Autumn Term 2007:
As a lead up to the teacher/parent meetings, some important information about developments this term.
- Principals Summary
- Head of Elementary Summary
- The schools working notes to monitor standards
- A parents questionnaire
The Principal's Summary...
- The Enhanced National Curriculum / Progressive Montessori model continues to develop well
- Following on from the school's good Ofsted report, we react to the inspectors suggestions and build on the strong aspects identified
- Key staff continue to work on the school's leadership team taking decisions and making policy democratically
- The parents democracy continues to meet and bring issues to the school's management
A progressive Montessori Curriculum...
- This is the school's set of underpinning ideas. This ethos has a key role in the environment and continues to make the school unique and true to its principles.
- A setting that encourages children to develop at an appropriate rate free from pressure
- Offering a prepared environment designed to cater for children's developmental needs and learning styles.
- Allowing children the option to work individually when appropriate and the right mix of group tuition to consolidate learning.
- Concrete examples of this include...
- Children's choices in how they spend their time during the day
- Children's freedom to complete work started without timetables and pressure
- Access to a wide range of Montessori materials that aid independent learning
- Encouraging Interest led learning as much as possible.
- Practical, hands on, concrete learning where possible.
- How do these measures benefit children and families?
- Children are happy. They have an innate love of learning
- Children are free to express themselves, free to develop their personalities and characters
- Children feel they matter and are listened to
- Children learn key life skills. Negotiation / The spirit of Independence / Good social skills
Had Montessori lived today she would have embraced many aspects of 'best practice' in modern schools. The Enhanced National Curriculum program offered by the school concentrates on those aspect that compliment and extend Montessori's vision. Since our Ofsted inspection in July 07 we have worked hard to introduce these new and exciting measures following on from the inspectors judgements and suggestions. The most important of which are...
- Critical Thinking and Questioning Skills, sometimes knows as 'higher order thinking'.
- This is a modern approach to helping children develop critical thinking skills
- It involves some structured group work and an exciting approach to teamwork within the class
Ofsted concentrated on the school strengths which was gratifying. But we recognised the areas that needed work. We are extremely positive that the changes introduced in September 07 are beginning to bare fruit...
- The children were a little unsettled to start, but the changes are beginning to show very positive results...
- There is a new focus and positive atmosphere in the class as the children take on and adjust to different expectations
- Children are making positive choices and treating each other and teachers with respect
- You might take this for granted in a small school, but when children have the freedom to make decisions about how to behave and choose to be positive and productive a special thing has been achieved. They don't behave because they are scared of teacher or fear peer pressure, they do so because they like what they are doing and where they are. This is a subtle but crucial difference between us and many other schools.
There have been practical development too...
- Over the last year we have been implementing plans to develop the outside area for the children to use for developing skills in sustainability and land management and ways in which it can be scheduled into the curriculum more prominently.
- There is the new barn too. Now we have the bonfire party done with we will set about marking out the play areas for an exciting array of sporting activities.
- Essentially we are pleased with the school's direction this year. We are focused on improving and raising standards and celebrating children's achievements. Again in our own unique way... where there are high expectations but respect for children's rights The result...?
Children's individual needs are constantly being met
Observations from the Head of Elementary. Emma Watson... (working notes from the elementary log)
At Forest Farm we want to see happy, healthy, confident and motivated children; young students, prepared for whatever the 21st Century has to offer.
We are in a world that is constantly changing, so to know facts and figures, to be able to recite them at will is no longer the prize it once was in schools. We want to prepare children for this exciting adventure by equipping them with modern skills. We want to help them identify their abilities; to help them know where and how to feed these and source relevant information to build on their knowledge. We hope children will learn to question their assumptions and discover meaning for themselves. It's an all round and sophisticated skill set we are aiming for - where children believe in themselves yet have the ability to listen to others and decide whether or not to adapt their own ideas to include new ones.
In order to achieve this we believe we have several core areas to implement and develop over the next few years:
1) Higher Order Thinking Skills*,
2) Basic skills of Maths and Language, Cultural diversity awareness and awareness of the world we live in both physical and human aspects including Sustainability and environmental education.
3) Emotional literacy remains important in terms of health and mental well being and the **5R's attitudes to learning further helps develop independent learning as well as social skills. **In a nutshell the 5 R's; Resourcefulness, Resilience, Reflectiveness, Reciprocity and Respect, are about creating a culture which develops and nurtures attitudes that enable our children to face the uncertainty of the future 'calmly, creatively and confidently' (To quote Guy Claxton, the originator or the 5 R's or as he calls it 'Building Learning Power'.)
4) Rules, Rights and Responsibilities also has its part to play which links to our democratic rights as members of a democratic community.
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Some detail on a typical week's structure...
The often frenetic activity at school is more sometimes missed by the busy parent. Here's a sample...
Monday: Language presentation (sometimes whole class sometimes groups) and 3 hour work cycle until lunch. 1.30 - 2pm usually used for filing last week's work.
Drama 2-3pm
Tuesday: Youngest 8 to Spanish whilst other 8 are presented with handwriting (individual letters) and are heard reading one on one. Then the oldest children to Spanish and the youngest have handwriting / reading. Last hour is work plan for evaluation and consolidation.
PE 1:30-2:30pm and 2.30 - 3.00 handwriting poetry focus.
Wednesday: Maths presentations in year groups (this will be our first week) then work plan to complete maths and Language etc.
Art 1:30-3pm
Thursday: Culture / outdoors education presentation as whole class (at the moment Culture is based on developing our courtyard so that we can grow food crops in the Spring, we will also be looking into how 'Christmas is Celebrated around the world' and hopefully listen to some experts about how to best look after our ponies so that this too can be built into our daily routines.
Friday: Work cycle - Friday is a day to complete work plans in the mornings, whilst one teacher tests spellings 1:1 and sets up the next list for the following week as well as handing out the Maths homework, the other teacher is using this time to 'interview' at least half of the class 1:1 if not all (may be fortnightly or weekly) to discuss their work file for the week; what they felt went well and anything they found difficult as well as any particular achievements the teacher has noticed.
Music 1:30-3pm in two groups of 45 minutes.
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Review of the year so far... These are excerpts taken from the school elementary log, internal documents used to monitor quality / standards between management and teachers.
We began the year teaching all 16 children as a class and introduced our enhanced National Curriculum style Maths and Language Lessons. Our purpose for teaching all children together was to get to know the children well so we could support each other in terms of planning, teaching and assessment.
Reflections. This was a trial, if it worked well it could continue, it was also a possible future plan to split the class into 2 smaller groups of approx 8. Whilst there were some positive elements of our early approach in terms of delivering the National Curriculum and levels of teacher confidence in delivery there were some issues with the interactive / participatory nature of this style of teaching and all children accessing the lesson despite our best efforts. Through we had planned for a wide variety of abilities, the delivery was not always meeting these demands, particularly in maths.
Principals comment. 'Isn't this one of the strengths of our environment. Reflection and action! A plan, an assessment and then change to meet the children needs. Always evaluating, always adapting to the new situation. Exciting and endlessly challenging! This type of evolution is so very welcome.'
cont...
Maths has been our focus for development this term and will continue to be until January 2008. We feel that teaching in two smaller groups has enhanced the children's learning further, however we still believe that some children would benefit more in smaller age related groups (which would be fluid according to our ongoing informal observations/assessments). Therefore we have worked together to plan 4 separate lessons and will be implementing this for the remainder of the term.
Again adapting to the children's needs we now have one teacher directed lesson focus per day, the rest of the day is for the child to select from their work plan or be taught a specific skill / introduced to a particular task on a 1:1 basis. Children and teachers feel much more positive about this approach and many feel calmer. It's great to have the support and freedom to change when experience shows us we should! In language we have taken the topic of Poetry and have planned one presentation lesson per week for the next five weeks and some work plan activities. This is similar to a weeks plan in mainstream but also includes more independent tasks. Sometimes it works well to present to the whole class and then their work plan task is to 'learn a poem in small groups'. The next week we introduced to the younger and older ones separately the concept of rhyme and have set different work plan tasks for the ages accordingly, the following week we aim to pair older and younger children together to collect and describe Autumnal objects they find on our walk, the older ones scribing perhaps and the younger ones assisting in the brainstorming stage, in future weeks the children will be writing their own poems using these objects as a stimulus and finally reviewing poems written by other poets, identifying rhyme and description in particular (the points we have been teaching specifically). January onwards will be a time to develop the Language curriculum further, however we are currently integrating Montessori materials and ensuring children have relevant activities on their work plans.
In the last week or two we have introduced a 'gem jar' which all staff especially peripatetics can contribute to. If a child / group/ whole class is helping to make the classroom an effective learning environment by sticking to our class rules related to learning (respecting work space, listening carefully, not distracting others) then they can earn a gem in the jar, once it is filled they have a treat of their choice (voted for as whole class) each week the jar is emptied and an attempt to re-fill it is made the following week. This seems to be working very well for many children and peripatetics. It also does not exclude children as the whole class get the treat and the whole class can earn gems as well as individuals, students can also nominate each other for gems.
Some use of the 5 R's is being made as teachers are referring to them when they see particularly good examples and children are encouraged to mark it on their personal toolkit record cards. This is a key area for development which needs to be a focus once the curriculum is well under way. This also applies to Higher Order Thinking in terms of planning in advancesome key questions, however both Victoria and Emma encourage children to ponder on their thoughts before giving an answer and do regularly ask questions which demand skills of *analysis, synthesis and evaluation, such as: 'Do you agree...? Why did x happen? What would happen if...? Using all the information you have what do you think about ...? What changes would you make...? Does it work? (Particularly with regards to changes in the curriculum / classroom organization but also related to curriculum when teaching) We also need to develop Assessment for Learning in terms of using the green / amber cards and children marking on their work whether they felt it was easy (green) a good challenge (orange) or a real struggle (red), this is something we could develop perhaps in January alongside the Language development. Traffic light emotions - regularly at registration children are asked what colour they are feeling (red = can't learn too excited/ upset, amber = Ok but something is on my mind, I may need to talk to someone in a bit, green = fine ready to go) if a child is on red then they are free to talk privately to the other adult in the room who will then inform the other teacher if it is deemed necessary and further action taken if needed. This is working well and children are getting better at being able to recognise their own emotions and talk about them, knowing that we truly value their feelings. In terms of Sustainability we are encouraging recycling in the classroom (having now clearly labelled our bins), we are composting also and collecting manure in order to use it on our raised beds in the Courtyard come the spring.
We are constantly reflecting on our current practice and encouraging the children to give us feedback about their experiences in the classroom. We are responding both to what we see and what we hear from children and parents in order to meet the needs of the individuals in our class.
We hope you get a lot from the parent evenings. You will receive a questionare shortly about the school. We would very much like to hear your views!
OMS: Leadership Team.
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