British Values and Protected Characteristics

In Year 5 and 6, we have been focussing on British Values and Protected Characteristics. And as part of Me and My Community Week we have been lucky enough to have Zoom sessions to discover and explore what these things mean in more details.

To help us remember the British Values we learnt a saying:

I really do matter.

We spoke about how we display these values in our everyday life at school, at home and within our community.

There are 9 Protected Characteristics and, as a class, we are confident about what they are and what they mean. We learnt about the Equality Act 2010 and how that helps people within our community.

We were introduced to 2 words:

• Discrimination is unfair treatment of one particular person or group of people. Usually the different treatment is because of the person’s sex, religion, nationality, ethnicity (culture), race, or other personal traits.
•  Stereotype is an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic.

Help at Home – Ask your child if they can remember the 4 British Values and how they can display them. What are the 9 Protected Characteristics? What does each one mean? What does discrimination mean? What does stereotype mean?

Me and My Community Week

Wetherby Brass Band

On Tuesday, we were lucky to have a visit from Steven from Wetherby Brass Band. He spoke to the whole school about the benefits of playing in a band and being part of a community within the Wetherby community.

Steven, brought in some instruments and some of us were lucky enough to play some of them – some made hilarious noises.

The band play during many events in the Wetherby community, including the Remembrance Parade. They also play every Sunday at 2.30-4.30pm from the end of April to the end of September.

Me and My Community – Caring for Our Community

What is a community?

Communities are made up of people who are connected in some way. They might share common interests and values.

The children came up with a list of people who make up our community:

• families
• friends
• police
• teachers
• shop owners
• doctors
• neighbours
• church

We are connected to these people in lots of different ways and they all play a part in making our community a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

We thought about our classroom community and how we’re connected to one another. To show our community and its importance, children passed the string to the next person, whilst offering some words of appreciation, encouragement or support.

The web shows our classroom community. If we all show care and support, it will be strong.

We then dropped the string…

When people stop caring and supporting, the community will start to have problems.

What if we cared MORE not less?

Help at home by discussing this question with your child. You could use these stem sentences to help:

• To support my family community at home, I could…

• To care for my school community, I could…

• To help my local community, I could…

Bonfire Night Safety

We hope you have a lovely time if you are going out tonight to celebrate Bonfire Night and watch some fireworks.

Please remember the top tips we talked about in class today to help keep you safe:

Living and Learning: Me and My Community Themed Week – St James

Yesterday, as part of our Me and My Community themed week we learnt about St James. We learnt that he grew up as a fisherman with his brother. Jesus went to meet James and he became one of the three disciples who were very close to Jesus, along with Peter and John.

James became the first travelling apostle (an important early Christian Teacher) and the Apostle’s symbol is a scallop shell (the badge of pilgrims everywhere) which is like our school logo. We thought about why there are three shells on our school logo and why they are in 3 different colours and 3 sizes.

We also thought about our school vision ‘We are a happy and  healthy place to achieve and believe’ and what the words happy, healthy, achieve and believe mean to us.

Help at home: Can your child tell you something they have learnt about St James? Can they tell you why we have shells as our school logo? Do they remember what our school vision is?

Me and My Community – Our School Vision

As part of our themed week, Me and My Community, we spent some time discussing our school vision.

Our school vision is to be…

…a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

We picked out 4 key words from our vision:

• happy

• healthy

• achieve

• believe

We discussed each word, thinking about what ‘happy and healthy’ looks and feels like, and all the ways in which we ‘achieve and believe’

“We can be happy by playing together.”

“We stay healthy by washing our hands.”

“We can achieve by working together.”

“We can believe by cheering each other on.”

Help at home by discussing our school vision with your child. How is our school vision reflected in life outside of school?

Christian Distinctiveness – Me and My Community Themed Week

At St James, this week is ‘me and my community’ themed week! With this in mind, our first day focussed on Christian distinctiveness here at St James’ CE Primary. Year 3 have worked really hard today and we covered four learning objectives – these are below and are supported by some fantastic learning.

LO: I know our school vision. 

St James is a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

In class, we discussed what it does and should look, sound and feel like to be happy and healthy. We also discussed our current achievements and what it feels like to believe in something. Year 3 were then tasked to create a poster to promote our school vision.

LO: I know what our school logo looks like.

As a class, we gathered ideas on what our school logo represents. This discussion sparked some brilliant ideas, and the children really thought deeply about their responses. We came up with a fantastic class poster for our classroom!

LO: I know who St James was.

The children took part in a reading activity, based on St James himself. St James, son of Zebedee, was a fisherman, along with his brother, John. When Jesus came to visit, both James and John were excited to become followers of Jesus and to become ‘fishers of men’. When James heard the stories that Jesus told, Jesus became the centre of everything he believed in. He dedicated his life following Jesus and became one of his three closest followers (along with John and Peter).

LO: I know the Christian Values at St James’ CE Primary. 

Here at St James, we have six Christian Values:

• compassion
• forgiveness
• perseverance
• honesty
• peace
• courage

Year 3 read three bible stories. We had to decide and debate which Christian Value was shown the most in each story. Here are some quotes from the children:

‘Noah showed perseverance in The Flood Begins because it must have taken ages for him to build the boat.’ – Max

‘In The Good Samaritan, compassion was the main Christian value because the Samaritan showed care towards the dying man when the others before him didn’t.’ – Orianne

‘Zacchaeus showed forgiveness because he had to forgive himself for treating people badly and Jesus helped him do it’. – Isabella

‘Zacchaeus showed peace and honesty by admitting to his mistakes and Jesus helped people become peaceful in Jericho.’ – Bea

Junior Leadership Team Election

Democracy – from Ancient Greece to St James’

Democracy is one of the British Values we learn about in school.  We found it really interesting to learn how Democracy began in Athens in Ancient Greece as part of our Topic lessons and we were really excited to see it in action as part of our JLT elections.

Our British Values are:

• Democracy
• Rule of Law
• Individual Liberty
• Respect and Tolerance

It would be great to discuss these with your child.  What does the value mean to them?  What would Britain be like if we didn’t have this value?

History – Stone Age to Iron Age and Ancient Egypt

As our history topic comes to an end, the children have been demonstrating their knowledge and all that they have learnt by producing a two-page spread. They have ensured they record all they remember from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and compared this with what they have learnt about Ancient Egypt.

Help at home – Ask your child about what they remember. Is there any comparisons they can make between the Iron Age and Ancient Egypt? Who was Howard Carter and what do they think of him? Why was the River Nile so important to ancient Egyptians? Can they remember the dates of each key period? If time, can they find out any more interesting information to share after half term?