Living and Learning – drugs, alcohol and tobacco
The last couple of weeks have been focused on talking about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. This topic is really important. The children became familiar and educated on these substances so that once they are old enough, they can make safe and informed decisions on what they choose to do.
The year 4 children identified how certain drugs and household items (i.e. paracetamol or surface cleaner) should be used safely. They were really sensible and knew exactly what to do:
- Do not touch these items without permission from a trusted adult.
- The instructions on the products must be followed.
- Keep them out of reach of small children.
D:side came in the following week to talk about alcohol and it was a fantastic session with lots of interactive activities that the children loved! The session wasn’t to worry the children about alcohol but just to make them aware of what it is and the rules around it. The children began acting out how they would respond if a friend was pressuring them to drink alcohol and they even got to try the alcohol glasses on and have a walk around the classroom – tricky!
Living and learning: RSE
This half term, Year 5 have been learning about Relationships and Sex Education.
We have completed 9 RSE lessons in total. These lessons have answered these questions:
What is a healthy friendship?
What are the male and female parts of the body?
What is puberty and what happens during puberty?
What is a respectful relationship?
Why are families important?
Why is personal hygiene important?
How might our emotions change?
What kind of relationships are there?
What kind of families are there?
Science learning
This half term, Year 2 have enjoyed learning all about animals (including humans) in our science topic.
This week, as the science learning comes to an end, the children will be self assessing their understanding of the vocabulary as shown below.
Our visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park allowed the children to use their knowledge learnt at school to describe the animals we saw.
We saw a wallaby which is a mammal because it has live babies but we didn’t see any fish.
We saw a lion and a lion is a mammal because it has fur. We didn’t see any amphibians.
The BBC website is great to support science learning and these videos are a good recap of our learning.
To share their knowledge, ask your child to have a go at these true or false statements about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores.
Living and Learning: RSE
This half term, we’ve been enjoying our RSE Living and Learning sessions.
RSE is relationships and sex education.
Each week, we have a different L&L statement. During our RSE learning, these were all about relationships and being a good friend. Our sessions included learning about:
- the names of male, female and baby animals such as a bull, cow and calf
- the biological differences between male and female humans
- the names of body parts that males and females have
The children in Y3 had lots of relevant, thoughtful questions during our learning and were able to show maturity, too! Well done, Y3!
Living and Learning: RSE
Year 6 have been enjoying our recent RSE learning – this is relationships and sex education. I’ve been really impressed by the maturity the children have shown during the lessons. The first couple of sessions focused on vocabulary – making sure the children understood the anatomical names for the body parts. This links well with their science learning also. We reminded the children about the NSPCC PANTS campaign that promotes the fact that privates are private, always remember your body belongs to you, no means no, talk about things that might upset you and speak up, someone can help. We’ve then moved on to talk about changes that happen during puberty, and, finally, we’ve learnt about reproduction. The children have shown great respect and empathy during these sessions.
Living and Learning – I recognise that family and friends are important.
For the previous few weeks, our Living and Learning lessons were focused on RSE.
Despite some of them being nervous, Year 4 were incredibly mature and grown up in the lessons. I was so impressed!
Over 3 weeks, we discussed the biological differences between males and females and how there must be a male and female in order to have a baby. However, we also discussed how some families e.g. same sex parents, would have a baby!
We learnt some new key vocabulary and the children became more and more comfortable when using these words.
Finally, we spoke about how male and females change throughout their life. We grow, we have different responsibilities and our roles in life change.
Living and learning: drug education
In Living and Learning, we have been learning all about drugs and keeping safe around drugs. For Year 2, this learning was based on things that go into our bodies and onto our skin and how to manage risk around household products and medicines.
Our definition of a drug is a substance that changes the way our body or mind works.
Firstly, we thought about the things that are good and not so good for our bodies.
We identified that some things that go into or onto our bodies can be harmful and how we might know that.
We reviewed our ideas and talked about how some things can be both helpful and harmful.
Hygiene products helps us to keep clean but might be harmful if we swallow them. The same with cleaning products. There might even be labels on these items to show they can be harmful. Have a look to see if you can spot any labels and hazard symbols on these items at home. Where are these products kept in the home?
If someone eats too many sweets or drinks too much (fizzy drink) it can damage their teeth and make them feel ill.
Our second lesson focussed on medicines – what they look like, how they are used and why people use them. Safety around medicines was also a key part of this learning.
As always in our Living and Learning sessions, we talked about how to seek help about this and who we would ask.
Finally, this week Dave from d:side came to visit to support this learning about drugs.
What three things go in our body?
Checking the size of our lungs.
Locating our heart
What are the jobs of these parts of the body?
Let’s try and remember where those parts of the body go.
Our two lungs
Our heart
Our liver
Our stomach
The children gave some great responses to share their understanding.
Living and learning: I understand some drugs are harmful
Moortown baby in training!
Pupil health questionnaire homework
This week, our whole school homework is I can share my views about health.
We’re proud to be a happy and healthy school.
Each year, we ask you to complete a short health questionnaire. Your views can help us to become even happier and healthier.
Parents/carers: please complete this survey with your child, to find out their views on some of our key health issues at school, and comment at the end.
Please submit before Friday 15 July 2022 and as an extra incentive the class that submit the most responses will earn an extra playtime next week!