Only one you, mentoring and School Parliament

Mentoring

Each year the children in Years 1-6 are involved in Mentoring interviews with their class teacher. During this one-to-one session, children can talk about their feelings about school and their perception of themselves as a learner. The role of the teacher during this session is to listen. After the session is completed the teacher can then reflect on each child’s answers, pick out common themes and consider if any individual needs further support to help them grow in their Gateway experience. Through analysing the whole school's responses we can establish:

• Children like coming to school because they enjoy being with their friends, not only in the playground but during learning activities.
• Children like coming to school because they enjoy the clubs on offer.
• Children feel safe at school because there are lots of adults in school to help them and they know who to talk to if they feel worried about anything.

Whole school project

In conjunction with our Mentoring Day, the children in Years 1 - 6 participated in a whole school immersive book project. Every class started the day reading ‘Only One You’ by Linda Kranz. This story celebrates each and every person's unique talents. The theme encourages children to embrace individuality and consider words of wisdom they can pass on to others. Throughout the school the children used their individual creativity to design and paint their own pebble, many wrote words of wisdom on them for others to read. All of these pebbles will be laid together in the school grounds for the school community to enjoy..

Upper Prep took the project a little further, creating their own versions of the story in the form of digital books which they plan to share with the younger children in school this term.

School Parliament

The children have been learning about Parliament as part of UK Parliament Week. During form time, they watched an introductory video about Parliament, democracy and how laws are made, followed by a 365 degree tour of the Houses of Parliament and the House of Lords
Many of the children have researched, discussed and debated topical issues, and have discovered how the Houses of Parliament can be approached to solve issues in the real world.
Our own MPs met at the beginning of the week to discuss their committee priorities for the term.