Noah and his Ark: Reception

Today Reception welcomed Reverend Sarah to school, who shared a very special story with us. She was visiting from a church to tell us a Christian story from their special book called The Bible. 

Reverend Sarah began with an Ark and a man called Noah... The children were incredibly respectful during this time, and showed understanding that people can believe different things. 

"Some people believe in God and some people don't, but that's okay you can still be friends"

- Margo

"Is this story real? Because I believe in God so I think it's real, but someone that doesn't believe in God might think it's not real... so we think different things"

- Oliver

The children enjoyed retelling the story of Noah's Ark after story time and were also inspired to create models and artwork. The children even lined up for assembly two by two!

Interfaith week -Agent Reflector

Last week was Interfaith Week at Windhill21. A time when the school community takes time to celebrate the different faiths in our community. It's a time when pupils and teachers take a deeper look at the values we share and learn about the different beliefs and practices of those around them.

This year we have linked Interfaith week to one of Global goals the children have been focussing on "No Poverty." All year groups started their learning with the story of "The Good Samaritan" from the Bible and took part in a range of activities to compare the Christian response to poverty to that of other world faiths such as Islam , Buddhism , Hinduism and Judaism.

The week included a whole school assembly to launch the week, P4C discussions, drama and a range of Reflection stations in the Atrium for each year group to visit with their teachers.

Here is a flavour of some of the Reflections the children took part in this week.

"Prayer and hope tree"- a place for pupils to take time to consider
things they were thankful for or take time write a hope or prayer.



"The world we live in" - with so much going on in the world pupils were invited to look at the pictures of poverty- including homelessness, hunger, draught and natural disasters and take time to think or find out about these issues and place a candle on the country they were thinking of.

"Climate change"- linked to last terms global goal of looking after the world we live in. Pupils made pledges of how they could help preserve the environment for the future.

"Peace and Justice"- linked to the global goal number 16 "peace and justice" .Pupils were asked to reflect on a quotation from Mahatma Ghandi about responding to those who treat you unfairly and how those from the Hindu faith may respond in situations of injustice.

"The Good Samaritan"- Who is your neighbour?  At this station pupils were encouraged to take time to show empathy and reflect on our responses to helping others we don't know or who do not share the same views as us.

"Reduced Inequalities".
We are all different- we look, behave and believe different things often
but in this diversity we have  different talents and gifts we can use to help those around us.
What is your gift/talent and how will your use it to help others?

Finding out about what others believe- at this station pupils were asked to reflect on the Muslim act of Zakat ( charity) and respond in their own way -reflecting on why this was important and taking time to think about their own point of view.

Interfaith week in Nursery

Last week was Interfaith week for the whole school and was linked to the whole school global goal of No Poverty.

In Nursery we read the story of "The Good Samaritan" and talked about what it means to be kind. 

We watched the following video clip called  "Am I Kind" to help us talk about what being "kind" meant. The children were quick to recognise that sharing toys with other people - even if they didn't want to was a kind act.

During our "choosing time" the children were keen to make their own "Look out" telescopes like Miss Woodhouse's  to "keep an eye out" for their friends and help anyone who might be sad or hurt. 

The children continued to explore these ideas in their  role play and showed how they would help someone who was hurt and were very caring in the way they bandaged, wrapped up and cared for the injured dolls - just like The Good Samaritan did in the story.

Interfaith week in Reception

During Interfaith week, the children in Reception have been thinking very carefully about lots of different concepts. To start the week, the children shared the story of The Good Samaritan, a story from the Christian special book called the Bible. Following this, we explored the word 'good' and came up with characteristics of someone that was 'good'

"They have to have good listening ears"
"They need to be caring and look after people"
"They don't all look the same. Lots of different people can be good"

The children they drew their very own 'good creature' including all the features that they felt reflected what it meant to be 'good'. We also enjoyed interacting with the special reflection stations set up for us this week:

Here, Bobbi and Oliver closed their eyes and made a wish for people living in poverty all over the world. They placed their candle on a part of the world that they felt needed their wish to come true.

Ellie explained how she was thankful for her mummy and the teachers looking after her,
drawing a little heart for the Thankful Tree.

Here, Nico, Ethan and Fletcher made pledges to look after their world. Ethan pledged to use less plastic to help look after all the creatures of the world. Fletcher and Nico both said that they wanted to look after the animals too.

Year 5 R.E. Banksy Class

Banksy Class had a great afternoon playing The Commitments Game in their R.E. lesson.


They had to discuss with their group which of the given activities they were/were not/were not sure they were committed and they then ignored what their group said and placed each activity where they thought it should go - green, they were committed to it; orange, they were partly committed to it and red, they were not committed to it at all.


When it was their turn, the rule was 'swap one, place one' so if a previous member of their group had placed a commitment somewhere they did not agree with, they could swap it before taking their turn.


Potential disagreements loomed, however all pupils played and discussed in a mature and productive way - well done Banksy Class!


There were many commitments groups found very easy to place and quite a few many groups really could not agree on: religion, listening to music, completing homework and earning at least 50 stars a week on Doodle Maths are some examples of commitments they were given.

Questions

This week in RE and PSHE the children have been thinking about questions. They looked at different types of questions people can ask and sorted questions into those categories. We have also started an 'I wonder why...' so that we can discuss one deeper thinking question in class everyday. Archie started us off by asking 'Why do penguins have wings if they don't need to fly?'

Year 2 Interfaith - should we have rules?

As part of interfaith week, year 2 thought about the question ‘should we have rules?’ They answered the question initially on post-its. Then, after looking at rules we have at school, in religions and in the country, they wrote a second post-it with their new answer to the question. We discussed whether our opinions had changed after seeing the new information or not.

That's not fair!!

As part of interfaith day on Wednesday, nursery watched the following video all about rules. 

Afterwards we looked at what rules we have at nursery and talked about why we might need rules to keep us safe. 

Later on in the session the children had to use Agent problem solver to sort out a dilemma with Harold  and his friends. Harold only had 2 cakes and had to choose which of his friends to give it to (his best friend or the one who was hungrier), but no matter how he tried it just didn't feel fair to the children,  as only friend was able to have a cake. So the children thought very hard and decided it would only be fair if they could cut the cake and everyone could have a piece! 

Interfaith week (13/03/2017)

 Last week the internationalism team held an interfaith week which was launched with Key stage 2 assembly on Monday and KS1 on Tuesday.   The focus for this week was to reflect as a community on what it means to “belong” and explore ideas of being included or excluded because of what we look like or what we believe or think. Our inspiration for this came from this thought provoking phrase:

“We are all different fish swimming in the same ocean”

The week included workshops for each class from Nursery to Year 6, using P4C stimuli (see video clip above) and questions to encourage pupils and staff to reflect on the things that make us different but also to recognise and consider the deeper values that we share and join us together. At the end of the workshops pupils were set a challenge to decorate their own fish (in a unique, special way) and write values that were important to them.

 

 

 

During the week pupils were the given the opportunity to take part in “reflection stations” in the learning zone at lunchtimes. These will be in the learning zone for parents and children to use during parent consultations on Wednesday and Thursday.