World COPD Day - Herne Bay Junior School

On 14th November (World COPD day), BE members Jean and Rosemary who both have COPD - and Iveta Richterova from the respiratory team at the Whit and Tank – held creative educational sessions making giant “lungs” with the Year 5s at Herne Bay Junior School. Sadly Mollie, who had planned the session with us, was ill and unable to be there.



Rosemary and Jean had practised building lungs beforehand to see if the idea was viable - how Blue Peter is this?

Working with 120 children in two groups of 60, we used the British Lung Foundation’s red balloons as a way of thinking about lung health. Each child was asked to blow up a balloon with one large breath, then we compared the various sizes of our balloons. Jean's and Rosemary’s were pretty puny (especially Jean's!) while Year 5 head, David Vellani's balloon was almost fully inflated. (Oh the joy of healthy lungs!) The children asked lots of questions about pollution and how many breaths we breathe in a day (22,736).



With so many children we struggled to finish on time, but finally suspended two pairs of four foot high symbolic communal lungs over the minstrels’ gallery in the school hall, emphasising that they contained the precious individual breath of each child who had taken part. After we left, the children went on to make posters on the themes of the session.

This was a big learning curve. It was hard to work with so many children, and sadly Jean was only able to take one photo as we were on the go the whole afternoon.

Mollie was sorely missed, especially during the discussion. We wish you better, Mollie, and look forward to de-briefing with you later on. We have had quite a bit of coverage in the Herne Bay Times, Whitstable Gazette and hopefully in the forthcoming NHS Health News, which has hopefully raised our profile in the area.