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We are a coastal school with children who often don't have experiences outside of the local area. We decided to get involved with Skills Builder Accelerator in the hope that it would support us in building children's understanding of 'the bigger picture'. We want our children to be inspired by the world around them and have the confidence and resilience to achieve whatever they want in their future lives.
Overall impact
Being part of the programme has really helped us focus on how we can help children recognise what skills they are good at and those they need to work on. As a staff, it has reinforced our belief that bringing things to life, providing experiences and building aspirations is essential for our children. The programme has helped by providing the resources and help/advice from our associate. The impact on the students has been the consistency of language and recognition of what an essential skill is. A real highlight was the challenge day and seeing the children working together.
Keep it simple
We have put up a poster of the skills in each class and created a display board in the hall for everyone to see. We have also added the skills we are focussing on for the term on our medium term plans so that it makes it clear how we can incorporate the skills into different lessons. We remind the children each term about the skills and for some skills, we have used the assemblies to introduce it. We have a fortnightly newsletter where we often refer to skills too.
Start early, keep going
Even in reception, we have the pictures of the skills up so that the children begin to recognise what they are and how we are using them. We ran a careers week where we invited people from different industries to talk to the children, as part of their talks, we asked them to talk about the essential skills and how they use them as part of their job.
Measure it
We assess how well we've covered lessons on our medium term plans as well as professional discussions regularly in staff meetings. It is really interesting to discuss how different cohorts need more support with each skill. For example, we have one particular year group who find it difficult to listen to each other. It has been really useful to have the skills steps to think about what activities could be done to support them. Staff also use the Hub to measure progress regularly.
Focus tightly
We talk about the skills all the time and make explicit references to them when it fits. This means teaching the pupils explicitly what a skill is and looking at a specific-step. We've found that this has really rubbed off on the children and they will often now say to us when they recognise they are using a particular skill. The display board in the hall is a really lovely way for children to see the skills in action. We use the skills steps to help us think about where the children are with a particular skill.
Keep practising
We have also added the skills we are focussing on for the term on our medium term plans so that it makes it clear how we can incorporate the skills into different lessons. This means staff refer to skills regularly and they are part of the wider curriculum. We also have a Creativity club which has worked well too.
Bring it to life
This year we used the Crime Scene Challenge day. It was brilliant for all ages and the children loved it! Wherever possible, anybody who visits the school is asked questions about their job and the skills they need. We try to give our children a wide range of experiences such as trips, opportunities to raise money for the school and charities, inviting people in and virtual talks/visits. We also talk about how skills fit into these.
What's next
We are definitely planning another Challenge Day next year, will continue building up our display board and would like to introduce some kind of passport of the skills which children can take through the school. This would also help teachers to see where children are when they receive them from the previous class.
