For Primary schools - Our Amazing Bodies - Taster lesson
This module has been provided for primary school classes of girls and boys. You may choose to run it with girls and boys separately.
Note re risk assessment and safeguarding:
Please view the Safeguarding and risk assessment section provided. It is the teacher’s responsibility to undertake a relevant risk assessment before running every session, and have appropriate safeguarding processes in place for students.
Primary school children can be at different levels of maturity and emotional development, depending on factors such as whether they have older siblings, exposure to particular content on the internet, and so on. Once you are familiar with the content of this session, please consider whether you feel the material is appropriate for all of your students attending the session. In this lesson, we are covering the topic of body confidence in an age-appropriate manner, but you know your pupils best so we ask you to take a careful view of their worldliness and assume innocence in all cases. The central messages in this session are about diversity and valuing who we are as people, not judging ourselves on appearance.
This 13 minute video explains how to teach this workshop session (you can toggle captions on/off by using the CC button at the bottom of the screen). It is for teachers to view to familiarise yourself with the content, it's not intended to be viewed by pupils.
You will find all the resources you need to run the session at the bottom of this page (see "Resources to run session with pupils").
The resources include a worksheet, with three exercises for pupils. There are slides in the PDF which indicate when these should be used. It is at your discretion whether you ask for the completed worksheets to be handed in or not. The exercises are:
- What we see - What I’ve learnt about the differences between what I see in films / TV / magazines and real life
- Different coloured cats - My favourite cat in this picture is…
- Our personalities - Three qualities I like about myself are…
Length of session with pupils: 20 minutes
Learning intention: For pupils to understand that the way bodies are shown in films/TV is not a reasonable representation of the bodies of real people, which are diverse and varied. It is who we are as people that really matters.
Success criteria:
By the end of this session pupils will have:
- Understood that what we see in cartoons is not realistic and is completely impossible for real bodies, and that on TV we often see models/very thin celebrities which is also not a realistic representation of real bodies
- Understood the prevalence of photoshopping, and that practically every image we see has been digitally altered to make it perfect
- Comprehended, through the use of metaphor of different coloured cats, that in the real world bodies come in all shapes and sizes
- Grasped that we all have qualities that are admired, and that this is what our friends and family appreciate and love about us, and this is what matters, not our appearance
Once you have viewed the video above, in "Resources to run session with pupils" below, you can access:
- PDF of slides for the session
- PDF of notes for slides (with key points from commentary in the video above), for your reference to run the session
- Pupil worksheet to download and printed out for distribution to pupils
- PDF of links to two external websites (for slides 10 and 11) - please open each link in a new tab
Taking this further…empowering girls to build their confidence
Thank you for viewing - and using - this taster lesson.
This "Our Amazing Bodies" module is one of the six modules in the Building Girls’ Confidence programme which has proven popular in schools. The other modules are:
- Self-awareness
- Inspiring Role models
- Setting goals goals
- Expressing ourselves
- How we talk to ourselves
You choose whether to use these modules as individual sessions with pupils, or combine them to run a two hour workshop. Resources are provided for both options.
Ready-to-go resources
Like this taster lesson, each module includes:
- Slides for the session
- Reference notes to run the session
- Student worksheet (as an editable PDF or for printing)
Impact feedback forms are also provided.
What teachers and students say
- "This was helpful for the girls and covered a lot of areas. It gave them a chance to pause and think about themselves. It encouraged the girls to think about things differently" Teacher
- “I have learnt that you are unique and you don’t need to change yourself” 11 year-old-girl
Price and getting started
If you’ve decided these resources are a good fit for what you’re looking for, buying them is straightforward.
The price is £195 for one school, for 12 months access.
This includes access to all teachers at one school. Each teacher sets up their own account.
to complete your purchase online (credit card).
The training and resources will be immediately available to you. An email will be sent to you with login details. Please use your school email address (not gmail/hotmail, etc), so we can correctly identify your school.
To pay by invoice, please click here
If you are interested in this teacher training and resources for your organisation / charity or Multi Academy Trust, please click here
“An excellent course, the girls’ confidence has definitely improved. Great resources. Inspiring!” Teacher
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help, please contact me, Caroline Walker (Director & Founder of Confident Teens) at hello@confidentteens.co.uk
You can access the resources for this session in the links below.
The last file is an extra document giving links to two external websites:
- The first link (for slide 10) is of photos of celebrities before/after they have been photoshopped (for copyright reasons, these images can’t be shared within the slides).
- The second link (for slide 11) is a video showing an example of how photoshopping is done. This video is on YouTube, and so there are often adverts appearing before the video; we suggest you set up these links prior to the session to be able to forward through the adverts, as they may not be age-appropriate for your pupils.
Resources to run session with students
2 Lessons
Taster lesson - Our amazing bodies
Through understanding messages in society around “perfect bodies”, exposing the prevalence of photoshopping and valuing our inner selves.
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