At Green Meadow School we include the assembly pictures we’ve used each week on the Friday newsletter home to parents. Our aim is to encourage families to continue discussions about these pictures at home; we want children to be talking about these issues with confidence and we want our parents to be involved. In this way we are being transparent and open about the way we deliver our equality ethos.
Our assembly pictures are taken from the monthly Excelsior Agents of Hope newsletter and the No Outsiders website. They give us a vehicle to deliver messages of hope and community cohesion at a time when our children need those messages more than ever.
Each week our oracy team meet to discuss which assemblies they are going to use the following week and they take turns to provide flips, one for KS1 and one for KS2; this way the task isn’t too onerous for one person. Teachers appreciate being sent the flips at the start of each week and this also means we can make sure there is consistent questioning used across the school.
The pictures we have used this month have included these inspiring stories:
- Every day during the Tokyo Olympics a man stood outside the venue as coaches carrying athletes drove past. He held a sign above his head which read, “Good morning, Athletes. Even if you don’t get a medal, you’re still the BEST so believe in yourself!”. We used this assembly to start our new year off with a great positive message- be the best you can be and support each other.
- A photo of a girl skipping across the tarmac at an airport in Belgium went viral because the girl is a refugee from Afghanistan. The photo shows a different image of people from Afghanistan and gave children an opportunity to talk about and make sense of what they had heard. In these assemblies we don’t seek to provide answers to difficult questions, we seek to provide a safe place to explore and form ideas. And it’s ok to hold different ideas to someone sitting next to you, we still show respect to each other regardless of whether we agree or disagree.
- Birmingham Pride, at the end of September 2021, gave us an avenue to explore the different communities that live alongside each other in the city today and to ask why many cities hold Pride events every year. This also links in to our work on different families and RSE across the school.
- The picture on the left below shows a blind dog who had found a friend in another dog who can see and acts as a guide dog for him. This assembly encouraged discussion about helping one another and identifying needs, which we all have in different ways.
- The picture on the right below shows an Olympic boxer who won bronze medal for Australia this year, and wears rainbow nails under his gloves. He says he wants to break down stereotypes which gave us a great opportunity to explore what stereotypes are and to think about how this boxer is achieving his goal.
To receive the monthly Excelsior “Agents of hope” newsletter, email Andrew Moffat on a.moffat@excelsiormat.org.
No Outsiders assemblies can be found at https://no-outsiders.com/assembly-plans
