Dear Parents and Carers,
I would like to end the week by congratulating our school ambassadors for leading this year’s Poppy Appeal and thanking our House Captains for leading round one of our Spelling Bee competition. I was really impressed with the Y6’s organisation as well as their interaction with and encouragement of children in the younger years. As you are aware, everyone in Y6 has a leadership role in school and the importance of pupils having greater roles within school decision-making is increasingly recognised as a means of building future leaders. Our pupil leadership model provides opportunities for leading in the classroom and across the whole school. Children are also encouraged to take on leadership roles within our community projects and current examples of leadership at Bramhope include:
Involving pupils in conversations and decisions about “Codes of Conduct” (eg our ‘class charters’ and ‘library policy’)
Engaging pupils in conversations and decisions about teaching, learning and assessment (eg peer marking)
Encouraging pupils to develop and share their own opinions about issues and to engage in debate, discussion and analysis (eg our weekly ‘Big talk’ assemblies)
Involving pupils in the decision-making within school (eg adapting our school menus following feedback from School Council.)
Electing pupils to meaningful roles of school ambassadors (as well as reading prefects, eco councillors, digital leaders…)
Engaging pupils as members and participants in key school processes (eg staff recruitment)
Involving pupils in peer support (eg our ‘Bramhope Buddies’)
Inviting and enabling pupils to undertake research and consultation about aspects of the school that may need change or improvement (today we have been collecting pupil voice about reading for example)
Supporting pupils to develop and implement community-based projects (eg our choir are going to sing to older people as a result of our dementia friendly link)
Enabling pupils to engage with local government and the wider community (eg eco councillors tackling environmental issues around food waste and recycling)
As you can see, by Y6, children are actively involved in all aspects of school life and have many opportunities to lead. We look forward to seeing how our current Y6 pupils contribute this year, especially our digital leaders who have contributed to our forthcoming ‘growing up in a digital world’ workshop for parents.
Staffing news
You may have seen that we are currently advertising for a new member of staff to join our reception team. This is because Debbie Arbon has family commitments and will therefore be leaving us at the end of this term. Whilst we are sad to say goodbye, we are very fortunate that Debbie will be joining Kingfisher Buddies from January and our children will therefore still see her around school and get to spend time with her. We will be saying a formal farewell and thank you to Debbie at the end of term and I am interviewing next week to fill her position.
Have a lovely weekend.
Rachel Colbourn
