Professional Photographs of our school

 

 

In the summer term 2009 we invited a professional photographer into school to take a series of photographs for our new school brochure. The results were outstanding and so we have selected a number of them here to inform you about some things you may not be aware of about our school.

 

 

3M have donated a number of vests to us over the years to help us with road safety. The vests are used in school at various times. We use them as part of our approach to Road Safety.

 

Our Travel Plan 

We have worked with the Local Authority to produce a Travel Plan to reduce the number of car journeys taken to our school. This work involved creating a gate in the junior yard to make it easier for people in the West Ward area to get to school; Installing a cycle store and signage around our site. We are also looking into creating a similar facility in our infant building.

 

 

Cycling to school reduces car journeys and helps to keep children fit and healthy!

 

 

Free School Meals

The photographer caught our junior cooks taking a short tea break.

 

 

In September 2009 Durham Local Authority began a two year pilot programme to provide all pupils with free school meals. This is a great thing for parents who know that their children can access a good, healthy meal as well as saving a lot of money each day. Take-up has been excellent and very few children now bring a packed lunch into school. Our school meals are provided by Taylor Shaw who won the Durham contract some time ago. Meals are designed around government guidelines to ensure nutritional balance for all. They are proving to be very popular indeed with pupils and staff!

 

Outdoor Play Equipment

In recent years we have put a lot of money into improving our school grounds to benefit all of our pupils. Our junior area is very popular with our Key Stage 2 pupils

 

 

Whilst the Key Stage One play equipment remains popular with our infant children.

 

 

Our approaches to physical work and outdoor play has helped us to achieve national recognition in the Active Mark for 2009!

This is an achievement we are very proud of. We hope to add the 2009 Healthy Schools Award to this award very soon!

 

 

 

We also have a number of seated areas around our school site. Some outdoor tables have games built into them to keep the children occupied in different ways over lunch and play times.

 

All too often our outdoor equipment is vandalised, spoiling everything for our children and causing additional expense to our school!

 

 

Lessons

Since our last inspection in 2008 we have had to work very hard indeed to improve what we do at school. Staff have worked very hard to ensure that every lesson is 'good' under Ofsted criteria to ensure that all children learn from lessons and make good progress. We have had to consider how children learn, how to vary our lessons and how to ensure all children take part in the lesson. We have also worked hard to improve how the children's work will look, how we mark work and provide feedback to pupils so that they know how to improve what they do. Improving literacy, and in particular writing, has been a major focus.

Soon we will be re-inspected by Ofsted Inspectors when we hope that they will recognise all the hard work put in since the last inspection.