Equalities week: Body Image

Body image is the way you view other people, but also yourself, based on the way they look. Some people are unkind to others because they think they don’t look right. Some people don’t like their own bodies, and can be unkind to themselves.

We wanted to celebrate our differences in our bodies because they make us who we are!

We watched Monsters University and were introduced to characters who all looked a little strange, but each one was good at something different because of how they looked. Mike didn’t look scary and so everyone was mean to him, but he was very clever and knew the strategies to scaring every child.

We drew our favourite monsters and labelled them with what was AMAZING about them.

Equalities week: Disability

On Wednesday we learnt about different disabilities. Lots of us didn’t know that you can have disabilities that you can’t see, such as learning disabilities or health problems inside. We all knew about physical disabilities and the Paralympics.

We read a story about someone in a wheelchair who went to a Special School. They couldn’t play competitions with other schools because the games weren’t suitable. So the teacher found a game called Botcha, which they were all great at. They even started a local league and then went through to the Nationals in London.

We learnt that it’s important to empathise with someone with a disability, and to help when necessary, but that disabled people want to be as independent as possible too.

Scratch: developing a game - backgrounds and characters

Today we made our background and character for our game. We had to edit and paint the Stage which is the background and include the parts our character has to avoid in our game. Some of us had to add in the bits the character would need to collect. We then made our character, either by importing a premise one and editing or drawing it ourself.

Equalities week: Race

Today we talked about how sometimes people are treated differently, and often not nicely, because of the colour of their skin or where they or their family comes from.

We celebrated all of our heritages in class, and used www.cartoonify.de to create digital self portraits which let us accurately choose or create the colour of our skin.

We noticed that ALL OF US have different skin colours and shades, but we’re all fantastic too!

Equalities week: Gender

This afternoon we spoke about what we expect boys/men and girls/women to be like. It was interesting to see that some people think that women can’t do certain jobs, but also that men can’t do things like design clothes or do make up.

We looked at the plots from Disney films and noticed that most of the heroes are men, but also that even if the hero is a heroine then she usually has to give something up, like Rapunzel in Tangled who saved Finn but has to giver up her magical hair. However it’s not just the woman who aren’t portrayed fairly. The men in Disney films tend to be huge and so much larger than the female characters.

We watched Brave, which is a Disney film about a Scottish princess called Merida. She isn’t your usual princess, and has messy hair and loves to fight. Then we designed our own Disney hero.

Scratch: developing a game

This term in computing we are going to make our own computer game using Scratch. Scratch is a free programming website and software that you can use to build games, quizzes, stories and animations.

In our first lesson we looked at an example code and followed the instructions to build the code for the program. You have to choose the correct blocks to build the instructions for the Sprite or character on screen. The blocks are split into different categories like motion, sound, looks and events. You can also design or import a background, so your Sprite can move around a castle or avoid blocks in a maze.

We designed our game this week, and had to think about the overall aim. Was it to avoid things or collect objects? We had a mixture of both. Some of us were really challenging ourselves and want to introduce levels to our game, which the Sprite will have to work through.

We can’t wait to build our game and play it!

Cats Protection talk

Today, we were lucky to have Louisa from Cats Protection come and talk to us all about how to look after cats, or keep stray cats safe. This linked with our book from last term, Varjak Paw, which is all about a cat who has to save his family, and in turn saves the city’s cats.

We learnt when we can, and when we shouldn’t, approach a cat in the street, and also when visiting friends or family. We know that if you have a cat at home then you know what it will like and not like, but a cat that you have never met before might not be as friendly.

We know that cats should:

• Clean themselves
• Eat healthily
• Have playtime
• Have collar and a microchip
• Belong to a vet
• Have their vaccinations
• Be given flea treatments
• Eat meat based food
• Have their food and water away from each other, and away from their litter tray

We would like to say a very big thank you to Louisa and Cats Protection for coming to speak to us.

🐱

A new term

This term we are thinking reflectively about our learning. We want to be able to self assess our learning, edit where necessary and celebrate our success and perseverance. As part of this, we completed an online survey and so used out keyboard and mouse skills to navigate it. Some of our laptops were running a little slowly, but we knew what to do!