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Lapal Primary School is part of Hales Valley Trust. Our Trust is an all-primary academy trust, based in Dudley, West Midlands. Our vision is ‘Learning together, successful forever’ which is underpinned by our school values of perseverance, excellence, kindness, cooperation, and honesty. In our school, we actively promote these values in everything that we do, and the Skills Builder essential skills provide a framework to explicitly teach and apply this.
Overall impact
Our curriculum is designed to provide experiences that build a rich understanding of key knowledge and skills by engaging children and developing their curiosity through exploration, as well as developing their character and learning behaviours so that they become successful lifelong learners. The Skills Builder essential skills are a key part of our aim to ensure that our children develop skills and values to work and communicate well with others, appreciate equality and diversity and prepare them for life in the modern world in which we live. We enable our children to build strong relationships and appreciate their roles and responsibilities as part of local, national, and global communities. We develop their character so that they are thoughtful world citizens, healthy individuals, environmentally aware and creative and confident communicators. The essential skills are woven into all that we do and serve as a solid platform for which our children can build success during their journey through Lapal and beyond. As our recent Ofsted inspection report quoted, ‘Pupils are supported to persevere and to develop resilience and strength of character.’
Keep it simple
The language of the essential skills is now part of our Lapal vocabulary for all stakeholders; it is a common language that is universally understood. Whole school and phase assemblies are based on cultural/significant events/people, always starting with sharing a quality text. We always reference the essential skills, so children understand what they look like in day-to-day life through the context of the book. We celebrate children’s successes using Skills Builder language through positive praise, half-termly learning review meetings with children which are communicated to parents and also end of year reports. Our policies refer to Skills Builder, for example our behaviour policy includes a stem sentence for staff to structure sentences when verbally giving positive praise to children, so that all adults can reinforce the skills in a consistent way. All classrooms display the Skills Builder posters as a visual cue and also the monthly skill focus, including the steps linked to this. Teachers make reference to the skills through their teaching of all subjects and make the abstract concrete by explicitly teaching them through a range of contexts. Deliberate, well planned opportunities to apply these skills flood our children’s learning experiences.
Start early, keep going
All students, in all year groups have planned opportunities for the learning and practising of essential skills from our Early Year Foundation Stage through to Year 6. Lapal understands the importance of starting to learn these skills as young as possible, allowing 7 years for each child to master each step at an age-appropriate level. Early Career Teachers (ECTs) are supported by their mentor to contextualise the learning to their year group – with explicit links made to the small steps in the Early Career Framework (ECF) that ECTs are focusing on during their first two years of teaching. Our EYFS team are coached by their Phase Leader who helps contextualise the learning to the younger age of the children. Staff record their lessons using IRIS Connect video technology, subsequently working with a coach to reflect on their own teaching successes and how they can have even more impact. Only the relevant steps for the current monthly focus are displayed in each classroom, showing where the children are currently working at and the next steps so that children can aspire to reach them. Homezone has been shared with parents to allow them to explore the skills out of school too.
Measure it
All teachers reflect on the children’s progress against the essential skills using Skills Builder Hub, completing a monthly assessment to prioritise and inform next steps in teaching. This is done with the children present so that the children are always informed of their progress. The Skills Builder Leader checks on progress at 3 points in the year, following this up with learning conversations with teachers to support them in making the children’s next steps a reality. The assessments determine which resources are used from the Skills Builder Hub by each teacher. Each classroom displays a poster which indicates which skill the class are currently working on, and the relevant steps which they are developing. Teachers reflect on individual student successes and next steps in their end of year report well as reviewing their progress ½ termly through learning review meetings with each child. As part of a class’s transition to a new teacher, the assessment from the Skills Builder Hub is used as a baseline to begin the new academic year.
Focus tightly
A discrete weekly session is taught using the resources from the Skills Builder Hub, which is adapted to meet the needs of the children. The learning of the essential skills does not happen by chance, students have planned, regular and explicit opportunities to build on their existing knowledge of the essential skills. The assessments carried out on the Skills Builder Hub assessment tool informs next steps, so that all teachers pitch their teaching at an appropriate level.
Keep practising
Skills Builder skills are ‘taught not caught.’ The application of the essential skills is deliberately planned into the curriculum and beyond by all teachers, which forms part of our written curriculum. We offer a range of opportunities such as residentials, Bikeability, mini markets, focus day projects, such as Year 6 enterprise challenges, as well as after school clubs for children to practise the skills in different contexts. Our Taskmaster after school club, for example gave children the opportunity to take part in an engaging club which directly reinforced the skills. Lapal children have engaged in range of workshops from external providers and our local high schools such as a debate workshops. Our extensive extra-curricular offering ranges from craft and pilates to gardening and music clubs.
Bring it to life
As part of our transition between year groups, each class spend time with their new class teacher with a focus on Skills Builder. Linked to the current monthly focus, the children explore a challenge at an age-appropriate level in all year groups. Not only does this enable the new class teacher to get to know their new class on a pastoral level, it also helps them see children applying the Skills Builder essential skills, so that they can see how they can build on these with their class in the new academic year. Our pupil leadership teams, such as our Junior Leadership Team and our Digital Leaders, also get a chance to not only practise and develop their leadership skills but also the other essential skills in a variety of projects which aim to drive school improvement – this is systematic and deliberately planned into the work that they do. We invite a range of visitors to our school to explore how these skills are used in a professional environment, for example paramedics, the RNLI and even a Formula 1 day – we encourage our children to have big dreams and high aspirations.
What's next
Engage in a Trust wide Challenge Day, where children from our 5 schools all have the opportunity to practise the essential skills simultaneously, allowing collaboration and the sharing of success with our learning community. Explore ‘virtual trips’ as part of our Skills Builder offering as an additional way for children to develop their essential skills.
