A busy week in 5R!

In this post, you’ll find an update of the Child Protection and Puberty lessons of this week, as well as a few words about fifth grade’s Mock Middle School, beginning next Monday.

Child Protection Lessons

This week we had two Child Protection lessons, as developed by our ZIS Counselors. The topic of the first lesson was communication. The students discussed three types of communication:  aggressive, passive, and assertive. After discussing these we role-played different kinds of communication in everyday situations and then discussed that you might have to use assertive communication in situations to keep yourself safe.

For our second Child Protection session, the focus was touch. We approached the discussion by dividing touch into categories: Safe, Unsafe and Unwanted.

We defined these as:

• Unsafe: Touch that can be hurtful, kicking, pushing etc., as well as touching of private body parts.
• Safe: Touch that won’t be hurtful, and isn’t threatening.
• Unwanted: Touch that you don’t want. It might not be ill intended, but you don’t want it, like too much tickling or affection in a way that feels uncomfortable.

We introduced The Touching Rule: No one should touch your private body parts except to keep you clean and healthy. We then discussed our “gut feelings”, trusting our impulses when we’re uncomfortable, and erring on the side of caution when we don’t know someone’s intentions.

Students spent some time individually making a list of trusted adults that they felt they could speak with if they ever had a disturbing experience in this way.

Finally, we outlined some safety steps:

• Say words that mean NO
• Get away
• Tell an adult

Puberty

This week has also featured two lessons focusing on body changes, as described in last week’s newsfeed. Students were divided into two groups, by gender.

Boys watched this video:

Girls watched this video:

Our focus is on the physical and emotional changes that happen during puberty. We aim to take a scientific “just the facts” sort of approach. Additionally, students have the opportunity to submit anonymous questions so that we can address worries and wonderings sensitively.

Sex education is not part of this talk and so we may direct students to ask certain questions to their parents where necessary. Please be aware that your child may want to talk about what has been discussed in class.

Mock Middle School

As described on the newsfeed, next week we launch our Mock Middle School in fifth grade, as part of our process of preparing students for the transition. As students will be moving (with their current class group), from teacher to teacher for different subjects, organization can be a greater challenge. Many students may choose to purchase an accordion folder, like this, to keep their notebooks and work organized. Many will also prefer to have a pencil case of writing tools with them.

Home Learning will increase somewhat during this time. Students will be expected to be recording their nightly home reading (the expectation continues to be a minimum of a 1/2 hour per evening) in their agendas. Their agendas will be checked each morning. Additionally, students will receive 4 math problems per day, 4 times per week to complete. If the content is new for them, they may skip that problem and have a look at a solution the next day. Please support them in their organization to be successful with these responsibilities.

Many thanks for your support for your child’s home away from home!