SCHOOL OF THE WEEK: Woodlands Community Primary School

Looking over the town and beyond from its hillside perch, the primary school situated in Upper Cwmbran has developed strong ties with those in its environs.

It is a forward-facing school, using modern technology and up-to-date lesson ideas to enhance the education of its 350 pupils.

Jaci Bates, the school’s head teacher, has been in the position since 2006 and sets her staff of 60 the challenge of creating a healthy learning environment.

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Sarah Cooke, the deputy head teacher, took on the role of tour guide in chief in showing off all that is great at the school.

“Pupils are at the very centre of what we do as a school,” she said.

“We want to prepare our pupils and equip them with the skills for a rapidly changing and challenging world.

“We are particularly proud of how we engage with the local community.”

Community primary by name, it is community by nature as Miss Cooke explains just how the school achieves this end.

“Our school choir regularly visits Leadon Court care home to sing for the residents,” said the deputy head teacher.

“Our year six pupils are currently involved in an art project with Crownbridge School.

“Our nursery pupils have a visit planned to The Hawthorns retirement home.

“This community involvement fosters partnerships and results in sharing and maximising experiences and resources.

“Our parents are also invited to join us for open mornings and they are keep up-to-date with their child’s learning via our Seesaw app.

“It is a communication app which allows us to share videos, pictures and examples of the children’s work. It goes straight to the parents so they can see and have an opportunity to feedback and see how their child is doing.”

The first stop on the tour is to the music class, headed up by Sally Villa, who goes through how the partnership with Crownbridge, as mentioned by Miss Cooke, works in a practical nature.

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"We have established a link between our school and Crownbridge called “Working Together”," said Mrs Villa.

“It is a whole morning and it involves the children from Crownbridge and our school working together on a project.

“The pupils have a joint choir session and they sing together, they have a snack together and then we play icebreaker games such as parachute games – things to get them mixing and talking to each other.

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“It culminates in an art session and hopefully by the end of it, each school will have a joint piece of art to hang up in their school with everybody’s work mixed in together.

“It is only year six from Woodlands and class six from Crownbridge – which is similar in age to the children at our school – and it has been so lovely."

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Mrs Villa adds that at the core of the project is helping the children to break down stigmas around differences.

“I want the children here to realise that the children in Crownbridge aren’t really different to them. They may face different challenges but they all like playing games and watching things on Youtube," she said.

“They have started making friends and they look forward to seeing each other.

“They’ve realised that a lot of the children at not very much different to them.

“The aim I guess is to help break down the stigma of special needs.

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“We have a choir buddy scheme so when we perform and when Crownbridge performs, they may need a helping hand so each child has their own buddy from Woodlands who sings with them.

“The two schools have recently performed together at the Torfaen Choral Festival.

"We would love to have it run throughout the school’s year groups. It would be lovely to the children singing with others at all ages."

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Jo Morgan, the school's PSE co-ordinator added: "There is a big focus on positive relationships.

"We started the Crownbridge collaboration as we wanted to explore the differences in children and respect those who may be different, with disabilities for example.

"Every child in the school was given a heart and they were looking at what makes a good friend.

"They wrote about why that person was a good friend and that made a friendship tree.

"At the other end of the scale, we have formed links with residential care homes. The plan is walk the children to the home and sing to them or take some drawings.

"It is the important of emotional intelligence we want to encourage in our children as we believe that is an important component to success in later life.

"It is important for everybody to respect everyone else and value everyone in the community.""

To help promote the community nature of the school, the year five students have set up a newsletter club - ergo the school's digital newspaper, with editors, journalists and photographers.

"The club started originally to promote more able and talented writing," said Claire Gratton.

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"A letter went out to all children in year five and all the pupils in newsletter club were those who responded and applied.

"I thought rather just restrict it, we took on all those who applied and they report on issues which are going on in school – subjects which they’ve covered and experiences that they’ve had in school this term.

"The plan is to send out a letter every term. The children decide on everything – they chose their roles and voted for one another so who was going to be an editor or a photographer or a journalist and so on.

"We have set up a shared area on Google Drive where the teachers can put the work. The children have told them the themes for this term.

"It is all really pupil-led, the pupil’s voice and they have chosen on four topics to report on – their visit to Bristol Zoo, Children in Need, anti-bullying week and the Criw Cymraeg challenge.

"It has only just been set up so we will see how it goes and decide if it can be rolled out on a bigger scale. It has been brilliant so far in the few weeks it has been running."

"It is not just developing their writing but their oracy and collaboration with one another and teamwork skills as well as their self-esteem."

The school is looking to the future, and the coding club meshes peer-to-peer learning with a new way of teaching.

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"It is equipping them for the 21st century. It is something which will be huge when they are going into work in five or 10 years’ time," said Jasmine Wey.

"I’m still learning things which I’ve never been taught before and the accreditation that I get is from both primary and secondary school.

"That allows me to come back in teach the older pupils at the school who can in turn feedback any questions to their coding club at Key Stage three level.

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"Across the school, we can really push coding on. It helps with the school as it works towards becoming a STEM accredited.

"I feedback into digital leaders and staff about what has been going on at the courses I attend.

"Through the digital leaders, they take that to the coding club and they can disseminate that back to the other children.

"They are doing a lot of the teaching as well and it will help to upskill the staff at the same time.

"Coding club is for children between seven and 11. I work with the foundation phase so luckily I can feed this across the lower school so it is really a whole school approach."

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Miss Cooke, who heads up the school's bid to achieve the bronze Cymraeg Campus award, said Woodlands is doing all it can to promote the Welsh language, and 'diolch' is commonly heard around the school instead of 'thank you'.

"We’ve brought in the Welsh language charter to promote and increase the use of Welsh by children in a whole school context," she said.

"At Woodlands, we promote a strong Welsh ethos and provide a range of enriching activities that propel the children to enjoy learning Welsh.

"This is one of our targets for the award which we are going for – that the children have a secure understanding of why it’s important to learn Welsh.

"It is the language of the country which we live in. We believe it is extremely important for children to be able to speak the language of the nation."

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