On January 24th 2020, Be Kind Movement showed ITSY film to all of year 6 (46 children) at Swaffield Primary School in Wandsworth, London.
Excerpts from the evaluation report compiled by our workshop delivery partner, deep:black.
The intention of the workshop was to provide practical and experiential learning to students to deepen their understanding of kindness. This group was selected as the most likely to benefit by being able to reflect on their experiences of primary school and in preparation for them to soon be leaving primary to join secondary. By the end of the workshop students watched the film Itsy as a way of introducing the theme of kindness, identified and shared their personal stories of giving and receiving kindness. They also creatively explored and reflected on their experiences, shared feelings with their peers and made a commitment to be more kind to themselves.
It was noticed that children visibly engaged with the film and were expressive as they watched it. They expressed fear for Itsy and relief when Itsy was discovered safe. One child commented, I was sad when I thought spider dies and when he survived that made me happy. Some children commented on Muslim characters on screen sharing positivity about their faith and relief that there was no mention of terrorists, one child recognized the spoken Arabic in the film. The team noticed how welcome and unusual it seemed to have such diverse characters offered in an educational resource.
What one thing will you take away from the workshop?
Children wrote the following:
Be kind and helpful, to help more people,
I will takeaway the sunshine game,
Be more kind to my family, to listen to others more, to be more positive.
I can be kind to myself by not letting things bother me,
By not being stressed out.
I learnt that you should not bully.
I liked when we talked about how to be kind to ourselves.
To not judge someone or something,
I learnt about spiders,
I learnt about happiness,
Useful to think about feelings creatively.
To talk more to my parents and don’t hide anything.
To respect other people, to be kind to everyone,.
To not to be afraid of spiders.”