School Day

Typical timetable for Monday - Friday

Pupils are at school for 33.5 hours each week. 

Each class is led by a qualified teacher and each year base is supported by a teaching assistant. The class teacher oversees all children’s development, however all children have opportunities to learn from and be assessed by both staff.

Lunch-times are part of the learning journey where staff eat the same lunch with the children while developing social skills, problem solving and shared thinking. We feel that this is a crucial time where children can learn skills for life as well as developing confidence, independence and self-esteem. They contribute to setting the table and serving one another from food set into the centre of the table. This gives children many social experiences and support their knowledge of healthy eating.

Afternoon sessions are dedicated to children engaging in first hand experiences and incorporate: sustained shared thinking projects, trips to the local area including the library, park, shopping centre, Concordia leisure centre, theatre groups performing plays. They are planned in conjunction with a half termly topic. Children are regularly part of the decision making process including outings to go on and things to make during cooking experiences.

Sustained shared thinking experiences play a major role in our ethos (where children work together to solve a problem or develop an idea). We plan experiences of this for the children as well as embracing spontaneous opportunities. This may involve a longer term project, such as finding a teddy in a tree and deciding what to do next or planning and creating our next role play area, or a daily experience such as getting a toy down from the roof.

An outing, outside of the local area, is planned at least once every half term, where children are involved in the planning, risk assessment and evaluation process. This is planned around the topic which the children are exploring and so far have included venues such as Discovery Museum, Toy Museum, Newcastle Safety Centre, Ashington Woods, Theatre Royal, York Chocolate Factory, Alnwick Castle, Warkworth Castle, Forbidden Corner in Yorkshire, St Mary’s Lighthouse, farms and garden centres. Children are provided with the opportunity to experience public transport as well as private coach hire. We sometimes ask for a small voluntary contribution to some of these trips but do not exclude any child from any visit if they are unable to contribute.