Pupils engaged with our workshops last week exploring inequality by immersing themselves in a range of different cultures. They learnt about the importance of celebrating differences and valuing and respecting every person. The sessions were interactive and they were able to touch authentic crafts, musical instruments and textiles from different countries, some children enjoyed dressing up in traditional costumes and they also had time to explore the photo boards created by women designers living in different countries showing how they want to represent their own cultures. Our younger children enjoyed play food to learn about different cuisines. The summer term focus for the session was on Latin America and they definitely brought the Latioin American world region to Dawlish for our children to explore.
They also read the book ‘Coming to England’, written by Baroness Floella Benjamin, which is an inspiring true story of how she came from Trinidad to England as part of the Windrush Generation. Class 1 have been fascinated with this story as they have learnt about Windrush through Votes for Schools.
Feedback from Kate, who ran the session was very positive:
I just wanted to write to say how impressed I was with your children’s learning yesterday.
- When I asked why we have different skin colours, a year 6 child said it’s because we have different amounts of melanin. No child I’ve seen so far has talked about melanin.
- One child confidently told me who Indigenous people are and many in KS2 could use correct racial identifiers as Black, White, Asian etc
- A Year 5 child wanted to know more about how racism shows up in employment in regards to the Windrush learning
- KS2 were confidently able to tell me about The Windrush and their huge contributions to society
I was really impressed, of all the schools I have visited, your children had the most knowledge on these topics and were so wanting to learn more, it was really great to see. They had a level of confidence and understanding where I was having conversations with them at a higher level than of schools I normally visit. The interactions I had with the teachers were very open to learning more too.
