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We were delighted that Senior leaders from our participating schools were able to join other projects funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Teacher Development Fund from across England, to discuss how our Confident Creator project, embedding arts in the curriculum, is moving on in its second year. It has been very encouraging to see several schools now using Music, Drama and Art more regularly in their teaching. At our local Senior Leaders meeting, staff took part in a practical workshop with our artists and enjoyed mark-making, doing a 5-step Music warm up and making a story using the story square activity.

Our exciting new partnership with Ogden Trust has meant a busy term of Science this term. Just before half term, 24 young Scientists from Stockwell, Jessop, St Saviour’s and Loughborough Primaries, all Spanish speaking, met a group of Spanish speaking scientists from a range of professions, all working in London including the field of Astrophysics and Medicine. The scientists worked with the children on a range of investigations and told them more about their own work. The unique feature of this workshop was that it was all delivered in Spanish. The room was full of lively chat, questioning and problem solving. At the end of the session children unanimously agreed they had enjoyed and learnt more about Science. We hope to run more of these workshops with Native Scientists, in other home languages. Thanks to Stockwell Primary for hosting this brilliant event.

Its been a busy first few weeks of term at BLC with projects starting up, training and teacher meetings.

Our Headteachers met in the first week of term, sharing the great work they have planned for their school communities this year. Whilst there is no doubt there are challenging times ahead for our schools, what shone through was the wealth of expertise and skills in our cluster from our leadership teams that find solutions to make sure our children and young people thrive in our community.

Our steering group of Deputy Heads met up at the South Bank Centre this week, where in addition to their agenda of actions for the cluster, they toured the South Bank site and signed up for opportunities for staff and pupils in Music, Literature and Art on offer to Lambeth schools. Our growing partnership with South Bank Centre is benefitting many children in our area.

We have also already done training for our second year of our Confident Creators programme and there are now some excellent examples of our schools embedding the arts into the curriculum and using the arts to develop a growth mindset in pupils.

Our Science Leads have met and planned a busy year of training, support and events in Science and in particular in Physics, to support teaching and learning. We are grateful to the Ogden Trust for their funding as we begin a 4 year partnership with them.

In the next few weeks we are planning cross-cluster year group teacher meetings, a girls football tournament in partnership with The Black Prince Trust and Girls United FA and a new research project starting up with the Laurel Trust. More news on the blog to follow!

Lots of activities for families this weekend.

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On 15th July the teachers from our Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded Confident Creators project, developing a Growth Mindset through the Arts, together with arts practitioners who have been working with the teachers all year, got together to share their work and celebrate the wealth of creativity that has been taking place. The teachers went on a journey through drama, art and music to create their own collaborative pieces which demonstrated their learning and that of their children. They made drama, art and wrote songs which they performed at the end of the day to an audience which included Senior Leaders and visitors from the funder and other projects. Throughout the day the teachers shared with each other how they and their children had grown in confidence with the arts and developed skills in problem solving, risk taking and collaborative working. It has been a very busy year, with over 600 hours of artists working with teachers in school on top of CPD days. We look forward to embedding the practice in schools and sharing more widely in 2019-20.

The last couple of weeks of term saw the runners up and final of our girls football league, at Vauxhall Powerleague. The final match was between Jubilee and Christ Church Streatham primaries. Both teams had been playing excellent football all term, but in the end Jubilee were the winners, with a 3 – 1 score. Thanks to all the teams who took part and played such a great standard of football. Also a big thank you to Vauxhall Powerleague for hosting our games and to Jack at The Black Prince Trust being our referee each week.

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