Tag Archives: buddies

Our Buddies

In Primary 7 we have the responsibility to help the P1s settle into school. We are their buddies and look after them. It’s important that they feel safe, nurtured and included in our school. We had to show them little things like where their seat was and also help them change into their coat and shoes for going into class and out into the playground. I think they are all very happy, especially my buddy! I am very happy Mrs Reid and Mrs Hunter picked me for my buddy. He is a lot more confident and he is talking to me and my friends more. Mrs Hunter says that I have really helped him come out of his shell. I had to find out things to talk to him about that he liked and his favourite things are Mickey Mouse and Wreck it Ralph. He always talks about it, he is very funny and likes the song head shoulders knees and toes. When I do it with him he says ‘again, again’  because he likes it so much! We have all loved working with our buddies and we go down to Primary 1 every Friday to help them learn skills like literacy and maths. One of our favourite things to do with our buddies is read with them. We have to be really expressive when we tell a story to keep them interested. Then we use our Talking Round Corners questioning skills to ask them about the story we just read.

Sports Leaders

We have been learning sports leadership skills and leading sessions with our buddies in P1. The first thing we had to do was in a group we planned our session using the STEPS principles which is Space, Time, Equipment, People and Speed. We had to organise a warm up, main activity and a cool down. Since we have a wheelchair user in P1, it was really important to think about the activities and how he would be able to take part in our session. We decided to play Boccia which is a sport that wheelchairs users can play, (my buddy is a wheelchair user) it is like bowls and it is really fun! Then we collected any equipment and practised it first to check the space we needed and timed it.

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Leading the session was hard at first because at the start the P1s were a little hyper but we managed to calm them down and then get some of the shy ones to come out of their shell. Sometimes it was hard to stop them from running about and get them to listen. It was good teaching them some cool activities they can play when they are in the playground with their friends or even show their parents. It was our first time teaching P1 and also we were the first P7s in Whinhill to do Sports Leaders.

We will be doing it again tomorrow so we had to reflect on how our last session went and write an evaluation before we planned our next session. The session we planned this week is a bit more advanced. We had to change what sort of sponge balls we were using because we needed bigger ones for the P1s who found it hard and smaller ones to make a challenge for the good ones. The first session went really well and next we are going to work up the classes and lead more sessions. We have learned loads of new skills so far like planning and organising the session and working with others in a group. We hope you enjoyed reading this post by Scott and Nathan in P7.

Meeting our Buddies!

This is our first post on our new class blog! On the first day of school we got to meet our P1 buddies. We were a wee bit nervous because we were not sure what it would be like to be responsible for someone new in the school. It has been lots of fun with our buddies so far and we been involved in lots of activities to help them settle into school. Some of the P1s are really shy and some are really energetic and excited about school! Outside in the playground we drew with chalk and a lot of the Primary 7s got chalk all over them! We had to help them write their name and draw a picture beside it. It was good to get a chance to talk and get to know our buddies better.  In class, we talked about asking them open questions to start a conversation and it really worked! Look at our photos at the bottom of the page.

Each morning we go down to Primary 1 and make sure that they are safe in the playground and help them get changed into their sandshoes for class. If we see our buddies crying in the morning about missing Mums and Dads we calm them by reading them a book or trying to make them happy and take their mind off it. We would like to say thank you to Mrs Hunter and Mrs Reid  for helping us with our buddies that we love so much.

By Chloe and Cerys P7