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Appletree Gardens First School is a small school catering from nursery to year 4 pupils in North Tyneside. We are a school who massively champion developing the whole child and recognise how vital developing essential skills can be for supporting a child's future. At Appletree we value the importance of developing pupils’ self perception, confidence and determination. Skills Builder offers a robust development of these key areas to support teachers to manageably develop and assess pupils strengths and areas for development.
Overall impact
The programme has opened our students’ awareness of the skills, and given them a great opportunity to put them into practice. They understand the importance that the essential skills hold for them now and in the future. Alongside our BLOSSOM code, and ‘Grow your learning’ threads, Skills Builder has had a positive impact on children’s personal development at Appletree.
Keep it simple
Principle 1: Essential skills are consistently referenced throughout school; there are termly launch assemblies for each focus skill, and challenges associated with each skill. Staff meetings regularly address essential skills, and staff have been given a document with leaders' vision and expectations for essential-skill development, covering how essential skills will be taught, when to do it, and how frequently. Highlights of best practice are taken from learning walks and are spotlighted in this document.
Start early, keep going
Principle 2: All classes have a touchpoint with essential skills, with a weekly skills lesson. EYFS focus on communication skills, whilst all other classes cover all 8 essential skills over the course of the year. This year, all classes also took part in the Crime Scene Challenge day, which put all 8 essential skills into a real life context.
Measure it
Principle 3:. All teachers use the Hub to baseline in July, then from September prioritize weaker areas for their classes. Each year group has focused on a different skill as a result of these assessments. At the end of each half term, teachers reassess on the Hub to guide the focus for the next term. We use the data overview page to monitor overall skill development and send reminders for baseline assessments to be completed. In EYFS, we assess Speaking and Listening through conversation.
Focus tightly
Principle 4: The first section of golden time on a Friday (20 mins approx.) is dedicated to essential-skill teaching, using short lessons on the Hub. Teachers, the following week, weave this skill-step / learning into curriculum lessons. Skill stories, widgets and the Inclusion Handbook are used for EYFS.
Keep practising
Principle 5: Staff use a 'non-negotiable slide' with a Skills Builder layer to the 'brick' and previous learning (a previous skill-step), alongside the content for the following week and a lesson objective dedicated to essential skills There is an expectation that staff use this slide in at least 3 curriculum lessons a week.
Bring it to life
Principle 6: This year has been a great year to link essential skills to the wider world - we enjoy lots of whole school theme days and events, and we’ve also enjoyed the whole school challenge day Crime Scene Challenge!
What's next
Next year we will be continuing on Digital Membership, and our priority is to ensure children have extra curricular opportunities to embed and practice their essential skills.
