Autumn  Term

Welcome back. We hope that everybody enjoyed the break. We are looking forward to getting to know our Y3's and enjoying another stimulating and interesting term. We have many visits and visitors prepared to enrich our curriculum and our teachers are excited about using a teaching strategy called Philosophy for Children - P4C - to encourage their children's questioning skills and arousing their curiosity.

P4C derives from the United States. It is a system that the Y4 team have been using with success. Our staff felt that it would benefit the whole school. One of our training days has been dedicated to trying out the methods. It promotes discussion in a circle, questioning and discussion, prompted by a curious object, painting or poem. Children are provided with a warm up,  the stimulus, have thinking time on the stimulus and then share to create five philosphical questions written on to paper in thick pen.

Airing time is given to select the most popular question to discuss after a vote. Invisible voting is whan children turn outward with their hands behind their back and put up their thumb for the most popular. Ground rules are that there is no such thing as a silly question and that all opinions are valid. A discussion follows and children deepen their thinking by challenging and listening to one another.

The Y4 teachers have found that our children engage with this method very well and it has been used to stimulate creative writing and reflect on a topic.

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT TARGETS

Our 2009 - 10 results demonstrate a continued improvement in our reading and maths results. We are very proud of both the pupils and our satff for their effort and enthusiasm. Writing emerged as an area to improve however at Y6, but the complexion across the school is positive with good progress being made. In order to address the shortfall of higher level writers,  we have a number of strategies to address writing. We are increasing our talking opportunities and our expectations for all pupils to use a wider vocabulary. " If you can speak it, you can write it."  We are using independent writing books every two weeks for children to write freely and in response to a variety of stimuli. The pupils are encouraged to assess their own and a partner's work. Next steps for improvement will be set with the pupils so that they are aware of how to progress and feel committed to improving.

Our targets for 2010 - 11 are as follows:

• Actively involve pupuils in assessing their learning
• Raise achievement in writing
• Raise the level of pupils' articulation

We are confident that with our vigorous and positive approach, we will equip our pupils with the skills but also the enjoyment of being articulte young people ready for Key Stage 3 and beyond.

Y6 SATs Week - Monday 9th May - Thursday 13th May 2011