Happy Friday, and welcome everybody to the Banstead Bulletin. We have locked Mr Chesworth up and taken over the news this week. Not really, but we wanted the opportunity to share our thoughts and Mr Chesworth kindly agreed.
Writing to you today is your Head Boy and Head Girl – Gus and Harriet. We joined in Year 1 and Year 3, and think we know how Banstead Prep works, and what makes it a pretty special place to be a part of. We could talk for hours about the residentials, such as Hindleap Warren (which our Year 4s are currently experiencing) or Condover Hall, or even the trips to the zoo and other brilliant experiences. But today, we’re going to focus on the younger years and how we plan to spend our final year leading them.
One of the things we do that is important is helping younger years; walking them to classes, playing with them during wet breaks and reading to and with younger children.
By us leading younger children, they see and learn how to have fun in the best way possible and to learn from us what makes a BPS leader. When we walk them to classes, sometimes we see children who have big feelings that they are not sure how to deal with. Sometimes just asking simple questions like ‘what’s your name?’ or ‘what did you do at the weekend?’ is really helpful in making them feel comfortable – it also really helps that we are on the gate on Mondays to help children start the week positively.
During wet breaks, Year 6 are assigned to different classes, so our Year 6 team can not only play fun games with children, but bond with all year groups and let them know we are here for them at any time. As well as wet break, at normal break time we see and play with younger children too. Our support helps teach younger children how to play nicely, follow rules and how to deal with something when it goes wrong.
When we read with Year 1s and 2s, they ask really good questions on what the words could mean. They can choose trickier library books, that we can read together and discuss the meaning. They often choose fictional stories and books like Dog-Man; it’s a really good opportunity for us to remember the fun types of books we used to read when we were their age. This is also a good time to build strong friendships with different children – as some children come to us at reading time and then look for us in the playground as they feel safe and know we are there for them.
Hopefully you can see how much importance we place on relationships at school – as leaders, we want our youngest children to have the best time possible during their time at BPS and that means we have a responsibility to show them how to grow, learn and have fun. We are really proud of the work we are putting in for the next generation and look forward to hearing about the kind of leaders they will be in future. Thank you Mr Chesworth for allowing this ‘take-over’ happen!
Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you at the gate on Monday.
Gus & Harriet
Head Boy & Head Girl
Year 6
