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The Mary Bassett Lower School welcomes children from Nursery to Year 4. We are situated in the heart of the town and we are very lucky to have some beautiful outdoor spaces. 'The Mary Bassett Way' is an critical thread running through school life, we use Skills Builder to provide us with the structure and an explicit set of progressive skills. These have become our set of core values.
Overall impact
The impact on our school community has been huge. Skills Builder has provided us with the vocabulary of the essential skills which has transformed how children talk about the things they are doing. It has provided teachers with resources and a progressive set of skills that allowed for depth of learning.
Keep it simple
All children in school are exposed to the essential skills, every class from Reception to Year 4 have two dedicated skills builder lessons per week. We have parents meetings explaining the approach and a page on the school website with links to Skills Builder. Staff have received CPD throughout the year. We celebrate essential skills success in our weekly achievement assembly and share stories linked to themes every week. Every class explores two skills in depth every half term, there is a display in every classroom. Dojo points are awarded when children demonstrate a skill.
Start early, keep going
Every class has a display and these are referred to throughout the school day and used as a working wall. The vocabulary of essential skills is being modelled from nursery. Parents have been shown a presentation about Skills Builder and encouraged to sign up to the weekly email. Two fifteen minute lessons are timetabled every week for children from Reception, the first lesson is learning about the skill in depth, the second lesson is to provide the opportunity to apply this skill.
Measure it
Each class is assessed every half term on Skills Builder Hub, the teacher decides upon one or two skills to focus on the following half term, these are shared centrally. From this the headteacher will plan their weekly assembly theme based on the prominent themes for that half term, stories are read that exemplify the skill and these books go to the school library for the children to take out if they want to - they are very popular books!
Focus tightly
The wider curriculum offers opportunities to apply the essential skills within different subjects, this is alongside the explicit weekly skills builder lessons. By dedicating two fifteen minute slots to the essential skills this allows real depth of learning and the children can take time to fully understand a skill. This makes it easier for them to apply these skills across the curriculum.
Keep practising
The wider curriculum offers opportunities to apply the essential skills within different subjects. As the language is so embedded staff naturally talk about essential skills on a daily basis. This is focussed and often about specific skill-steps. The children also have a wide range of extra curricular activities on offer mainly lead by school staff which enables the application of the skills to a greater depth. Opportunities across the curriculum allow further opportunity to apply the skills.
Bring it to life
The children have enjoyed the Day in politics challenge day this year. It was an excellent opportunity to shoe their skills in action and this had a huge impact, the children and staff thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We plan to incorporate two challenge days into our school year. Children were lucky enough to virtually meet and interview a range of professional people, they found this very informative. There are also a range of visits during school time and a residential in year four enables the children to apply and practice their essential skills knowledge in real life
What's next
We want to further track the skills that the children are using in the wider curriculum offer, so that we can ensure there is full coverage of all essential skills in all subject areas.
