Its been wonderful seeing how our friendly occasional matches and one off girls football tournaments for primary children have developed over the last few terms into a 16 team league! We are very lucky to have built a partnership with a local charity, Girls United FA, Fulham Foundation, Powerleague and The Black Prince Trust. Girls United works with girls and women promoting football opportunities for all ages. They are currently running a number of inspiring events open to everyone to come to, and a tournament on International Womens Day, 7th March, for teams to join – from beginners to intermediate and a men’s tournament. We look forward to developing lots more opportunities over the year.
Today is the last day of term for most of us and what a busy term its been! Thank you to all our amazing partner organisations and individuals who have worked with us this term and enriched the learning for our staff, children and young people. A few highlights have included the development of our primary girls football offer through work with Black Prince Trust, Powerleague, Girls United FA and Fulham Football Club. Last month over 100 girls were playing football together and next term we shall start our league with 16 teams signed up! On our Paul Hamlyn Foundation Confident Creators programme, now in its second year, we have been delighted to work with Pegasus Opera and artist Liz Atkin – some wonderful lessons have been delivered this term from songwriting with year 1 classes on The Stick Man to children making fabulous Antarctic sea creatures from clay in year 2 and many more. We are delighted to have made a start with our new creative writing project with storymaker Steven Camden and Cath Greenwood from the Unicorn Theatre. funded by the Laurel Trust, and look forward to developing this work in 2020. The BLC is interested in supporting the whole child and our work with Guys and St Thomas’ Charity puts children’s health and well being high on our agenda. We are excited to see the new Oval House theatre building go up in Brixton and have been delighted that pupils from Hill Mead and St John’s Angell Town Primary have been working with architects Matt and Fiona to design a temporary performance space that will be used in the summer whilst the permanent building is completed. Our Science partnership with Ogden Trust has got off to a great start with high quality training for teachers across the cluster, Nursery through to KS4 and we look forward to a strong Science focus next term with our annual Science Fair at St Gabriel’s College. This is just a snap shot of some of the things we have done this term. Thanks to all the staff and families in our schools for their endless support and enthusiasm this term and of course to the pupils in our schools. Wishing everyone a very happy break and looking forward to 2020.
Yesterday over 100 primary aged girls congregated at the Powerleague pitches at The Black Prince Trust to take part in our latest girls football tournament. We have seen girls football grow over the year, from some friendly matches in local schools to an event that now attracts teams from across the borough playing together. This has been largely due to the building of a partnership of organisations supporting the work – The Black Prince Trust, Fulham Football Club, Girls United and Powerleague working with our cluster and our neighboroughing clusters Oval and Windmill. Following 4 group heats and 2 semi-finals the winners yesterday were Walnut Tree Walk Primary. It was fantastic to see girls from different teams putting teams together and playing whilst the semis and final were going on, before the presentation of team and individual medals. Thanks to all staff, organisations and the pupils for a great event.
Last week we had our first teacher training day for our new project In My Own Words, funded by Laurel Trust. This is an exciting action-research project we are taking part in, in partnership with the Windmill cluster. 12 teachers are working together with Cath Greenwood from the Unicorn Theatre and storyteller and writer Steven Camden. This project is looking at how teachers can create an inclusive environment for creative writing encouraging those usually reluctant to write, or perceived as having less experiences to draw upon to use in their writing. The training session was an immersive experience. As a group we made a story setting, drawing it out on a long piece of paper on the floor, We then took parts of the story setting and worked in partners to think about the characters who might live in the various spaces in our environment, using drama and art to illustrate our thoughts and sharing them together. As the time went on, plots naturally developed and by lunchtime we had created a number of stories that linked together. Teachers commented they were eager to go back into the class and try some of the activities with their children. Our artist team will then visit the teachers in school and work together with their classes before the Christmas break. Thanks to everyone who took part in this really inspiring day. It was great to work with such a creative and enthusiastic group of talented teachers, who worked so well together. This is going to be a really interesting and dynamic project.
We are delighted to have started another series of Royal Institution Maths Masterclasses this term, hosted by St Gabriel’s College. We have had bumper numbers of children engaging this term with 35 year 5 children on the register across 7 local primaries. Last week’s master class focussed on Codes and Ciphers, led by Debo Gbakinro, an engineer with Network Rail and former pupil of one of our primaries, St John Divine. Debo led a great session, with children exploring a range of codes and ciphers used in a range of day to day situations. Our next session will be about Maths in the Solar System. Thanks to all the staff in school, and our excellent masterclass leaders for giving this opportunity to the children.
This term teachers from years 1 through to 6 have met together from our primary schools. These start of year meetings are designed to allow teachers to get to know each other, have initial discussions about children’s learning and share experiences. We often start the meetings by asking teachers to introduce themselves and say how many years they have been working in the particular Key Stage – we frequently have over 70 years of experience in the room! Teachers have given some great feedback about what they’ve taken from these meetings: comparing different approaches to writing and the variety of maths approaches, discussing behaviour management, getting ideas for differentiation, seeing how colleagues include visuals and photographs of learning in children’s books, seeing teachers giving Maths challenges at the end of lessons, different methods of marking. Over 60 teachers have taken part in these meetings this term – many thanks to all of them for taking the time to share with other schools.
Our new Ogden Trust Partnership has enabled over 40 teachers from our schools to received training so far this term. Our Primary CPD day was for year 3, year 5 and Science Leads on Forces, and our Ogden Co-ordinator Carole Kendrick took teachers through a wealth of practical investigations to do in the classroom. All primaries and our secondary Special School The Michael Tippett School, have received class resource boxes to accompany the work, with several hundred pounds worth of equipment to use. Our EYFS teachers also enjoyed a day of specialist practical training with an Ogden specialist and received a resource for weekly investigations for children throughout the year. Teachers’ feedback from the sessions was very positive and we shall now be ensuring that the training becomes meaningful learning for pupils in our schools.
14 teams from across the borough came together for our first girls primary football tournament of the year – a fantastic turn out with over 120 girls on the site of Vauxhall Powerleague pitches. This was a partnership event between BLC, Oval Cluster, Girls United FA and The Black Prince Trust. A busy schedule of games took place with teams playing at least 3 times and those not through to the semis and the final doing additional skills activities with the staff from Powerleague and The Black Prince Trust. There were medals for best team player, best attitude to play and bravest player as well as for places in the tournament and congratulations to all the girls for a great afternoon’s display of skills and team spirit.
The Brixton Learning Collaborative 