By Jody Sayce, Primary Deputy Head for Academics at Caxton College in Valencia

During this term, we have worked on two of our Primary core values, Responsibility and Positivity, and in our Social, Personal and Health Education (PSHE) assemblies we have explored them through the reading of selected titles for each educational stage.

Responsibility

In the Years 1 and 2 assembly we were focusing on the responsibility step ‘Make good choices’. We read the book I Want my Hat Back by Jon Klassen. In this humorous book, we read about a rabbit who didn’t make good choices when the bear asked if he had seen his hat. After the story we thought about some situations where we might need to ‘Make good choices’ and thought about what we should do. What would you do if you found something that belongs to somebody else? What would you do if you saw somebody looking sad on the playground? As always, the children were ready with their responsible responses!

In Years 3 and 4 we thought about the responsibility step ‘Do the things you are supposed to do’. We read a book by Nicola Davies called Every Child a Song which is based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Before reading the book we explored a few of the rights that all children have, such as the right to health, to education and to freedom of expression. We also thought about the responsibilities that come with those rights. We spoke about keeping ourselves healthy and washing our hands, trying our best with learning at school and expressing our thoughts and opinions respectfully. 

In Years 5 and 6 we continued on the theme of inspirational global figures, working on the responsibility step ‘We work together in our community and support each other’. We read The Seed of Compassion by the Dalai Lama, which is the story of how he ‘grew’ his seed of compassion. We thought about how our own actions are like seeds that we plant, impacting ourselves and our communities. We thought about practical ways to show compassion, through responsibility to ourselves, to our school community and to our global community. The children contributed some very thought provoking ideas.

Positivity

In Years 1 and 2 we were focusing on the Positivity step, ‘Be the reason someone smiles’. We read a lovely book by Ed Vere called How to be a Lion. We thought about some of the ways that Leonard the Lion made his friend Marianne the duck smile and how she made him smile too. We thought about the fierce lions in the story and whether they made anyone smile. The children had some great ideas of things we can do ourselves to ‘Be the reason somebody smiles’. We also loved that Leonard the Lion was gentle, not fierce like the other lions, and he spoke out about being his unique self. 

In Years 3 to 6 we focused on the positivity step ‘Have a growth mindset’ and the inspirational figure, Greta Thunberg. We defined a growth mindset as ‘believing in the incredible power of our brains to learn new things’. We dipped into some brain science before reading Greta and the Giants by Zoe Tucker. We were astounded by what some of the older children already knew about Greta, her famous ‘School Strike for climate change’, and how she says that her autism is her superpower. The children were able to identify different ways that Greta used her Growth Mindset to help stop the giants from destroying the natural world. Young Greta has achieved amazing things and if we believe in the incredible power of our own brains to learn new things, we can too!