Each Friday we hold an Achievement Assembly for children from Year 1 to Year 6. It’s a superb event in which children from across the school share with one another the things they’ve achieved during the week. The assemblies will often involve children sharing a particularly well crafted piece of writing, some creative mathematics, a well constructed art work or a practised performance piece. They provide an opportunity for us to define what success look like and what good learning entails.
This week the assembly was particularly full and the work the children were presenting, of a particularly high standard. It became apparent that one of the reasons for this was the number of exciting experiences the teachers had arranged for the children during the week. They had enjoyed a vast range of enrichment activities.
Enrichment activities are additional activities that take place either during or after school hours, and complement the classroom teaching and the material being presented to the children. These activities both enhance the children’s learning experience and broaden the scope of what they are learning through practical experiences that link theory with real world applications. They offer personal and social development opportunities to the children and a chance to develop and reflect upon their character virtues.
To this end, this week children in Reception worked with a professional artist exploring the work of Matisse and creating their own masterpieces; children in Year 2 were visited by workers from the Ford factory who organised them into a production line, demonstrating why this was such a revelatory idea, and they were introduced to one of the children’s grandfathers who has worked for Ford for thirty years and gave a fascinating insight; children in Year 3 were visited by the Rainbow Theatre who brought the Stone Age to life, before meeting artists from Bow Arts who worked with them to create banners for our new school Houses; children in Year 4 had a Roman Day with a huge range of experiences laid on including making Roman medicine, a clay oil lamp, a mosaic and much more; and, children in Year 6 were visited by a puppeteer from the stage show War Horse who introduced them to his work and taught them how to apply the finer points to their own puppets.
And all this in just one week at our school.
I’m sure you’ll agree, our teachers are doing a magnificent job and, as you’ll see from the news articles on this site, the children are really enjoying the fantastic experiences on offer and are making huge leaps in their learning.
