Getting Settled...

It has been a super busy last few days as we have negotiated the new classroom and got to know each other. Routines are underway and we are all settling quickly as Middle Team members.

Harold from the Life Education Trust has been visiting for the last few days. We have been learning all about 'Heart Central' and what our heart needs to stay healthy and function properly.

We have been using the Thinking Hats to look closely at the concept of Community and what this means to all of us here at Bradford.

With the White Hat, Kodie and Rebecca P looked up the dictionary to find out what 'community' meant and then their group (which also included Zane, Moana and Mina) created their own definition as "all the people in our school".

Darrin led the Red Hat into a discussion on what it felt like to be part of a community. Antonia, Darrin, Zane and Kelli all decided that people in our community felt 'confident and happy'. They said they felt particularly happy when they were included in activities and games.

The Yellow Thinking Hat group which consisted of Zoe, Callum, Cairo and Josiah H all felt there were many strengths (positives) to belonging to a community. They recorded that people always had someone to turn to if they were stuck, hurt or felt lonely. Cairo said the good thing about helping others is that when you need a favour later, they will remember how you helped them and it goes round and round!

Campbell, Arleyah, Alex, Lorilee and Josiah T all investigated our community using the Green Thinking hat to guide their thinking. They came up with a number of ideas to make our community stronger by including others and sharing 'so that everybody feels comfortable in our community'.

Using the Blue Thinking Hat, Aden, Paolo, Grace and KayLee discussed the idea of 'thinking about our thinking'. They all felt that our experiences shape our thinking and if we have a good experience then we might feel positively about something. Likewise, if we have a bad experience then we might think negatively about it. They also felt that community thinking was a great idea because when we listen to others ideas and experiences we may change our opinion or come up with one great idea. Paolo pointed out that community thinking really does mean including everyones ideas and that sometimes if you are working in a group you need to compromise!

Paige, Brayden, Rebecca S and Alyssa possibly had the hardest Thinking Hat to discuss - the Black Hat. They found it difficult to think about negative aspects of belonging to a community. However, they did agree that it can be difficult when you are in a community and one party is perhaps not doing the right thing. We had a class discussion and decided that the benefits of belonging to a community far, far outweighed the negatives and that we could encourage others to do the right thing so that we could grow our super Bradford School Community.

WE ALL AGREED THAT WE NEEDED TO PUT OURSELVES OUT THERE BY PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING TO OUR COMMUNITY TO GET THE BEST OUT OF IT!!! WE ARE ALL GOING TO CHALLENGE OURSELVES TO TRY SOMETHING NEW THIS YEAR - WATCH THIS SPACE FOR OUR GOALS...

AU REVOIR FOR NOW...