Wednesday 9 March 2011

Val Thompson Governor Visit

I visited the school on Thursday 17th February 2011 in my role as community governor. As I am a newly appointed governor this visit had been organised to let me see as much as possible of the school.
I managed to see most of the year groups apart from the nursery classes. I found an active working environment with the children fully engaged in their activities. The staff work very hard to provide excellent learning experiences and I saw a range of lessons including music, maths and painting.
A special assembly took place during my visit, a representative from the chosen charity of the year, NSPCC, came to tell the children that their fund raising had totalled over £2000. It was very interesting to find out how the money would be used to both help children and to train adults to help in the future.
I joined the children for lunch at the end of my visit and enjoyed the calm and polite way everyone made the most of the mid day break.
I would like to thank all of the staff and children for making me feel so welcome during my visit.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Governor visit - Thursday 17th february 2011

Visit to John Bramston Primary School - Thursday 17th February 2011

Governor - Brian Walker (SEN Link)

Focus - Interventions to support SEN

I spent a few very happy hours in school seeing how staff support children who need a little extra help. As it was nearing half term there were assessments taking place.

I spent time with Class Y6 K/L as they undertook a 45 minute Science test. Staff were fully engaged in reading out the questions from the test paper for those children that would benefit from this extra help.

I then observed some out-of-class interventions that support children. Mrs Murcutt was working with a year 4 child to help with fine motor skills / speech & language. Mrs Murcutt has introduced some great ideas and resources for her work with children.

I then met Mrs Evans who showed me some of her intervention work. Mrs Evans is trained in using the Precision Teaching technique and works with individual children to support their reading. I observed her working with a child, who told me that the sessions are helping him to 'remember words.'

After a quick visit to Reception and Nursery where I tried extremely hard not to trip over tiny people, I went into Class 4B where there was assessments taking place This time it was a writing assessment. I stayed long enough to witness how well the children were working on their assignments.

I briefly spoke to a lady in the Staff Room who was a representative from the NSPCC. She had just just received over £2000 which had been collected by the children of John Bramston for the charity! She was clearly moved by the amount that was raised.

As always, I was impressed by the colourful and calm environment of the school.

My visit concluded with a debrief with the Assistant Headteacher.

Thank you and well done to everyone who helped to make my visit so pleasurable and informative.