HEAD’S BLOG
We are all continually excited about learning and aspire to improve our school all of the time.
Times are changing again!
There is a new Ofsted Framework with the focal points of ‘Leadership and Management’, ‘Quality of Education’, ‘Behaviour and Attitudes’ and ‘Personal Development’.
Lisa Moorhouse | Head teacher/ SENCo/DSL/ Humanities incl RE and PSHE/ Science/Music |
Christina Stirling | Teaching and Learning Lead/ Maths/ PE Year 6 Lead/ KS2 lead |
Natasha Chandler | Computing |
Katie Friday | Early Years/KS1 lead/ Forest School’s lead/ English lead |
Emma Bernasconi | Sports Co-ordinator |
Anne Platt | HLTA-SEN Admin/ TAF/TAC /Children’s Mental Health lead/ELSA/DSL |
Louise Siddle | SNAST |
Mehul Pancholi | Chair of Governors |
Our School Improvement Plan for this year will therefore focus on these areas.
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
We have been building a policy for Learning and Teaching over the last 6 years and our Leadership and Management work will include a drive to completely embed this policy all the way across the school. We have a highly distributed leadership and each one of us will drive towards making our areas the best they can be. We will also endeavour to help you to develop an understanding of what your child is learning at school and help you to support them.
QUALITY OF EDUCATION
The new Ofsted Framework has moved the focus to the quality of education including ‘intent’, ‘implementation’ and ‘impact’ of the curriculum, with more of a focus on how it can be used to support the development of a completely rounded child rather than just getting good results. At Dry Sandford we are delighted about this change.
We will continue to develop English skills by using a focus text so that children become totally immersed through the book into the topic, empathising with the characters so they develop a deep understanding of what they are learning about. Our curriculum is quite specific in terms of the core skills. Maths, English, Computing and Science skills are revisited constantly in a spiral of learning which is specifically targeted to meet the needs of all the children in every class. Children are excited by the challenges that their teacher provides, and they work their way up these with guidance from the adults who work with them. For the none-core subjects, we have focused our energies on creating ladders of progression. Every subject in the curriculum is built into the class topics but we have ensured that the ladders sit alongside the topics ensuring that the skills and knowledge learned are progressive and fit with the expectations of the year group. Our children have their own age-related targets but many are directed towards a greater depth through philosophy and higher order thinking in all or some areas, which is why many work above age-related expectation. Your child is being observed with great care and we assess their potential and provide interventions to move individuals or groups of children forward either emotionally or academically as required…we will let you know if these interventions are significant, and will involve you if necessary.
This year we have decided to focus on ‘Reflection’ through our topics so that the children reflect on what they have learned and how they might apply this to their future lives.
BEHAVIOUR AND ATTITUDES
We are very proud of our children and their attitudes to learning. We believe that behaviour is a communication and as our children are generally very happy, they behave exceptionally well nearly all of the time.
Times of free play are when children demonstrate how they can regulate their feelings and manage their behaviour. This is particularly challenging for them this year, as many have had such a long break from school. We will continue to put in support to help them resettle into their relationships. Support will be given to the children, to help them to design games which all children can be part of. Children will then be supported in designing games for themselves.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
We have been using Philosophy for Children to get our children really thinking about the choices they make and the reasons they make them. Philosophy is used in all areas of our topics but is also used to get children really thinking about the assembly and PHSCE themes. In addition to this, we have, over the last twelve months, had a focus on fairness and equality. Last year's year 5 and 6 put together a vision for the school focusing upon this, and this year we will be able to complete their work which unfortunately had to be brought to and abrupt close because of the COVID-19 crisis.
This term our theme is 'Being me in my world' and thoughts for each week are as follows…