Learning should be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for all pupils. It should be fun. We aim to teach children to grow into positive, responsible learners who work and co-operate with others while developing their own knowledge and skills.
We are committed to developing high standards of literacy and numeracy skills within a broad and balanced curriculum. Our aim is support children as they become curious, creative and positive about learning and develop lively and enquiring minds.
We take every opportunity to enrich lessons through visits, visitors, use of resources and the wider community. Activities this year have included a skipping workshop, a football coaching day, residential visit to Castleton, theatre trip to Stratford and whole school art and book days. We have excellent computer facilities with the development of ICT skills a real strength of the school.
The National Curriculum provides the basis of a wide learning programme, including the core subjects of English, maths and science and the foundation subjects including art, music, history, geography, P.E and information and communications technology [ICT]. Pupils also have lessons in religious education [RE] and personal, health and social education [PHSE].
We want learning to be real and active. Pupils will be involved in a wide range of practical activities including drama to develop confidence and understanding of issues and texts, experiments to test out scientific hypothesis and fieldwork in Overseal and beyond. It is not unusual to find groups of pupils on the playground learning about angles and rotation, in the hall holding a meeting to discuss the treatment of wild animals or e-mailing members of the local council about real issues that concern them.
We use the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies to support our teaching of English and maths. We make good use of supplementary materials including support programmes for pupils who need extra support with schemes such as Springboard maths, Further Literacy Support, Better Words and Positive Play. We are committed to ensuring that all pupils succeed and every opportunity to celebrate progress is taken. Teachers and teaching assistants work closely together and there is a very effective programme of assessment and monitoring to ensure the needs of all pupils are being met and they are making progress.
We know that parents play a vital part in their children's education and we have an open door policy, actively encouraging parents to come into school to discuss any concerns so that they can be tackled straight away. We have regular parents evenings and good use is made of the 'home-school reading diary' for on-going communication between teachers and those parents who are unable to come into school.
We are very excited about our association with the University of the First Age [UFA}. Two members of staff are fellows of the UFA and this means that the whole school can take advantage of the very latest research into the human brain and preferred learning styles. We hold regular 'Super Learning Days' and are confident that our work with the UFA will ensure all our pupils can become 'super learners'. University of the First Age |