What makes a good leader? Year 3 practise their oracy skills during America Day.

Year 3 impressed us with their passion for politics during America Day. It was fantastic to see the children so interested and engaged in the upcoming American elections. 

We started the day by exploring the continents and journeyed from Windhill21 over to the United States using Google maps. We then spent some time exploring the 50 states and hearing from children who had holidayed in America. 

We learnt about the American Presidents (past and present) and discussed what qualities we thought made a great leader. We worked in groups to make a diamond 9 and used our oracy skills to explain our decisions. Does a great leader have to be confident? Does a great leader have to be a good listener? 

We then turned our attention to a president that we considered to be a good leader: Barack Obama. We read about his background and watched some of his inspirational speeches. As a class, we discussed what made his speeches so effective and powerful and created our own success criteria to define what makes a good speech.

After lunch, we were challenged to write our own speeches in teams. The brief was to generate an exciting new idea for a fantasy playground and to pitch it to the rest of the class. The children had so many fun and exciting ideas, from theme parks to slumber parties. After they had collaborated in their teams, the children used the success criteria from earlier to plan and deliver a speech to the rest of the class. We were so proud of their passion, confidence and effort. There are clearly lots of future leaders at Windhill21!