We teamed up with Swaffham Town Council to help them with a tree planting project. With the aim to develop more green spaces around our town, we planted saplings on a local field next to the play park...

This year we took part in the 'Learn about Livestock Event' from 20th to 24th March and provided our children with an exciting enrichment opportunity. For one week we looked after an ewe called Blossom and her baby lamb on the school grounds. 

It was a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to have some real hands on life experience of caring and looking after sheep. This included feeding, watering, cleaning and grooming the sheep. The children have learnt lots of interesting facts about sheep and other animals on the farm. Here are some of the facts the children have learnt in their classes.

"It's a mammal cause it has fur, it has a backbone. It's mum gives it milk to keep it alive." Callie- Year 1

"A male sheep is called a ram." Charlie- Year 3

"Sheep has hooves, ears a mouth and a fluffy coat." James- Year 3

"A female sheep is called an ewe." Charlotte- Year 3

The children voted to called the boy lamb 'Marshmallow'.

We had a great week looking after them at Heartwood!

Learn to Love- Love to learn 

‘ To infinity and beyond!’  

We use our pupil premium funding wisely to ensure that our children have the social and emotional skills, emotive language and the best start to their learning destinies. 

Quality first teaching of reading and language development will ensure that our wonderful children fulfil their potential with any challenges to learning ‘zapped away’. We plan our strategy to ensure that our disadvantaged pupils are better, confident and life-long learners.

We believe that all children are God’s children and deserve the best in their school.

When children love themselves, their peers, school and community they will have the foundations to love to learn and the sky has no limits to what they can achieve ...

Our 3 year strategy is based around the following 5 priorities to support children with the identified challenges they may face :

• Every teacher a Quality First Educator 
• Every child a reader 
• Every child a confident communicator
• Every child will Learn to love- Love to learn
• Every child to reach for infinity and beyond 

COVID-19 Recovery and Therapy Premium 

Children and young people across the country have experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19). Those from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds will be among those hardest hit. The aggregate impact of lost time in education will be substantial, and the scale of our response must match the scale of the challenge.

We know that we have the professional knowledge and expertise in the education system to ensure that children and young people recover and get back on track. Returning to normal educational routines as quickly as possible will be critical to our national recovery, and the government intends for schools and colleges to fully open in September.

The government has announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up. This includes a one-off universal £650 million catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time.

Although all children have had their education disrupted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, it is likely that disadvantaged and vulnerable groups will have been hardest hit

Schools’ allocations will be calculated on a per pupil basis, providing each mainstream school with a total of £80 for each pupil in years reception through to 11.

How do we plan to use this premium at Heartwood?

We have identified that reading and phonics to be the most affected by the closure of the partial school for COVID-19, we have strategically planned to address the gaps of reading through the RWI recovery curriculum and 1:1 intervention, this is partially funded by the Pupil Premium Funding we are allocated above. 

A large proportion of the funding will be spent on addressing the potential impact that COVID and school closures has had on our children's social, emotional and mental health.

We plan that the impact of this will ensure that these core skills are taught that were missed during lock-down, enabling the children to continue to flourish and aim to be at age related expectation for their year group. This will carefully be measured by target setting and monitoring the progress of the identified children to ensure the premium funding is the having the biggest possible impact. 

School- led Tutoring

From September 2021, the DfE are offering schools funding to provide school-led tutoring for some of their disadvantaged pupils. The aim is to provide support with some of the gaps from the school closures during COVID-19. We are using our additional COVID recovery grant to subsidise the 25% of the tuition staffing costs.

Writing

 At Heartwood our school-led tutoring will focus on supporting Year 2, 3, and 4 children with accelerating their writing focussing on the gaps and strategies to support access to the key stage curriculum. 

Our experienced SENDCo will increase her hours in school and will be planning and delivering at least 15 hours extra tutoring for each of the identified children. Some will be 1:1 and some will be in small groups of up to 3 children. This is in addition to interventions that we provide in school.

Phonics and reading

In addition to the tuition above, we will be providing small group phonic catch up groups before school for KS1 and KS2 pupils. 

Pupil Premium Ambassador- Marie Compton 

Pupil Premium Link Governor- Lee Stevens