Many schools would say their curriculum is broad and creative. I have never worked anywhere where the curriculum was not creative. So how can you compare one school with another? What are the ingredients that make a child’s experience here at Westbourne House particularly special?
As many of you will know, children are most susceptible to learning experiences between the ages of 0 and 7. The key is to build strong foundations across the board in these years: get this right and children are set up for life.
I’m going to share some of our thinking on this area of learning and development to show how we ensure we deliver the important elements that establish the strongest of
foundations for our children:
- Developing a love of learning
- Learning to trust your ideas and communicate them
- Being happy
- Understanding that mistakes are good
- Learning the traditional values of respect and kindness
- Building strong foundations in Maths and English
Developing a love of learning
The Pre-Prep at Westbourne House is fizzing with energy and creativity. Learning here is wonder-filled and fabulously fun.
Isabel, mum
Children that enjoy learning tend to explore things more deeply and are keen to follow their instincts and keep discovering.
We believe variety is key to making school fascinating – give children lots of different ways to experience learning and to express themselves and they will thrive and come
back for more. Therefore we ensure that each day at Westbourne is filled with different experiences.
We also have small class sizes, which means we have more time to teach, discuss and support. It also means we are light on our feet and able to plan and implement changes and ideas promptly. We meet regularly as a teaching team to plan topics we believe are inspirational, and to think carefully about the ways we can stimulate the children’s interest in the world.
Once we have decided on ideas and themes, we often take a whole term to explore and teach a topic, and as a result the children’s understanding and learning is deep and
crosses several areas of the curriculum. Exploration of a topic might encompass written work, movement, singing, science, outdoor learning, art and design, and trips outside school. We hope when you visit our classrooms that the children’s work on display underlines the extent to which they have grasped and explored various topics. The Year 2 Victorian experience, for instance, is one example of such work, and presents a mixture of artists from the Victorian age, the engineering achievements of Brunel, an experience as Victorians at the Weald and Downland, and lots of imaginative writing in between.
Our teachers are also privileged: they have access to resources and facilities that enable them to be more creative. If they want to create a moonscape to bring learning about space to life, then they can. If we work with clay, we can fire the clay creations in our kilns. And we have specialist teachers in music, IT and art from the pool of teachers at Westbourne House, who support our teachers and further enhance and enlarge the children’s learning experience of school.
Learning to trust your ideas and communicate them
Our children are very different to one another in character and interests, yet Westbourne House has drawn out strengths in all of them.
Bea, mum
We do not ask children to put up their hands in class as we want every child to participate. Instead, we allow every child to have a voice, to make suggestions and –
vitally – ask questions. We also find different ways for the children to express themselves. Our children give verbal presentations to their class – so they take on an element of the teaching process themselves – but we also encourage self-expression through art and music. The children’s singing, for example, is wonderful; I have never heard better at any age.
Another way we encourage children to express themselves is through a fun debating game. Children are given a choice of words, for example ‘summer or winter’, ‘English or
Maths’, ‘dogs or cats’, and each child has to give a reason for making their choice. It is entertaining, encourages participation and sends out the message that we will both
accept what the children say and that their thoughts, and those of others, carry weight and are worthy of respect.
Mistakes are good
I've been trying to encourage my child to learn from their mistakes at home (instead of getting upset), and also to take responsibility when they make mistakes that impact others. I'm so pleased that the school is focusing on this - my daughter is finally listening!
Year 2 mum
We would like our children to leave the Pre-Prep with some grit and determination. A key component in this is celebrating mistakes so we can learn from them. We focus on the journey our children take on the road to learning a skill, rather than the end itself.
Happiness
“There are smiles everywhere you look. What more could you ask for in a learning
environment for your child?”
Emma, mum
Making school a happy place requires several things. One of the most important is the adults present, so we have experienced, energised and talented teachers and other staff who welcome the children with broad smiles. Our children know that the teachers notice them and feel reassured and safe.
As I’ve mentioned, the classrooms are a wonderful place to learn, full of colour and interest. So a second way to create happiness is to make the school feel magical and inspiring, something to which we devote a lot of time and energy. Thus our decorations are changed each term and we know that our children look forward to seeing the new theme and creation on their first day back.
Children are unique and we understand that children enjoy different aspects of school life: some things make them happier than others. Therefore we aim to balance activities during the day. As well as focusing on progress in English and Maths, there is plenty of time to play independently, to get outdoors, and to do art, sport and music. Including outdoor learning in our mix also appeals to and suits many children. Our children have sport three times a week as well as forest school. We are lucky to have so many extraordinary facilities, from our pool, which gives children a chance to learn an important life-skill, to the climbing wall and canoes on the lake.
Learning the traditional values of respect and kindness
We feel lucky to have found such a wonderful place to which we can send our children, knowing that they are in good, caring and capable hands.
Bianca, mum
We are always aware that we need to model the behaviour we wish to see from our children. We have a strong moral code – the Westbourne Way – which we talk about and
model every day: eye contact and shaking hands, resolving altercations in a calm, fair and sensible way, and learning to say sorry and to forgive. One of the biggest accolades at school is being recognised for following the Westbourne Way at our celebration assembly. It is an incredibly special moment, with the child’s friends surrounding him or her with love and saying why they think he or she is kind.
Building strong foundations of English and Maths
There is a super high standard of teaching and learning in the core subjects of Maths and English, where the kids are flourishing and fulfilling their potential academically, without feeling any pressure whatsoever.
Jo, mum
If you get the foundations in Maths and English right now, children are off to a flying start.
I recruit teachers who are already outstanding but all receive on-going training once they join the school. I am trainer in Read Write Inc., a proven literacy approach that raises results and the standards of behaviour through its interactive methods. This means I can provide on-going support to the staff, as well as modelling best practice continuously.
Barbara Langford, director of studies for the whole school, also spends a considerable amount of time at the Pre-Prep each week working with pupils directly and demonstrating best practice in Singapore Maths. Our teachers are also adept at identifying early children who need extra support or different strategies to increase progress.
We believe all pupils leave the Pre-Prep with considerable proficiency in literacy and numeracy. As these two subjects underpin most future learning, we are confident that we have provided the strongest possible academic foundations for your children.
This is just a brief background to our thinking, but I hope you can see many of these various elements in play when you visit the school and, more to the point, in your own
children. We hope we are helping them to become as happy, kind, confident and well-rounded as possible, and that they are interested in the world and learning - and that they can’t wait to get back to school every day!
