Compassion

The 'Compassion' Team

Miss Rodgers, Miss Bowman, Mrs Rodriguez and Mr Hutchinson

• We live in a wonderful world made up of many different people with different beliefs, values, appearances, life situations and abilities. We believe that it is important all our children develop an appreciation and respect for the diverse society in which we live, showing care and compassion for others around them.
• Strong PSHE (personal, social and health education) teaching and timely intervention support ensures that, alongside our firm behaviour and anti-bullying policies, we promote and uphold the positive value of compassion across the school.
• Our wonderful inclusion team at Offham have developed a strong teaching and nurture programme to help develop friendships and tolerance at Offham. This includes the use of peer mentors (friendship friends) and buddies for our new children.
• We have developed several nurture and wellbeing areas in our school, including our animal care courtyard and our sensory room. We use these places, alongside our specialist teaching assistants and play therapist, to help children to talk about and work through difficult times and experiences.

'Compassion' subjects

RE and Collective Worship

Religious Education (RE) allows children to acquire core knowledge and understanding of beliefs and practices of the religious and worldviews which not only shape their history and culture, but which guide their own development. The children learn about the 5 major religions in a creative and explorative way, with local visitors and religious leaders visiting where possible.  

PSHE

Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education is a school subject through which pupils develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and to prepare them for work and life in modern Britain. 

SEND

At Offham we are dedicated to providing an effective and inclusive education for every child's needs. For more information about how we accommodate for children's needs, see our 'Inclusion' page, SEND Policy and other additional information on the school website.

What have we done this year?

Kindness Week - Term 1

We have had a wonderful time at Offham over the last five days celebrating kindness week. We began this very special learning week in style with a theatre company on Monday, teaching us all about how to be kind to one another in different situations. The assembly and workshops primarily taught the children important lessons through the use of story telling, puppetry and role play activities. To follow up the lessons learnt in the professionally led sessions, each class enjoyed a range of fun and engaging activities including a brilliant assembly led by the schools’ Wellbeing council. We hope you enjoy reading about them and enjoy the photos!

Diwali Day - 07/11/2018

On Wednesday the whole school had a fabulous day celebrating Diwali. Diwali, Deepavali or Dipavali is the Hindu festival of lights, which is celebrated every autumn in the northern hemisphere.
One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, Diwali symbolises the spiritual "victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance." The story that goes along with this wonderful festival is the heroic tale of Rama and Sita. As part of the day all of the classes were delighted to take part in some fantastic Diwali dance workshops. The KS2 dances revolved around a re-telling of the Rama and Sita story and the KS1 and Rain-bow dances used lots of traditional Diwali dance moves. The children all really enjoyed taking part in the dance workshops and we were delighted with the outcomes—videos can be viewed in our video section:
https://offham-primary-school.primarysite.media/

 
To celebrate the Festival the children also made some fantastic Rangoli patterns. During Diwali the main entrance of houses are usually adorned with a vibrant and multi-coloured display of geometric floor patterns which are called 'Rangoli'. People use flowers, rice or even pulses to design these patterns. Creative and colourful Rangolis, based on lots of colourful dots, instill a sense of harmony and connectivity. Our children made their rangoli patterns in a variety of ways, including using coloured pulses and rice and sand.

Other activities around the school included writing Diwali poems and information booklets about the festival and using origami to create beautiful Diwali flowers. We all really enjoyed our special day and have enjoyed learning about this vibrant and exciting Festival.

Remembrance Day - 09/11/2018

The school has been a real hive of commemorative and respectful activity today as we all joined together to celebrate and mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Every year at Offham we sell poppies and hold a minutes silence to mark our respect for those who have fallen on our behalf in conflicts both current and historic. However, as this year marks such a significant historical anniversary, we felt that it was important that we all marked it with a whole day of activities.
The children were learning about the significance of remembrance day and writing descriptive diary entries, poems and letters about the first world war.
Each class took time out of the school day to walk up to the memorial which has been erected on the village green. This beautiful and poignant display pays homage to each of the individual men from Offham village who went away to fight and never returned. The children were very respectful and really embraced finding out about all of the individuals involved.
To complete our day, all classes have made their own poppies in a variety of mediums: big, small and medium-sized. These were all used to create an impressive display out-side the library which we hope will create a lasting memory and impression on the children. 

Ramadan - Term 6

Rainbow Class

To celebrate Ramadan at the beginning of the week, Rainbow class read the story of Rameena’s Ramadan. We used the information learnt from the story and in a short video to create our own posters. We remembered some important information about helping others and being kind. Rainbow’s also enjoyed getting creative and using the important symbols of the moon and stars to create their own Ramadan mobiles.

Blue class

We loved learning about Ramadan on Monday. We began our day learning all about the celebration, who celebrates it and why. We then sequenced a story of a young girl celebrating Ramadan. In the afternoon we learnt about Ramadan patterns and created art work to represent this. The children created patterned Islam symbols and Ramadan lanterns.

Red Class

We really enjoyed learning about Ramadan on Monday. They have written some fascinating diary entries as Rameena. They also had fun creating some intricate henna designs.

Green Class

On Monday, Green Class learnt all about Ramadan! We found out that Muslims fast (they don’t eat during the day) during Ramadan to remind themselves of those who aren’t as lucky as ourselves. They celebrate at the end of Ramadan with Eid and all the women draw henna on their hands. To celebrate Ramadan Green Class drew henna, created acrostic poems and made posters writing and drawing all they had learnt.

Purple Class

We began the day by researching what happens at Ramadan and how it is celebrated. We then read Rameena’s final day of Ramadan and wrote a diary entry from her perspective. In the afternoon, the class designed their own Mehndi tattoo and own moon and star decoration - as they are the symbols of Islam.

Orange Class

We enjoyed our first Monday back, after half term, learning about the Muslim celebration of Ramadan! We spent the morning focusing on our own enquiry questions about Ramadan and its importance to Muslims, as well as writing our own diary entry in the role of a young Muslim girl called Rameena. Following this we enjoyed a variety of arts and crafts in the afternoon, making our own star and moon mobiles (a symbol of the Muslim faith) and designing our own Mehndi patterns that we felt reflected the Muslim celebrations of Eid.

Yellow Class

On Monday, our school took part in celebrating Ramadan, which is a tradition for Muslims to take part in on the 9th month on the Islamic Lunar Calendar. We learnt all about fasting (when people don’t eat or drink between sunrise and sunset), and we enjoyed designing henna patterns, which is a red dye mixed with plants. We also had fun writing a diary entry from a Muslim’s perspective.