West Blatchington Primary and Nursery School

We have continued to heavily invest in reading programmes as we know that learning to read is crucial for children to access the curriculum. Our ECAR teacher, has supported 8 Year 1 children this year and seen them make good progress in their reading. She has also worked across the school to support other children with their reading skills including some of our KS2 pupils. This programme lasts for 10 weeks and is delivered 3 x weekly by an adult working 1:1 with a child. We have seen some really positive gains from this programme and children have made accelerated progress with their reading in decoding and in their comprehension. This year we have increased the number of adults trained to deliver BRP across the school to 5 so we can target more children that need support. Julie also supports TAs delivering reading and writing interventions aimed at KS1.

Kate Heym has continued to support small groups across the school to develop their writing skills. We know that many children find this a tricky area as there is so much to remember! Both teachers have a real passion for writing and this has shown in the results we have seen. Some children have made significant improvements and told us how much working in a small group has made a difference. We will continue to offer this support next year as writing remains an area we would like to target so our attainment matches our good progress.

A Year 6 pupil told us –

"When I found out I was going to work in a small group I felt happy and excited because I wanted more help with my work. I learnt how to work collaboratively with others and really enjoyed the paired talking tasks and drama activities – especially the tornado drama session which helped me write my newspaper report. The sessions also helped me to develop strategies to create pictures in my head so I knew what to write. I found it useful to see examples of successful pieces of work so I could see how to make my writing better. I also learnt how to magpie ideas from other pupils in the group and use good ideas in my own writing. The sessions also helped me with my concentration once I was back in class. One of my most successful pieces of writing was my ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ diary entries and evacuee work. I remembered how to create pictures in my head [from the intervention sessions] and this helped me with my descriptive writing."

Another told us -

"I could absorb things more easily in the Intervention room. There were lots of resources on display to help us and word mats which we could use. I knew I would get individual attention and shown how to construct my sentences. I liked using large whiteboards because I could try out ideas for my writing and make changes. Mrs Paton helped me with my grammar and clauses and I can now form complex sentences that don’t run on !” Both of the pupils above went on to make outstanding progress in Year 6 and achieved national expectations! This is a real achievement for both of them and shows the benefits of working in a small group."

We have continued to support children to narrow their gaps through the ‘Every Child Counts Program’ and have developed this further so we are now running a TA led intervention called ‘First Class at Number‘ in both KS1 and KS2. Our maths intervention has been further enhanced by 1 to 1 tutoring. We will continue to further develop our Maths Support next year by extending the range of support available.

Some children in Upper Key Stage 2 also benefitted from additional EAL support through a specialised EAL teacher. This allowed some children to work in small groups with a particular focus on writing. The children that accessed this intervention made very good progress.

Children in Upper Key Stage 2 have also been targeted for additional 1 :1 / 1:2 tutoring. This was delivered by a team of tutors that the school have used over the years. Several children have received this support in Maths or Literacy to allow them to work on areas that they have found challenging or have needed additional support in. 23 pupils have received maths intervention and 7 pupils have received literacy intervention. Over the year, 57% of pupils who had maths tutoring and 71% of pupils who had literacy tutoring made good or better progress. All of the tutors were externally moderated and were judged as good or better. In the light of this impact, less tutoring will take place next year and we will look to develop greater opportunity for booster groups in Maths.