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Friday 16th March was the date for the culmination of a term’s work in Science involving year 5s from BLC Primary Schools and year 9s from St Gabriel’s College as students presented their experiments at the BLC Science Fair. The event was put together and hosted by one of our secondary schools, St Gabriel’s College and it was dedicated to the life and work of Professor Stephen Hawking who died this week, which is also British Science Week. Students from St Gabriel’s spoke about Professor Hawking and his huge contribution to Science. The children from our primaries had planned a wide range of experiments, based on investigative questions, including: Which fruit has the most electronic resistance? Do drinks have the same acidity, Does the type of soil effect plant growth? The entries were judged by 2 Kings College University students who are part of the Kings Scholars programme in partnership with St Gabriel’s. All the children produced fantastic work, and the winning team came from Archbishop Sumner Primary for their work on ‘Do Metals burn different colours?’. It was great to see so many parents and teachers attend the event and congratulations to all involved, with special thanks to St Gabriel’s Science Department.

It was great to see so many of our teachers get together for our year 2 and year 5 writing moderations this week, hosted by Archbishop Sumner and Jessop Primary Schools. During this process this year, we have tried to focus on teachers’ focussing on reading each others’ work samples and drawing on their professional expertise and knowledge of their own children to draw conclusions on the standard of writing, next steps and expectations for the end of the year. Being able to share expertise across the room: some teachers bringing several years’ experience of working with a particular year group, some who are literacy leads in their own schools, some who are NQTs, has been very valuable. There has been some very encouraging feedback from the sessions and a desire for longer sessions and more in other subject areas.

Last week teachers from both Year 6 and Reception classes met to work together, moderating writing. It was great to see so many teachers working together.
At the Reception moderation, 11 teachers shared how they select evidence of reading and writing. They agreed that videoing children reading was really worthwhile. They went on to explore compare work of children at Emerging, Expected and Exceeding levels in Term 4 of the 6 term year. A useful document was shared, ‘An exploration of Expected and Exceeding descriptors in the EYFS profile’, published online by Oxfordshire Early Years, Oxfordshire CC (www.oxfordshire.gov.uk). Feedback from the session showed teachers found this opportunity very valuable and would like to work together on the other profiles. THanks to Stockwell Primary for hosting the event.
Year 6 teachers also held joint moderation, hosted by St Saviour’s Primary, which was very productive and includes a mix of teachers experienced and new to year 6. This sharing of experience was highlighted as a really valuable exercise and particularly our single form entry schools requested more year 6 teacher meetings during the year to support planning and moderation.

Last week, year 4 teachers from 7 of our primary schools got together to look at writing across their schools. Our aim with moderation is to encourage teachers to get away as much as possible from using any tick lists to assess writing in these sessions, but for teachers to be able to feel confident in their professional judgments of what year 4 writing should look like and next steps for pupils. It was a really rewarding session with teachers commenting on the value they place on being able to look at children’s work from other schools. Exemplars from the meeting will be shared on the blog at a later date. Many thanks to St John’s for hosting and leading this session.

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Last Friday 4 teams of KS2 girls from the cluster took part in their first BLC football tournament, hosted by Archbishop Sumner Primary. Girls from ABS, Loughborough, St John’s Angell Town and St John Divine gathered for the afternoon and played 6 a side matches for nearly 2 hours. The girls showed exceptional skill and enthusiasm and a great afternoon was had by all. A big thank you to all the girls and their coaches, and to Archbishop Sumner for their hospitality. We hope to get a girls football league together in the summer, to capitalise on the girls’ talents.

Teachers from Reception classes in our cluster and Windmill cluster gathered last night to plan ready for the start of our Photography for Learning project, led by Fotosythesis, that starts up next week. This project is all about story making using photography as a stimulus. Looking forward to seeing the children’s story maps develop over the next few weeks!

On Tuesday staff from our schools and neighbouring schools in Windmill cluster attended a very informative session delivered by Barbara Firth from NACE, specialists in building provision for more able learners. Barbara covered many ways in which teachers can give opportunities for able learners to progress in the classroom, emphasising the value of encouraging collaboration between pupils and giving children opportunities to talk about their learning. Barbara left us with a number of initiatives to try out in school. We shall be forming a working party to trial more work and report back on its efficacy together.

Activities for families this weekend

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Family activities in and around London this weekend

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