Family Teams and Student Leadership
During term 2 our community worked hard at ensuring students had continued and new opportunities to work with multi-age groupings as well as opportunities for our leadership students to plan and facilitate activities. This allows students to connect with a variety of students they would not normally interact with as well to work in different classrooms and with different adults.
In February we took part in our first Family Teams activity in over four years. Students are placed in multi-grade groupings that have approximately 10 students per team. Our student leaders lead the activity with the help of adults as needed. Our first activity was coordinated by adults and had teams meeting for the first time—they meeted and greeted their team and then played some simple games to get to know their group better and offered some other games to play collaboratively.
As part of Student Leadership, 4 more family teams activities have been scheduled and each of student leadership branches—art, technology, games and teaching are responsible for one activity. Each of these 4 streams will organize a family team’s activity, they will teach it to our student leaders and then our leaders facilitate the activity with their family team.
For our second activity on March 13th, our student leadership arts group organized the activity. Family Teams would be creating cards, notes and messages to be shared with residents at Rosewood Manor, a home located right next to Blundell Elementary. Each team created one big card or many smaller cards with positive and uplifting messages on them to share. The residents and staff at Rosewood Manor were very excited and happy to receive the art work from our students.
Blundell also did Global Schools Playday on Thursday, March 14th. An hour of unstructured play time was scheduled for the entire school. Staff prepared their classrooms as play spaces for students. Students have the opportunity to move within the school and choose a place to play. Adults are there for support as needed and students are encouraged to lead and facilitate their own play. No electronics are to be used and students could also bring a favourite game from home to share.