Our school newsletters are sent home each term. Newsletters inform parents of the learning going on in school as well as giving lists of important dates.
Autumn Term Winter Term Spring Term Summer Term
Diary Dates Aug 24 Dec 2024 Newsletter
Diary Dates Aug 23 Woodlands_News March 2024 Newsletter
. Dec 2023 Newsletter
Diary Dates Aug 22 Dec 2022 Newsletter March 23 Newsletter May23 Newsletter
Nov 2021 Newsletter March 2022 Newsletter
What children want, what parents/carers want, what staff want.
We asked if you knew about and/or wanted more information about what we have in place to ensure that we are implementing what everyone has said they want for children whilst they are at Woodlands. Thank you for the feedback you gave us in March 2018 at the outset of our Curriculum Rationale review. Having consulted with the Parent Council the information most requested i.e. 10-20% of you requested has been placed here for you to access.
Staff Improvement/Collegiate Approaches
To ensure we continue to improve, keep up to date with national and local priorities and get it right for our pupils, staff share their expertise with each other, through training, focussed observations and discussions about learning, planning and assessment. They also share practice and collaborate engaging in professional dialogue about improvement, Learning and Teaching with colleagues from Carlogie, Monikie, Newbigging and Carnoustie High School. Thus, past session this has been focussed on improving approaches to ensure children learn maths and understand what they are learning and that we as a cluster of schools have a shared understanding of expectations. We improved the language children use to learn to prepare for Carnoustie High School and moderated our planning and assessment.
In addition, a maths champion (L Ferguson) from each school met with headteachers and our Education Support Officer Carol Lyon to plan and implement the collaborative plan taking into account feed back and priorities from staff. As a group they discussed and improved a document that staff use to assess children’s learning against Education Scotland’s benchmarks in maths and numbers to ensure they are progressive and have an appropriate skill-based sequence to best support Learning and Teaching. They also linked it to resources to further support Learning and Leaching. We have pathways in numbers, reading, Learning and Teaching, writing and RME, Health and Wellbeing.
Staff for Learning, life and work
Over the previous session we identified a need to improve partnerships and ensure our curriculum had a clear focus on Developing the Young Workforce– a key national improvement priority. We worked together as a staff to identify contexts for learning that would develop these skills across the school. Linking development skills through to other curriculum areas and identifying partnerships e.g. P4 linking with Easthaven annually, local businesses and parents supporting P7 and commitment links that could support this development.
Staff then rolled this out to other contexts for learning to highlight possible community links and created a database using the information you gave us about skills you would be happy to share and ways you would be happy to support. This has given staff a point of reference should they need to identify who would be able to help enhance children’s learning.
In addition, teachers keep a record of children’s achievements through clubs etc beyond the classroom and have regular conversations with children to help them make links between this and class learning. Also to help them realise these are all learning opportunities preparing them with skills for learning life and work e.g. learning to include others in team sports. Mrs Ferguson our acting principle teacher monitors the opportunities school provides to either draw on skills children are learning, build on them or provide opportunities where a common interest is identified.
Learning and Teaching and Assessment
During the collaboration referred to earlier teachers have discussed their maths assessments, developing our cold and hot task approaches. Teachers identified their need to ensure there is no support with cold tasks to initially identify where a child is in their learning and that they need to show what a child knows/understands. What they need to know then inform planning/next steps and improve its relevance. Discussing the cold tasks with children enables them to see what they can do and now need to learn, motivating them and ensuring greater clarity about what they are learning whilst improving depth, breadth and appropriate challenge. Continued discussion about their learning, hot tasks towards the end of a block of learning, sharing Learning Intentions and Success Criteria strategies further builds children’s ability to talk about understanding of what they are learning, their progress and next steps making their learning and what to do to be successful and achievements more visible.
As the children learn the teachers continue to identify what each child needs and will provide opportunities for children to select a challenge level they feel is appropriate to them. This builds confidence whilst also further enabling them to challenge themselves appropriately and understand appropriate challenge supports and improves learning. Groups are therefore fluid as the needs of each child within and across skills change. This year, discussion’s about where children are in the learning pit have further developed a growth mindset (GM) culture as children become more able to identify how challenged they feel, how challenge feels and what will help them succeed. This helps them develop a language and understanding of the learning process, with research informing us this improves attainment and achievement.
In addition to teachers creating and accessing a range of assessments, teachers observe children’s responses, reactions, strengths and needs on an ongoing daily basis. This formative assessment also informs planning of next steps and the questions staff pose to support/enhance learning. Children in P1, 5 and 7 also engage in national assessments annually online which teachers analyse and use to further support planning and judgements about attainment.
Furthermore, to ensure our improvements not only remain relevant nationally and locally and take account of current educational research and thinking it is important they are relevant to our children and have a positive impact. We therefore survey children and parents/carers and staff to identify how they feel about aspects learning and we use this to inform our approaches/what we need to particularly focus on. This informs a need to further look at inclusion, respect and responsibility this session which we approached through the introduction of mindfulness and of a need to continue to build on children’s ability to challenge themselves, talk about their progress. Through our pupil council and a link with the parent council and our parent forum we have also reviewed and updated our positive behaviour and relationships policy based on feedback received.
Individual Education Plans(IEPs)
When a child requires specific individual plans to either support or challenge them for a period of time an IEP will be discussed with our ASN teacher and parents/carers. Targets specific to that child that are in addition too teachers planning/targets for other children are identified and agreed along with the strategies to enable them to be met and measured. This is recorded in a document called an IEP and is then implemented in school and depending on targets and strategies agreed may be supported at home. These are discussed with the children and are evaluated and reviewed with parents/carers, teachers and usually ASN teacher before being either updated or closed as appropriate, with a copy held in the child’s records, a copy sent home. All children who are looked after are required to have an IEP.
