What will pupils be studying in PSHE?
The themes for the half term, along with information about some of the topics we will be exploring are below:
Year 7 : Relationships
In their lessons, Year 7 will look at the characteristics of healthy relationships like friendships, rights and responsibilities and assertiveness.
Year 8 : Relationships
In their lessons, Year 8 will look at having a positive relationships with themselves, managing a range of relationships and online safety.
Year 9 :
Changing Me and Relationships
In their lessons, Year 9 will look at the effects of drugs and alcohol and begin to look at the characteristics of healthy relationships.
Year 10 :
Relationships
In their lessons, Year 10 will look at intimacy, attraction and having a healthy relationship with oneself.
Year 11 :
Relationships
In their lessons, Year 11 will look at media stereotypes, child on child abuse and rights and protections under the Equality Act.
Years 12 & 13 :
Relationships
In their lessons, Years 12 and 13 will look at responsibilities and consequences, communicating wants and needs and unwanted, inappropriate behaviours.
As we do in every half term, we will also be using whole-school and year group assemblies to explore a wider range of PSHE topics such as online safety, healthy choices and bullying.
Diana Award Report
Many thanks to Scarlett W in Year 8 for her report below on the Diana Award Anti-Bullying training that some of our students completed in March. We are so excited to see what this group will achieve – keep an eye out for future updates!
‘On Thursday 2 March, 18 students took part in an anti-bullying ambassador training course. The course taught us about the Diana Award Anti-Bullying programme and showed us how to deal with different types of bullying. Our instructors, Chloe and Gina, started by telling us what anti-bullying ambassadors are and why every school needs them.
The Diana Award was created to help students at school who were targets of bullying. Anti-bullying ambassadors run events to show the school different types of bullying behaviour and show that difference is ok.
In our training, we learnt about the three different forms of bullying; physical, verbal and indirect, and how to help somebody who is experiencing this behaviour. We did some group activities which showed that emotions are visible by someone’s body language. At the end of the course, the team came together and started to plan ideas and events to help spread awareness about bullying. Throughout our school life we will be working towards earning four badges: respect, wellbeing, community and online safety. To earn each badge, we have to do 5 activities and send in proof of the activity to the Diana award project. Some examples of activities we could do for the respect badge are bake sales, a display board on diversity in the school or even culture days and workshops. Overall, the day was a great experience, and I cannot wait for the team and I to make everybody feel comfortable at Hymers College.’
Online Safety
Every half term in this newsletter we will share some tips and guidance on online safety and ways that our students can keep themselves safe online. Many of these resources are provided to us by National Online Safety (https:// nationalonlinesafety.com/). Their website has a wealth of advice and guidance, not only for schools but for parents and carers as well, on how to keep children safe online. We would highly recommend paying this website a visit if you are concerned about anything from online gaming, social media websites or internet safety. This half term’s newsletter focuses on ways to encourage open discussion at home about digital lives.
We would remind parents and carers that the school policy is that mobile phones are turned off between 8.30am and 4pm. If you need to get a message to your child, please contact them through the General Office.
Where to seek extra guidance/ support on PSHE topics
At the start of every PSHE lesson, we reiterate the importance of everyone’s rights and responsibilities. We remind everyone in the classroom that:
Everyone has the right to:
• Participate or pass • Privacy
• Listen and speak • Learn
• An opinion
Everyone has the responsibility to:
• Allow others to participate or pass
• Listen and allow others to speak
• Maintain privacy
• Respect difference of opinion
• Allow others to learn
If any students need to seek extra support and guidance on PSHE, or the session raises worries or concerns for them, we would encourage them to speak in the first instance to their form tutor. Other people they can speak to are their Heads of Year, Head of PSHE, Form Prefects and buddies as well as trusted adults at home.
At the end of every session students are signposted to websites or leaflets that can provide extra information or support on the topic they have covered.
