Shining Together, We Reach for the Stars
As a good school, we reflect carefully on our successes and areas that we need to improve upon. We then look at moving forward and what we need to do to achieve this in practice, taking into account and balancing school needs and finances. Our School Development Plan has been added to and adapted to reflect the needs of our school and children/ staff within.
These are our main priorities for this year:
Quality of Education:
We are working hard in English to support children to improve on the basics of sentence writing, knowing how to form a sentence so that it 'makes sense' to the reader and how to accurately punctuate. Grammar and punctuation has been interwoven into our English Long Term Planning to support teachers and ensure strong progression. Last year the whole team had training in the Place Value of Punctuation and Spelling, which supported them to increase their understanding of how to best deliver this in practice. We saw strong improvements from this.This year, we are introducing Drawing Club into Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, with the aim to:
* Increase enjoyment, love of and motivation to write, with children seeing themselves as joyful writers
* Support the basics of sentence writing using 'code'.
* A focus on oracy, being able to speak it, before being able to write it.
In maths we are focusing on improving children's maths fluency, so that they are able to solve mathematical calculations and problems with increased accuracy, speed and efficiency. We are working as part of Primary Quest Trust to put together a collaborative approach to support this. This year we are introducing Mastering Number in Class 1 to support rapid recall of those important facts, alongside a dedicated maths fluency time in Ks2.
Across the curriculum, we are continuing to embed and enhance our curriculum offer, so that children develop as musicians, historians, geographers, scientists etc, enabling them to know more and remember more over time, ensuring they are ready for their next stage of education. This involves the use of retrieval methods e.g. Knowledge Organisers and fun, low stakes quizzing.
We are changing our approach to teaching phonics and early reading this year. We are introducing Little Wandle Phonics Scheme, alongside their matched texts and reading sequence. We are working alongside Mangotsfield Reading Hub, based in South Gloucestershire, as a partner school to ensure we get this right for the children.
Oracy is a PQ Trust and school thread, one we are developing together to support and develop oracy across all subjects.
Development of Early Years curriculum to make strong progress:
Our main challenges in the early years are ensuring that our children make strong progress developmentally from their starting points (which depending on experience can be very varied). To ensure we are supporting all learners, using a play based approach we invest in Continuous Provision. This involves the teacher setting out activities or 'provocations' that the children can access to learn e.g. water play and a variety of containers. The role of the teacher and teaching assistant is to support in the setting, talking with children and challenging them in their learning at play. Continuous Provision is a strong feature at Primary Quest and we will be working with others to ensure that we continue to improve children's learning experience so they make strong progress.
In addition to this we have the exciting news that we will be building a new nursery provision on site, taking children from 2 years old. This will enable us to support children earlier so that they are ready for school.
As previously mentioned, we will also be focusing strongly on early reading and the teaching of phonics. This will begin at the earliest possible opportunity.
Leadership and Management
Local Advisory Board: Our Local Advisors key focus will be on ensuring that standards of education remain high and that leadership is providing a safe and happy place for children to flourish and thrive in learning. They will be supporting the headteacher to ensure our key priorities are being implemented and having an impact.
Middle leadership: We have invested strongly in coaching and mentoring of staff over the last couple of years and know that staff are confident to lead and take further responsibility. Miss Robyn Oakes is new to SENCO and is also coordinating specific subjects e.g. geography and history and Miss Davies is coordinating science and computing.
Pastoral and behaviour
As a school we first and fore most have the aims for children to:
* Be and feel safe
* Feel a sense of belonging
* Connect with others (friends and adults)
Then we feel our children will be in a better position to learn successfully. To support this we have invested in My Happy Minds ( a specific programme to support children to better understand emotion, relationships and resilience. We continue to deliver Therabuild (therapy developed around Lego), Drawing and Talking Therapy (therapy focused around drawing our emotions) and are a part of the NHS Young Minds Matter programme.
We have also signed up to be a part of the Gloucester County Council Relational, Restorative Practice Programme to better equip the school team to support children in behaviour.
We continue to target improvement and awareness of the importance of good attendance and the impact of attendance on children's achievement and wellbeing. This year, we will continue to work with families to spread this message, having courageous conversations within a culture of support.