Mind your head!

Hello and welcome back to the (rather delayed) Dorchester Middle School Blog!

One word. Wow!

I always knew that I worked in an awesome school but this particular week, of all weeks, reminded me how incredibly lucky I am to work here.

To say that Children's Mental Health Week was a success would be, as far as I am concerned, a true reflection of a week that gave the children a chance to think about their own mental health and wellbeing and to recognise that it is just as important as our physical health.

The week started with our Drop Down Day which was an absolute highlight for me. I have received so many positive comments and lovely feedback from the staff and children in equal measure.

We were joined by three representatives from Dorset Mind: Gemma, Abby and Grace.

Their workshops were excellent and focused on resilience.

Here are a few of my pictures from the Drop Down Day.

Our main focus was the Five Ways to Wellbeing:

Taking Notice

Giving

Learning

Being Active

Connecting

Can you work out which 'Way' was the focus in each of these pictures?

Throughout the week, we continued to look at and apply the Five Ways to Wellbeing as well as continuing to focus on Resilience.

However, on the Friday, we had a non uniform day where the theme was 'Dress to Express'.

We raised an incredible £470 for Dorset Mind.

The week was rounded off by DMS invading The Great Fields Parkrun on the Saturday morning.

This is just a small selection of the pictures that were taken on the day. Dorsetbays, who are the official Parkrun photographers, have a fabulous selection on their Facebook page.

Miss Clements also took some fabulous pictures but, once again, technology conspired against me and I have failed to work out how on earth to get them on here. Never fear, I will ask a young person who will point me in the right direction. I will do a separate Blog post with just the pictures.

I cannot begin to thank EVERYONE who turned up to Parkrun on that freezing cold morning. By all accounts, it was a fantastic event. Our children were incredible and the organisers were so impressed with how fantastic they were. They even wrote to Ms Pluck to tell her this!

The sponsorship forms have come in thick and fast and we are in the process of counting the money. Once we have a grand total, I will let you know how much we have raised. However, from an initial glance, I can already see how incredibly generous our school community has been again and I think you will be impressed with how much has been raised.

Team DMS forever!

In other news...

Here are the Worth a Mention Children from the week before we broke up for half term.

Year Six