This half term, Year 5 are taking part in an exciting project titled 'Young Leaders Award'. The aim of the Archbishop of York Young Leaders Awards is to equip young people to ‘be the change they want to see’ in their local communities. 

The project's mascot, Archie B (see image above) introduced the concept to the children and they learnt the lyrics and actions to go with the song 'Be the Change!' The children are now proudly wearing their Arch B badges on their blazers and they are equipped with an Archie scrapbook to record their journey in throughout the project. 

The first challenge the children faced was the big cup challenge. Using only an elastic band contraption, the children worked in groups to make a pyramid out of cups. They were not allowed to touch the cups or the table, just the elastic bands. Although seeming challenging to begin with, the children showed great teamwork skills and determination and were very close to successfully completing the challenge under the tight time constraint (3minutes). 

 

Following this, we discussed what makes a good leader and we considered who became the leader within their groups during the cup challenge. The children ordered the words they had decided depicted a good leader from most important to least important. Some of the words suggested were: confident, good listener, team player and public speaker. 

Finally, the children created freeze frames to model what they considered a good leader to look like and what they thought a bad leader might look like. 

The children are now currently working on their first community challenge. Their task is to complete one challenge from a series of challenges at home before the next session. The challenges include: coking for their family; putting the bins out for their neighbour; completing a litter pick in a local area; and walking a neighbour's dog. These are just a few of the many ideas and the children were incredibly enthusiastic about which challenge they were keen to complete. 

I'm looking forward to hearing all about their challenge and what they have learnt from completing the task. Look out for further updates on this exciting project and the children's community challenges.