there have been occasions when I’ve watched my colleagues make their way to the staff room and felt tempted to join them. But then the corridor outside my classroom becomes filled with giggles and chatter before a steady stream of students enters, all smiling and full of energy.

I return to my seat and watch as the room fills with students from each year group. Salutations and compliments criss-cross the room as they take their places in front of me.

As I sit and watch these amazing young people socialise, support each other and continue to change their academy for the better, I’m reminded of how thankful I am for the role I have as their facilitator.

Alison Ollett (pronouns: she/her) is a drama and personal development teacher. She’s also whole academy mental health champion at Plume, Maldon’s Community Academy in Essex. For more information on setting up a Pride Group, visit justlikeus.org or follow @JustLikeUsUK.

Bring LGBTQ+ role models into the classroom

Andrew Coe, former project leader for Out in Education, explains how a visit from an LGBTQ+ role model can help you to create a safe and inclusive classroom…

When “coming out” to a room of around 200 pupils, it is perfectly normal to experience some degree of apprehension.

Many of us who identify as LGBT+ did not get to bring our full selves to school. We spent years in the closet, attempting to blend in with the straight and/or cisgender majority of our peers.

For this reason, venturing back into this environment to educate today’s pupils about our identities can feel daunting. But the rewards are limitless.

This is the motivation behind student-led volunteering project Out in Education, based at the University of Nottingham.

Assemblies and lessons

Since 2013, they have visited 50+ schools to deliver assemblies and lessons on LGBT+ topics. This includes personal coming out stories, inclusive sex education, and anti-bullying workshops.

I had the pleasure of working with the project whilst studying physics at Nottingham, seeing the positive impact first-hand.

“The rewards are limitless”

One memorable example took place following a Year 8 assembly on different identities at a Nottingham secondary school. Soon after we had finished, one pupil came to the front to talk with us. They came out as bisexual for the first time.

To see such immediate effects, and to have given this pupil the confidence to come out so early in life – something which I was not able to do – was the greatest victory.

Anonymous Q&A

A regular feature of an Out in Education workshop is the ‘Anonymous Q&A’. This is where pupils write down questions which are answered by the volunteers at the end of the lesson.

This creates a far more organic learning process. Instead of relying on hypothetical situations, pupils hear about the personal experiences of others who have recently been through the school system themselves.

Unfailingly, pupils of all ages ask intelligent and thoughtful questions:

• How do you know when your real self shows?
• Do you prefer to be called gay/lesbian or normal?
• Did all of your friends accept you [when coming out]?

This creates conversations that are rewarding for both the pupils and volunteers.

Perhaps surprisingly, abrasive or inappropriate questions are rare. But they are usually along the lines of, “How do lesbians have sex?” or, “Can I have your number?”.

The tactic isn’t to ignore these. Instead, we either explain why they aren’t appropriate or, particularly for the former, to produce a sincere, matter-of-fact answer that is age appropriate.

Bullying

It is never too early to introduce pupils to the concepts of gender and sexuality. If they haven’t already, every pupil will go on to encounter LGBT+ people in their lives. The concepts of love and living as your true self are approachable at any age.

Current standards are still failing a tremendous number of LGBT+ children across the country. According to the Stonewall School Report (2017), 45% of LGBT pupils in Britain’s schools are bullied for being LGBT, and two in five young transgender people have attempted suicide.

A mere 13% of LGBT pupils have learned about healthy relationships in a same-sex context, and three in five have never been explicitly taught that same-sex couples can get married.

For full-time educators, the pressures of teaching core subjects can be heavy enough without the additional responsibility of being fully inclusive.

How you can help pupils

The solution isn’t to reinvent the syllabus, but to instead make subtle changes to the language and presumptions that can exist in the classroom.

For example, it cannot be assumed that every pupil in the room will be straight and cisgender, and using gender-neutral language (eg ‘partner’ instead of ‘boyfriend’) can prevent feelings of alienation.

Also, never allow the word “gay” to be used in a derogatory context. Display a pride flag in your classroom to remind LGBT+ pupils that they are safe. Where lessons permit, include LGBT+ figureheads or themes, which are currently seldom seen outside of PSHE lessons.

Until LGBT+ inclusive education becomes a compulsory part of the curriculum, projects like Out in Education will continue to help create safe and inclusive classrooms.

The phrase, “Be who you needed when you were younger” runs through the core of the project, with the hope that future generations won’t have to suffer as they explore their identity, but instead be able to celebrate them safely and confidently.

Andrew Coe is former project leader for Out in Education. If you would like to book a visit to your school from Out in Education for Pride Month 2023 visit their website. 

The post Pride Month 2023 – Best ideas and resources for schools appeared first on Teachwire.

Falsehoods regarding the modernised curriculum have helped to fuel calls for it to be reviewed – a step which would amount to a rolling back of equalities in this country. Here’s how.

Many of these falsehoods can be found in a report into the RSE taught by schools commissioned by Miriam Cates MP and produced by her organisation, the New Social Covenant Unit. The document makes a number of generalised and inaccurate assertions – including that age-inappropriate and extreme issues are being taught to young learners everywhere, causing harm to their wellbeing.

In reality, the opposite is true.

Cates cites blogs that include what she deems as ‘inappropriate content’ to back up her claims. However, these largely come from organisations that provide sexual wellbeing information for adults, and don’t work with school students.

Organisations geared towards working with schools – such as Sex Ed Matters, which I serve as director, and abides by guidance set by the PSHE Association – barely warrant any mention in the report.

Rather than listen to an MP, I suggest that we listen to students. A 2021 Ofsted review unearthed details of sexual harassment and abuse being effectively ‘normalised’ on school grounds, based on extensive interviews with young people.

A survey subsequently conducted by the Sex Education Forum found that many students in fact wanted more RSE support, as they believed this would keep them safe, better informed and provide a space for them in which they could raise concerns and develop their understanding.

Indeed, countless studies have shown how improving RSE provision has reduced rates of sexual violence, empowered students and made young people safer.

Yet despite this, the falsehoods persist, sparking calls for important topics like sexuality and body autonomy to be taken out of the curriculum altogether, for fear that such teaching ‘promotes a left wing agenda’ – rhetoric with echoes of headlines published shortly before the imposition of Section 28, which went on to devastate many lives.

We can already see history repeating itself in the US. Florida and Texas have introduced variants of a ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, prohibiting the teaching of gender and sexuality in all schools across both states.

We deserve better. We must act now, lest such damaging laws resurface and cause similar forms of harm here.

Laura Coryton is the director of Sex Ed Matters; for more information, visit sexedmatters.co.uk or follow @sexedmattersuk

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What is Empathy Day?

Research tells us that 1 in 16 10-15-year-olds are not happy with their lives. Teachers are reporting rising levels of anxiety and mental health problems.

Empathy Day 2023 aims to celebrate empathy’s power to build a kinder, less divided world. It was founded in 2017 and aims to drive a new empathy movement and remind everyone that empathy is a skill that can be learnt.

Empathy Day is story-driven, inspired by scientific evidence that in identifying with book characters, we learn to see things from other points of view.

The day is organised by social enterprise, EmpathyLab.

When is Empathy Day 2023?

Empathy Day 2023 is on 8th June.

JUMP TO A SECTION

• Official Empathy Day resources
• Kindness lesson plan
• 5 diverse books plus activities
• More Empathy Day ideas
• Why books are key to building empathy

Official Empathy Day 2023 resources

National assembly

To launch the Empathy Day Live! free online festival, Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho will lead a national assembly featuring an exclusive Empathy Day 2023 poem.

Stream it from 9am on 8th June 2023. Special guests including Cressida Cowell, Chris Riddell, Jacqueline Wilson and Frank Cottrell Boyce will also feature.

From 2pm, join beloved author and illustrator Rob Biddulph for a special empathy-themed ‘Draw with
Rob’.

Empathy Day 2023 handbook

A new empathy handbook for 7-12-year-olds goes on sale on 18th May 2023, in celebration of Empathy Day 2023. Written by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, We’ve Got This! takes readers through six simple steps to harness empathy as their human superpower.

Mission Empathy

At the heart of Empathy Day 2023 are five inspiring Mission Empathy Challenge activities for children to complete in class or at home from May onwards.

Designed to develop key empathy skills such as active listening and perspective-taking, the emphasis is on social change.

Sign up for free resources to take part.

#ReadForEmpathy collection

Expert judges have chosen these 65 books for 3-16-year-olds for their empathy-building insights. Use them in school to help young people learn more about empathy – and put it into action.

Kindness lesson plan

This free lesson plan for KS1 and KS2 is perfect for Empathy Day 2023. It investigates how children can connect to both their peers and their community in fulfilling and meaningful ways. It also touches on connecting with yourself to overcome life’s challenges.

The lesson explores how to use nature to improve connections, what a growth mindset is and how to use positive self-talk.

Pupils will also learn about the importance of kindness and how to put it into action.

5 diverse books plus activities

Once Upon a Dragon’s Fire by Beatrice Blue (Frances Lincoln)

What’s the story?

Rumours abound about a fearsome dragon and the village is terrified of him. But it takes two children with open hearts and minds to visit the dragon and recognise what he needs to combat his sorrow and loneliness. And the warmth the dragon feels when someone starts to care helps save the village from a terrible storm.

This is a gorgeous picture book about understanding others and the empathetic power of stories.

Try this…

• Discuss how rumours can cause terrible harm. Talk about how misunderstandings can spread.
• Characters Sylas and Freya instinctively know how to comfort the lonely dragon. He needs lots of stories. Make a big dragon and create a ‘dragon story shelf’ in the classroom. Everyone can choose books for the shelf that they would like to read to the dragon.
• Freya and Sylas are also very sensitive to the needs of the dragon. They want to share stories that don’t hurt his feelings, so they make up their own. Write your own stories for a dragon and create a story book.
• In the story, the children’s empathy is strengthened by meeting the dragon. They need to help the villagers to understand the dragon too. Imagine you are Freya or Sylas and create a magazine or podcast all about the dragon that you could share with the village.

Too Small Tola by Atinuke, illustrated by Onyinye Iwu (Walker Books)

What’s the story?

Tola is the smallest member of the family. Her siblings often doubt her abilitie. However, ever surprising, Tola demonstrates that being small need not hold anyone back.

This book is great for expanding children’s world views, with insights into Tola’s Nigerian life, in which people with different religious beliefs live together. It will also help children recognise some of the universal themes and challenges of childhood – a fantastic early reader.

Try this…

• Step into Tola’s shoes. What would it feel like to be Tola, always being told you’re too small? Discuss in pairs then write emotion words on the board.
• Tola and her siblings must fetch all the water they need for the day before they go to school. Water is precious. In groups, imagine you are a member of Tola’s family and plan how to use the water carefully for the day ahead to ensure it doesn’t run out. How do pupils feel about some people having water on tap and others having to queue for it every day?
• Explore the beautiful Nigerian fabrics that Mr Abdul uses to make clothes. Ask children to copy their favourite design onto a piece of paper or design their own.
• The residents of Tola’s apartment celebrate Easter and Ramadan. Research these festivals, share experiences and present findings to classmates.

Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah (Scholastic)

What’s the story?

Leonard has an idyllic childhood in Jamaica. However, at the age of ten he boards a ship with his mother to journey to England. Once there, he’s reunited with his father who has already been working in England for several years.

Leonard and his parents are part of the Windrush generation. As well as getting used to the cold weather and cramped living conditions, Leonard has to deal with daily prejudice and racism. The story follows Leonard up until 2018, when he is denied citizenship by the country that is his home.

Try this…

• Imagine you are Leonard leaving home in order to live in another country. List three things that you would look forward to and three things you would worry about.
• Listen to the poem Windrush by Denniston Stewart. Discuss how the experiences of the narrator compare to the experiences of Leonard and his family.
• What would happen if Leonard joined your school? How would the class make him feel welcome? What would you want him to know about life at your school? What advice would you give him to help him settle in?
• Listen to the Benjamin Zephaniah episode of the Author in your Classroom podcast to hear him talking about this book and his writing process. If you could ask him about his life, what would you want to know?

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Bre Indigo and Rey Terciero (Little, Brown Young Readers US)

What’s the story?

This graphic novel reimagines the story of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and shifts its location to modern-day Brooklyn. With their father away at war, it’s up to the March sisters to occupy themselves while their mother works to make ends meet.

Letters and emails from each of the girls split up the chapters and provide insight into each character’s world.

With sensitive portrayals of illness, blended families, sexuality, class, and race, the text shines a light on a range of experiences, prompting readers to question what it might feel like to be in the characters’ position and reflect on their own lives.

Try this…

• Which March sister do you most relate to? Write a diary extract about one of your favourite scenes in the book from their perspective. What might they be thinking?
• One of the central themes of the text is family. People live in lots of different types of families. Can you illustrate your family or the people you live with in a similar style? How could you represent everyone’s personality, hobbies and interests? How does your family compare to that of the March family?
• The text touches on some complex themes, ending with the girls at a Women’s March. Explore one of the more complex issues depicted in the graphic novel. Use websites such as CBBC’s Newsround to provide a child-friendly view of current affairs.

Belonging Street by Mandy Coe (Otter-Barry Books)

What’s the story?

Belonging Street is a wide-ranging collection of poems, all based on a loose theme of belonging. Poet and illustrator Mandy Coe has written about the natural world and why we are responsible for protecting it, the importance of family life and the power of connection.

The poems create wonderful discussion opportunities, as well as chances for students to write and be creative, and encourage empathy with our planet and its inhabitants.

Try this…

• Read the poem Coming Home To You. Discuss what ‘home’ means. Does it mean the same to everyone? If you had to summarise home in five words, what would they be?
• Explore the poem Hearing The Earth, Feeling The Earth. In groups discuss how you can help to care for the planet. Make posters for the classroom showing why it’s important to look after the world and what people can do to help.
• Find out what your school is already doing to protect the environment and if there is more that can be done. Present ideas to the headteacher or school council.
• Read and discuss the poem Take The Leap. Ask children to think about a time they did something that scared them. How did they feel before, during and after? What would they say to friends who are feeling scared? Can being scared sometimes be a good thing?

Thank you to contributors Jon Biddle (Moorlands Primary Academy), Richard Charlesworth (Springwell School) and Sarah Mears (EmpathyLab co-founder).

More Empathy Day 2023 ideas

Primary teachers and Empathy Book Collection selection panel judges Jon Biddle and Richard Charlesworth explain how to embed empathy throughout your school…

We all know how squeezed the primary curriculum is (and it’s getting more squeezed every year) but helping children develop the ability to empathise is something that we can’t ignore.

Some subjects – such as English and history – are a natural fit, but others require a little more thinking. However, there are stories to be told in all subjects, and we will be using these as the basis for much of our work on Empathy Day.

Maths

In maths we occasionally learn about mathematicians who have been overlooked in history. For example, Muhammad al-Khwarizmi isn’t a name that most of us know, but his work helped ensure that modern arithmetic is based around just ten different digits.

How might he feel to know that his work had such a lasting impact? Would you be proud to learn that something you had done was still being used over a thousand years later? What might you say to someone who wasn’t happy with their work?

A short conversation about these ideas while teaching place value can give the lesson an empathy focus without taking away from its main objectives.

A fan of algorithms, strings and Booleans? Or want to find out what each of those are? Then you might like to explore empathy alongside computing.

Texts such as Aimee Lucido’s verse novel In the Key of Code can link to coding lessons and act as a springboard for children to go on and find out about coding languages themselves.

Presented in poetic forms, with cleverly interwoven references to music, texts like this will link well to the curriculum as well as allowing readers to discuss themes around loneliness and moving homes.

PSHE

Encouraging empathy and developing pupils’ awareness of current affairs can be a challenging task. Using authentic and autobiographical texts, such as Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed’s When Stars are Scattered can be a great way to not only link to areas of the PHSE curriculum, but wider societal issues, such as human rights and the refugee experience.

Pupils could explore individual spreads in the graphic novel to discuss the emotions of each character and their actions. Alternatively, the text could prompt greater action, with classes exploring who the decision makers are in their local community – linking empathy to power.

Combining texts with further research (such as focusing on the work of charities including the British Red Cross, and the UN Refugee Agency) can enrich experiences in the classroom and connect ‘human crisis’ with ‘human kindness’.

Humanities

Exploring history with an empathetic perspective can also bring lesser-known narratives and historical figures to the fore.

Using well-researched texts such as Black and British: An illustrated history (David Olusoga, illustrated by Jake Alexander & Melleny Taylor), Mohinder’s War (Bali Rai) and After the War (Tom Palmer), can offer teachers – and readers – a range of viewpoints to analyse periods of history.

This links nicely to EmpathyLab’s ‘Human Discoveries’ activity from 2022 which asks children to spend time listening to family members, friends or neighbours and discover more about their lives. Children could share a secret ambition, or learn about their parent/carer’s childhood. 

One of the ideas suggested in the 2022 Empathy Day Toolkit is to go for an Empathy Walk in the local community. This could work beautifully alongside any unit of work based around the local area.

After returning, the children can discuss what they’ve seen; the effect of litter on the local environment, a couple deep in conversation on a bench, or a parent enjoying time with their young child in the park.

You can even adapt this to create an ‘Empathy Map’ of the local area.

Empathy Resolutions are something that only take a few minutes to write, but the impact can be enormous. Every Empathy Day, across the whole school, we ask our children to write down one way that they will try to be more empathetic in the future.

Previous examples have included not judging people that they don’t know or trying to understand people better when they’re being annoying.

We then share these in a whole-school display and refer to them again during Empathy Reflection Month (November), where we share how well we think we’ve done.

Books

When selecting a class book to read together, the EmpathyLab collection, a range of 65 expertly selected books for 3–16s, is always full of powerful recommendations.

In 2022 we enjoyed A Street Dog Named Pup by Gill Lewis, The Last Bear by Hannah Gold, Valerie Bloom’s poetry collection Stars with Flaming Tails, and picture books The Invisible by Tom Percival and Nen and the Lonely Fisherman by Ian Eagleton and James Mayhew.

Because the writing in all the books is so rich, with a really clear empathy focus, conversations and discussions while reading evolve almost organically.

The talk is very much based around the characters in the text, how we empathise with them and how we would behave if facing similar situations.

Many of the conversations lead into the children wanting to engage in social action based around themes of the book, which is one of EmpathyLab’s goals.

In The Last Bear, a polar bear is stranded on an island due to climate change. Many pupils went home and talked with their families about climate change and a group of them went to ask the headteacher whether he thought the school was doing enough to reduce its carbon footprint.

This led to making some simple changes, such as introducing light and board monitors in each class. Because the push came from the children, it gave them an extra sense of empowerment and ownership over the situation.

Why books are key to building empathy

Empathy is a superpower that benefits students in numerous ways, says English teacher Danielle Perkins – and books can give it to them in spades this Empathy Day 2023

In my first year of teaching, I remember looking up whilst reading the final pages of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to see a student using his sweatshirt to stifle his sobs and mop up his tears.

I’ve witnessed many different reactions from students in the course of reading literature, but that moment is still etched in my mind – not so much for his reaction, but rather the sea of bemused faces surrounding him.

How could one child have such a profound reaction, while others around him remained so emotionally untouched?

Detached and desensitised

At the time, I naively passed it off as simply a case of one student being highly sensitive. On reflection, however, I think the reaction said far more about the rest of the room than it did about him.

Still new to the profession myself, I soon found myself asking why so many of our young people appeared so detached and desensitised.

Outside of school hours, time spent reading books has been gradually replaced by the checking of Instagram captions and endless scrolling through ‘newsfeeds’.

Of course, any form of reading is beneficial, but the whole concept of social media seems to be one centred on materialism and egotism.

Hate crimes are on the up. Cyber bulling and ‘trolling’ have become commonplace throughout society. Social media purports to connect people, yet it actually serves to make us increasingly detached from others. The modern world has left our young people with an empathy deficit.

A joy to teach

Over the past few years, a new body of research has examined the emotional impact that literature can have, and found clear links between high quality literature, literacy and children’s empathy.

Empathy Lab is currently working with schools to provide support and resources for developing empathy skills across the curriculum – something that’s become a particular area of interest for me, following recent developments within the Black Lives Matter movement.

As well as using Empathy Lab resources, I’ve been spending some quality time with our school librarian, Jane Badcott, reading and discussing texts that might help foster empathy.

I’ve then collated extracts from these texts that our teachers can use alongside our main schemes of learning. We’ll dip into these to engage students with independent library book borrowing, but also use them for our class reader texts at KS3.

Class readers have remained a huge part of our departmental ethos, because of the opportunities they provide for students to collectively read for pleasure and discuss a text’s issues.

They’re also a joy to teach, and are vital in fostering empathy among young people.

More content

However, the increasing focus in recent years on a knowledge-centred curriculum has meant that we now have ever more content to teach and revisit.

We must protect what opportunities we have for promoting reading for pleasure and fostering empathy in our classrooms.

“We must protect what opportunities we have for promoting reading for pleasure and fostering empathy”

Our focus shouldn’t be on what, or how much knowledge we can impart, but instead on how students go on to use that knowledge.

Without empathy skills, students may well possess knowledge, but lack the ability to deploy it effectively in their studies.

No more villains

In my own classroom, I’ve found that a slower pace and a focus on empathy has produced the most thoughtful comments on character representations I’ve ever seen.

Students have stopped viewing characters as one-dimensional puppets and started seeing them as complex individuals, with human flaws and virtues.

We no longer ‘villainise’ characters, but attempt to understand them. We ask what motivates or inspires them, and consider the constraints under which they live.

What must it be like to face such challenges? Why do they behave in the way they do?

Vocabulary barriers

An initial barrier to having these sorts of discussions with students was their limited vocabulary when discussing feelings and complex ideas around character.

We’ve addressed this with the aid of an emotion wheel with tiered language to label emotions and facilitate classroom discussion.

“Empathy is the glue that holds together communities and supports relationships”

Consistent use of this across our curriculum has enabled students to feel more confident when talking about not just the emotions of fictional characters, but their own as well.

Empathy is the glue that holds together communities and supports relationships. Why should we confine the exploration of it to PSHE only?

Empathy has the potential to not just reduce bullying, but also support English literature students in analysing character in a more developed and thoughtful way.

In English language, it can support students’ analysis of multiple viewpoints and writing from different perspectives. Empathy is an acquirable superpower – and it all starts with the right book.

Help students develop empathy

• Encourage them to read for no other purpose than the pleasure of reading itself
• Slow the pace of your reading in class
• Develop a more extensive vocabulary for discussing feelings among your students
• Explore character motivations, constraints and feelings
• Focus on matters of character when discussing personal reading, rather than the number of pages read

The post Empathy Day 2023 – Best activities, books and curriculum ideas appeared first on Teachwire.

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• Year 6 leavers ideas
• Activities for all ages

Year 6 end of year activities

There’s something unique about the leap from primary to secondary. Your Year 6 leavers will go from being the biggest and oldest children in a comparatively small school, to being the littlest and youngest in a much bigger setting.

Been busy preparing for the end of the school year and haven’t had much of a chance to think about seeing the little scamps off to secondary? We’ve rounded up some great end of year activities and ideas for you.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Use Dr Seuss’ classic picturebook and this free activity pack to cover literacy and PSHE in UKS2. The activities make the perfect project for Year 6 leavers, giving them a chance to:

• Articulate their hopes and ambitions, and identify some of the attitudes, behaviours and skills they might need to achieve them
• Enjoy a shared reading-for-pleasure experience and build on it
• Interrogate text and pictures to extend their understanding and discover different meanings
• Explore aspects of challenge, opportunity and change through drama, creative writing and art
• Develop their understanding of story structure
• Gain insight into their own emotions and those of others
• Explore quotations and choose one they find meaningful

Introduce secondary subjects

During lockdown, teacher Emily Weston asked a range of secondary teachers to create a short presentation introducing their subject, a topic from it and a short activity children can complete.

Transition activity sheet

This activity sheet helps Y6 children think about their current school, and the new one that awaits them in six weeks. They’ll think about similarities and differences between the two and things they’ll remember about primary. There’s also space to write about what they have achieved, things they would like to know about their new school, and what they are looking forward to.

For other year groups these transition book templates can be used with a range of structures to match the age/ability of your class.

Find the Year 6 activity sheets here and the transition books here.

Transition passport

This passport to Y7 allows Y6 children to write about themselves, reflect on their primary school successes and think about their new school.

Print the document as an A5 booklet and share it with Year 7 teachers to help them build relationships with your pupils.

Transition lesson plan

We all know that change can be difficult, and scary. This resource is ideal for putting your students at ease with their impending transition.

It’s an activity from Mind Moose, a digital platform that helps children maintain good mental health and wellbeing. It takes around 45 minutes to an hour to complete.

You can download a PDF of the lesson plan and a couple of worksheets for the activities. These include things like getting children to write a timeline of their lives, to see how much change they’ve already experienced, and how it made them feel, and grow.

10 leavers’ assembly ideas

If you’re after something a bit different for this year’s celebrations, this top 10 list of ideas for your leavers’ assembly has some corkers.

There’s a Harry Potter sorting hat activity and a Marvel superheroes theme. We love the fantastic ‘Class of 2100’ reunion. This puts a new spin on looking back on your time at primary. Kids dress up as their 90-year-old selves to reminisce about their time in education and what they went on to achieve in life.

Career photo collage

This one shouldn’t take much effort, but it makes for a nice keepsake for you and your leavers. Have pupils write on a chalkboard what they want to be when they grow up. Next, take a picture then make a class collage with all the leavers on.

Create an end of year video

If you’ve been so caught up in the end-of-year shenanigans that you’ve not had time to think of the best send-off for your class we’ve rounded up some fantastic school dance routines, songs and celebrations that can inspire your own fun and games.

There’s inspiring poetry, paper waterfalls and the hilarious charm of kids talking about what they think you do over the summer.

Another option is to create your own lip-sync music video. Choose a song with some fitting lyrics. Next, shoot your own music video as a nice memory for your students (and teachers, of course).

An alternative spin, of course, is to write your own lyrics for the children to sing over the top of a well-known hit. And this video gets extra points for weaving in snippets of the kids talking about what they want to be when they grow up.

If you’re looking for something a little different to the old song-and-dance routines, why not get your Year 6s to film a mini movie? Check out this one from Earlsmend Primary for inspiration.

End of year activities for all ages

End of year bingo

This free end of year bingo game will have kids having fun out of their seats trying to get the information from their classmates to fill in their card.

The rules are simple: children will find a classmate matching each description and write his/her name in the box. Kids can go ahead and fill in blanks they already know. Alternatively, they can wander around asking friends if they fit one of the characteristics. The first person to fill five in a row wins.

The download also contains a blank version so you can customise it for your class.

My School Superhero end-of-term writing activity

Who’s been a real superhero in your class or school this term?

As the year draws to a close, this free writing activity is an ideal way for children and adults to share positive feedback about each other. They can highlight things they’ve learnt and the progress they’ve made together for a truly uplifting wall or corridor display.

Reflection questions

Find all the secondary subject slides here and give Y6 pupils a comprehensive look at the Y7 curriculum.

Getting children to reflect on everything they’ve learnt and achieved may be an obvious starting point, but that doesn’t mean you can’t save time by finding a pre-written list of questions to start yourself off. Like this one.

And you can also download them as task cards if you prefer.

Class word clouds

This end-of-year activity makes a great gift for kids to take away. Print out lists of everyone’s name in the class (yours included). Then get everyone to fill the sheet out using one positive word to describe each person.

Then input those answers into a word cloud generator and print out each child’s personalised page of positive traits.

Movie and popcorn day

No, we’re not suggesting you spend the last day handing the ‘teaching’ over to some DVDs!

This American resource has some great educational activities to go along with a fun day of turning the classroom into a cinema (only without the extortionate prices).

12 effective activities

If you’re just after a simple list of ideas to try out then this post features 12 effective lessons and activities to teach at the end of the school year.

Survey and photo activity

It’s the end of the year, so the weather is hopefully nice and suitable for this activity. First, you get children to fill out this survey of their favourite things (which you can print off here).

Then you can all go outside and take a nice photograph of each of the children, before putting their survey answers over the pic on a computer.

Art activities

Hands-on, fun art activities will always go down a treat at the end of a school year. This list has a nice selection for you to choose from.

Maths ideas

There are some end of year activities for inside the classroom and out here. They include STEM challenges, a paper aeroplane contest and parachute testing (not real ones, thankfully). Or have a go at a pirate escape test or making a fractions chart.

Browse more end of term activities, this time aimed at secondary pupils, and plan ahead with these back to school activities.

The post End of year activities – Fun ideas for KS1 and KS2 appeared first on Teachwire.