The School Day
The school day is 8:20am - 3pm. This equates to 32.5 hours in school.
The children are registered in to school at 8:20am. They then do a carousel of activities including handwriting, maths, spelling, retrieval of current learning, retrieval of past learning. From 8:45am, the children are grouped for Book Club. In Book Club, every child will read to the adult who delivers the session every day. In addition, the children will focus on one of the five comprehension skills per day (Retrieval, Inference, Vocabulary, Prediction, Sequencing). Some of the children will answer the questions verbally whilst others will read the question and formulate a written answer themselves. Children are challenged by more indepth questions or by re-phrasing questions. After Book Club, the children do Brain Gym or Dough Disco. Brain Gym is a programme of educational kinesiology exercises that has been adopted by some schools and educators. They are used to improve the functioning of the brain. Following Brain Gym, the children have a phonics lesson which is taught using the Little Wandle Scheme. This is an approach which is used consistently across school. Phonic assessments are undertaken every half term and this informs the closely matched phonetically decodable book that the child reads. After phonics, there is and hour of English and an hour of maths separarted by a 15 minute playtime. Lunch time is from 12 noon until 1.00 p.m. In the afternoon, the children have a story read to them from our quality text reading spine for 15 minutes and then they focus on one of the foundation subjects until 2:30pm. Assembly is from 2:30-2:50 and hometime is at 3pm. Every child has a full day of Forest School provision per week and the children have golden time on a Friday afternoon.
Families can wait in the school playground from 8:10am, where the class teacher will collect them at 8:20am. Children cannot be left unattended in school before 8.20 a.m. In the event of inclement weather, the children will be directed to go straight in to class.
Children who arrive late may have some difficulties in settling in and miss vital teaching and learning time. This has an impact on their progress. It is disruptive to the class teacher and other children. Punctuality is also important in order to develop good habits in the future.
As well as the lunch-time break, there is a morning break of Fifteen minutes for all children. The school is part of the Fruit and Vegetables for Schools Scheme, therefore children should not bring snacks to school. Parents may bring plastic water bottles to encourage children to drink water during the day. Parents are responsible for washing and refilling the bottle each day.
Please let the Headteacher/office staff know if you need to collect your child during the day for any reason. No child will be allowed to leave the premises during the school day unless he/she is accompanied by an agreed adult.
If a different person is to collect your child please inform the school, particularly if the child does not know about a change in arrangements. We prefer to know the name and some details of a new person in order to maintain efficient security at home time.
It is also very important that the children are collected promptly from school at
3.00 p.m. Parents are expected to be in the school yard to pick up their children.
Children can often feel distressed if a parent/carer is not there to collect them on time.
The staff’s working day does not finish when the children go home. There is always preparation and there are often in-service training commitments or staff meetings and curriculum discussions after 3.00 p.m.