July 18 was the third day of Workshop.

The entire day was used to focus on psycho-social

support and HFLE.
The first session of the day was HFLE. The first thing we did as a whole group was to make
rules for the class. I believe this was important because children need rules to govern them
and also to make them aware of the expected behavior. We were divided in groups and were
given different HFLE themes to work on. The task was to create a concept map. This concept
map would assist us in writing our specific objectives which should include the three life
skills knowledge, attitude and skill. I have learnt that life skills are psychosocial
competencies that help people to: make informed choices, think critically and creatively,
reflect on our actions, solve problems etc. it is my view that teaching these life skill are very
important because it will allow the children to be more responsible and also allow them to
better cope with the challenges/ adversities they will face.
The second session was psychosocial awareness. We did a lot of interesting activities such as
the checking in activity, this is me activity (where we were asked to make journals and we
were also given strips of paper with animal names on them and then ask to make the sound of
that animal in order to find out the other persons who had the same animal and also to form
our groups. We were then asked to list a positive characteristic of that animal we saw in our
selves. These activities gave us the opportunity to reflect and analyze ourselves. I intend to
use these same activities in class to help my students better understand who they are and how
they can improve if they dont like what they have found out. I also believe that the checkingin activity is a good way to regroup and settle the class to get them ready for another lesson.
The psychosocial awareness session was of great relevance because us as teachers need to
know what make our children tick and these activities will make us better equipped in that
department.
These sessions overall spoke about the fact that as teachers we need to be careful how we
speak to and treat our students. This is because our actions may negatively or positively
impact our students lives for a very long time.
What stood out most today was the activity where the presenters used the Pepsi Challenge to
show us that every negative word or action that is done to a student may just increase his/her

frustration (similar to the pressure building in the Pepsi bottle each time it was shaken) and at
some point the child will explode just like the Pepsi bottle when opened in that state.
It was a day well spent.