16 November 2017

On 16th November Year 6 took part in our very own challenge day working with Enabling Enterprise. Our challenge for the day was ‘A day in Politics'.

This term we have been learning all about government and politics. We have learnt all about the political parties in the UK; how democracy works and rule of law as well as how other countries are governed in different ways.

Our challenge day started with us all coming to school dressed to impress as politicians. We talked about how different jobs require different ‘uniforms' and we discussed that we should be dressed smartly if we are politicians because we are in charge of this country. In groups we formed our own political parties. We created our own team names, slogans and logos. These represented what we stood for as a party. We learnt about the importance of debate as well as how to conduct a respectful debate. We had a lively and enthusiastic debate about whether electronic voting should be introduced in the UK - what do you think?

As the day continued we created our team manifesto and we decided together on the areas of society we wanted to help if we were elected. Some of us chose education, care homes, military, hospitals, and the environment among others.

Once our manifesto was created we made our ‘stash' – this is the promotional material that we would use to promote our ideas and so that people remember us. Later we put together a presentation to explain our policies and priorities to the voters.

Each group presented their manifesto to the rest of the class as well as our three guests: Miss Cahill, Miss McDonald and Mr Powell. Everybody then took part in a vote – a secret ballot just like what happens during a real election. The votes for each team were totalled and combined with our enterprise points that we had earned throughout the day. The winning team were the 'Proper Politicians'.

During the day we focused on developing our skills. We really worked hard on using our imagination, team work, aiming high and problem solving. Using all of our challenge skills enabled us to be successful within our groups and work together to produce our presentation at the end of the day.

It was a fantastic day and we now can't wait to see if the real politicians in London are as good as we were. We are visiting the Houses of Parliament next week – we hope we get to see Theresa May!