Lesson 5 Activity 2 - Making a Contribution

Making a contribution! a) My personal contributions b) Emma’s contributions c) Jason’s contributions a) What are the activities you are involved in at b) What are the activities Emma is involved in at c) What are the activities Jason is involved in at school? school? school?

a) What responsible role can I take to help at b) What responsible role can Emma take to help c) What responsible role can Jason take to help school? at school? at school?

a) What can I do to help others at school? b) What can Emma do to help others at school? c) What can Jason do to help others at school?

1. What conclusions can you draw from this activity?

2. What can you do to make sure your school mates feel included in our school community?

1 My Friend Emma

The following narrative is written by Emma’s classmate, Jessica.

My name is Jessica, and I would like to write about my friend Emma. Emma is in my class at school. We are in grade 4. Our teacher is Mr Campbell.

Emma is great fun to be around and she loves to join in and play with her friends. At school, Emma sometimes needs help from Mr Campbell so that she can understand things. She has Down syndrome, which makes learning something new take a bit longer. She sometimes needs help with activities we are doing – so I like to help her when I can. Emma helps me too, especially when I need a partner to work with.

Emma likes activities that use pictures, and her favourite books are picture books. She likes playing a treasure hunt game where we use signs and pictures to show us where the next clue is. I love this game too. She is very good at finding the treasure!

Emma can do lots of things at school. Mr Campbell gives everyone in our class responsibilities each week. This week, I am responsible for shutting all the windows at the end of the day, emptying the bins and turning off the lights. Emma did this job last week. This week, Emma is responsible for watering the 4C vege patch and collecting eggs from our chickens. We all love this job the most!

At lunchtime, we have been playing a tagging game. Emma likes to run beside me when we play this game, and helps me when I am a tagger. On Tuesdays we can’t play that game, as we have choir practice. Emma and I are in the school choir. We will be singing on assembly next week, and again at the school fete in a couple of weeks.

Emma also loves to dance, and does ballet after school on Fridays. I will be able to meet some of her ballet friends next weekend at Emma’s party. Emma has invited me and some other school friends to her party. I can’t wait to go – Emma is having a pool party! We all love swimming, especially Emma.

I really like having Emma as my friend as she always makes the people around her feel happy. She is always smiling. Although she finds some things at school hard to do, she likes to give everything a go, and cheers others on when they have a go. Emma can do lots of things that I can do. She just does them her way.

Thank you for reading my story about my friend, Emma.

This is a picture of Emma at her ballet school.

2 My Friend Jason

The following narrative is written by Jason’s classmate, Zach.

My name is Zach, and I would like to write about my friend Jason. Jason is in my class at school. We are in grade 3.

I met Jason when he came to our school in year 1. At first, I thought Jason didn’t like it at our school, because he always played by himself and didn’t talk to anyone. He would spend all his playtime playing with the wooden blocks. I thought he was really good at it. My teacher told us that Jason has something called Autism. Having Autism made it hard for him to talk to other kids and join in. Our teacher said that Jason would love to have someone play beside him when he was making block towers.

So one day, I decided to play with Jason. I sat next to him and we both built the biggest towers ever! We loved it when the towers came crashing down if they got too tall! At the end of playtime, we would pack up the blocks. He always knows where everything goes, but he doesn’t like it if things are out of place, or if we change where things are in our classroom. Our teacher often thanks Jason for packing things up so well! He now has a job to check that we have packed up properly at the end of each day. He has even made labels for all our storage boxes!

Sometimes Jason likes to think aloud, and talks to himself. When this is bothering me, I tell him to think quietly, or ‘think it, don’t say it’. He doesn’t mind when I tell him this. I think aloud too sometimes, especially when I am in my bedroom playing with my Ben 10 toys.

I know when Jason is feeling worried. He starts to wave his hands around. When he does this, I ask him if he needs anything, and I help him if I can. If I can’t help, I get an adult who can help. He helps me too, especially when I am stuck with something on the computer.

At lunchtime, Jason doesn’t like to play team games very much, and only joins in if an adult helps him. Instead, Jason likes to go to lunch club. At our school, we have lunch clubs for chess, comics, computer games and drama. We both like the computer games club the best, and play Dragonvale on the IPads. We go most lunch times. I get upset when other kids tease Jason, especially when they haven’t even tried to understand him. That’s not cool.

Thank you for reading my story about Jason.

This is a picture of Jason

(Photos sourced from www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net)