Shared experiences. What is it like to arrive in Bristol?
Practitioners in EYFS are now working with a variety of newly arrived refugees and people seeking asylum in Bristol. Each family will have very different needs. You are the experts at the present time and we want to collate a list of useful advice from you. We need to learn from each other.
We had 6 schools in a meeting share that they have recently arrived refugees in their Reception class and schools. We would like set up a group to network and share experiences in Bristol. What have you learnt from working with your refugee families?
Please email:
Families will often have very complex needs which may impact negatively on a child’s development, well–being and learning. It is important though, not to make any stereotypical judgements concerning refugee children. It is often assumed that all refugee children are ‘traumatised’ and need specialist intervention. This is in fact not the case. What they are likely to need is access to good quality early years provision to provide them with opportunities to experience stability, safety, warm and friendly adults, friendships with peers and meaningful play experiences
Practice, Policies and Procedures
Each family is unique and will have their own personal history. Personal histories help to understand, to connect, to empathise and to settle each family into your setting and community.
NEU has short film clips with older refugee children explaining how it was when they first arrived in UK, how they felt and what helped them settle in.
‘Refugee children joining your school may well have experienced trauma and have disturbing memories of leaving home and the journey that followed. They are now likely to be confronted with classes without a single familiar face and no-one speaking their own language. Any pupil joining a school or class at the start of a key stage has a challenging transition facing them. For children from refugee families, whenever they start school, the challenge of fitting in is likely to be most acute. In many ways, the task faced by teachers is the same with regard to all new children. The goal is to make them feel welcome, provide support, encourage friendships, and make sensitive assessments about language needs, learning needs and wellbeing.’ NEU
Teacher TV film clip with 9 children who arrived as asylum seekers talk about their experiences. (Click Here to Watch)
What is it like to have no home? Children ask refugees questions about their life. Guardian 2016 appeal (Click Here to Watch)
Help change a life- a story of Hamze from Iraq. (Click Here to Watch)
We have had many Afghan refugee children join our reception class this year. They have been living in in temporary accommodation in a hotel in central Bristol in very cramped conditions. Due to this they have found being inside a classroom environment with the confinement of walls and a busy timetable really hard to adapt to. I wanted to give them and our team more freedom and space to build up relationships with these children and develop the children’s confidence and independence. Forest School has been incredible in this respect. We go every Monday to Leigh Woods and all of us now come in happy and excited about our day with our children in the woods, come rain or shine.
The consistency of going each week has enabled these children to gain an increased awareness of the consequences of their actions on peers through the team activities we do such as sharing of tools, building dens, and lots of parachute play. Their language development has been prompted more by their sensory experiences and the woodland surroundings fascinate them which encourages them to engage in activities for longer periods of time. All our children but especially our refugee children have developed an interest and love for the natural surroundings that I have tried to incorporate into our Continuous Provision for the rest of the week.
They have now developed more of an ability to concentrate on woodland themed activities back in the classroom such as making bird feeders, bug hotels, weaving with natural materials, playing in our mud kitchen area and engaging in art activities using twigs and leaves they’ve gathered from the forest on the Monday. We have built our own willow den and they love sitting in in for a story something before Forest School began, they weren’t interested in.
It has also allowed us to have the time and freedom to stand back and observe these children more closely and really see what they like doing which has helped us to plan for them more effectively for the rest of the week.
Contacts
Nicola Theobald – (General and Nursery School Enquiries)
Deborah Brown – (General Enquiries)
Dawn Butler – (General Enquiries)
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