Both our Willow and Oak nurture rooms are established and running well,  giving pupils the opportunity to make connections and develop friendships with their peers.  Children are happy and participating well in tasks and activities aimed at developing their health and well being.

In the Willow room, our focus for our Welly Wednesdays will be to have more opportunity to explore the great outdoors.  We will primarily explore our immediate environment, but may explore areas further away from the school.  The children will partake in a Wild Challenge, completing 6 activities linked to the RSPB challenge, which will encourage exploration of the natural habitats of small animals and insects from our local environment.  Children will be encouraged to work in small teams, to create housing and gain knowledge of these animal habitats.

The focus for some of our children will be preparing for full time attendance in their primary classroom, reducing time spent in the Willow Room and helping the children find strategies and tools to support them throughout this period of change.  For the children remaining in the Willow Room, they will need to time to adjust and chat about the changes taking place and how it makes them feel.

In our Oak room, the discussions and activities supported in the connected classroom materials, will continue to be our main focus, looking at different emotions, the impact these have on our bodies and how to manage big feelings.  With time for discussion and sharing of experience, children will develop tools to help them manage feelings and see a positive outcome.

As always, if parents have any questions or would like to chat about any aspect of our nurture provision, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Mrs Travers

As we are now in our last term of this academic session, the focus in both Nurture rooms will be to help each child reach their personal targets and achieve their goals. The summer term is usually a very busy term but nurture provision will continue to be available to all nurture pupils.

Willow Room

In the Willow Room, children are working hard on developing their literacy and maths strategies and skills, helping them to better prepare for transition to their mainstream classroom over the coming months, ready to be a full time member of their class in August. For those children, that will mean spending less time in the Willow Room and more time with their class teacher and peers. This will be a gentle transition, and personally tailored to suit each child’s needs.

For those who are remaining in nurture next session, the summer term will give teacher and pupil an opportunity to prepare for the other changes that will affect them next session, such as a change of teacher or support staff and moving to a new classroom. For some children this change can be difficult and the time spent in the Willow Room will help to prepare the children socially and emotionally for the changes a head.

The literacy and maths activities will maintain a link to current activities and teaching happening in each child’s own classroom with their class teacher, to ensure continuity and progression is being made. Children will of course work at their own pace; with the necessary support, but the focus will be on becoming more independent learners.

The health and wellbeing aspect of nurture provision, will very much be based on preparing for change, and equipping children with the tools to cope with the changes ahead. Welly Wednesday will continue, as will outdoor learning opportunities, to help children to recognise responsibilities, how to keep themselves safe and how to work together to achieve a common goal.

Oak Room

The Oak Room will still operate on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and the main focus will still be preparing for change and the transition to secondary school. As our summer term progresses, new worries or concerns about change are likely to be a focal point of discussion for our transition children. This will be tackled within primary 6/7 and 7 classrooms, but for the Oak pupils, there will be further opportunities to discuss some of these issues further.

Like the Willow pupils, the Oak Room pupils health and wellbeing focus, will very much be based on preparing for change, and equipping children with the tools to cope with the changes ahead. This is an exciting but challenging time for many primary 7 pupils, as they prepare for secondary school, leaving the many memories, staff and familiarity of the primary school behind them to embark on the next chapter of their school life. The aim of the Oak Room is to make this transition as easy as possible for the children in the nurture programme.

The upper primary children are very excited to be presenting their summer show but due to show rehearsals, the Oak Room may not always run two full afternoons per week as previously arranged. I will however, always be around to support our transition group pupils at any time and if a check in or a chat is required, this can be arranged to suit pupils and rehearsal times.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me,

Mrs Travers

Willow Room

The Willow Room children have now settled into their nurture class, learning the routines and expectations of our Willow Room.  The children are now familiar with check in, taking turns to share their news and discuss how they are feeling.  This continues during our snack times, where we eat together and chat about school and home life.

The academic focus has very much been on number and spelling/sounds.  Primary 1 have been working on numbers to 10 and will continue to familiarise themselves with forming each number figure and matching quantities.  We will begin to look at addition in the coming weeks too.  Our older children have been working on numbers to 20 and number stories, looking for pattern and relationships within the numbers.  The focus will be addition and subtraction within 20.

In literacy, active literacy activities have been used to help children retain and recall their new sounds.  The focus again for primary 1, has been initial sounds and letter formation whilst introducing their first common words and reading books.  Our older children have been recapping previous learning and have been introduced to joint phonemes and common words linked to Bug Club and Active Literacy.  This will continue to be our focus over the coming weeks.

Every Wednesday we take part in Welly Wednesday.  The children are encouraged to explore and discuss nature around us.  It involves outdoor learning opportunities and a chance to explore their local environment.  So far we have visited ‘The Foxes’, the basketball cages, the local swing park and a nature walk to Dean Park to look for signs of Autumn.  We will continue to explore our local area and have opportunities to visit play/learning facilities to further enhance the children’s learning.

Oak Room

The Oak Room children are settling into their new nurture classroom and are beginning to get to know each other better.  The children have discussed how they feel they would benefit from the Transition Nurture Group and have shared some of their worries or concerns about the transition to the academy.  The Oak group will also be supported by Julie and Nicola, home-link workers based at St. Joseph’s, who will be able to help organise regular visits and any questions the children may have.

The focus for the Oak room as we move forward will be researching and working on individual tasks, opportunities to work in a small group organising resources/activities to raise money for charity.  There will be tasks and activities which will allow the children to develop their organisational skills, transferring these skills to the process of preparing for academy.  We will also look at timetabling, managing our time and thinking of the tools and equipment we may require to be fully prepared to begin our journey at St. Joseph’s.  Pupils will also have the opportunity to develop their study and homework skills as we discuss strategies which may be useful when juggling different subjects and different tasks/challenges associated with academy life.

There will be opportunities for parents of both the Willow and the Oak room children to attend parent/carer drop in sessions.  The children will plan and invite parents/carers to visit Oak/Willow rooms and we hope to have 2 sessions per term, to allow parents to see what the children have been working on.

Any questions, as always, please feel free to get in touch.

Many Thanks

Mrs Travers