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Diversity At Shaftoe
at Shaftoe Trust Academy we are passionate about creating an inclusive environment at Shaftoe and explore diversity with the children from the minute they join us.
We want to help shape and mould children to become confident, accepting members of the school and society. Children who want to ask questions and who are keen to learn about people who may be different from themselves whether that be down to faith, culture, gender, race, sexual orientation or different backgrounds. Our school values encompass everything that we stand for and believe in:
- Acceptance - We challenge the term ‘tolerance’ as we feel this has negative connotations and everyone should fully accept people and not tolerate them.
- Bravery - We should be brave in all areas of our lives -taking risks and standing up for what we believe is right
- Compassion - Showing compassion to another person is proven to be good for our health and wellbeing. It pushes up to address inequalities and the struggles of others
- Determination - We believe that children should strive for greatness and show determination in all areas of their lives
- Equality - We believe that this value goes hand in hand with Acceptable. We are all equal and we teach the children to treat everyone as equal.
Our daily assembly programme focuses on Diversity and each week we share a book with the children which focuses on a particular theme or issue for them to explore in more detail (See Assembly section of the website to see our half termly overviews)
As well as this, we take part in regular workshops where the children get the opportunity to meet and interact with someone who may be different from them.
In the spring term 2021, we enjoyed a workshop with an aspiring paralympian and Disability Champion, Kiera. Kiera had her arm amputated just before her 21st birthday and she inspired the children with her story.
In the summer term 2021, we enjoyed a workshop with Loti, who has faced many challenges through his life, especially racism. He talked to the children about his football career and the racism he had experienced as a footballer.
In the autumn term 2021, we enjoyed welcoming visitors into school once again. We were visited by Nimerta and Rachel. Rachel is a member of the transgender community and talked about stereotyping, how important it is to be yourself the importance of accepting others which fits perfectly with our value.
Fiver Challenge
At Shaftoe Trust, we are passionate about Enterprise and preparing our children for the world of work so we were very excited to take part in our first Fiver Challenge in June 2021 and already can’t wait to make this an annual event. We were particularly keen on the Fiver challenge project as it also focuses on sustainability which we value as a school.Â
The Fiver Challenge is a four week programme that helps bring the business world to life for primary pupil school pupils.Â
Week 1 - Give the children money! Each class was excited to discover that they had been left £5 and told that they were going to start a business! The children had to work together to complete several important tasks while also learning about sustainability and why this is important.Â
- Brainstorming possible product or service ideas
- Carrying out market research with family or friends
- Agreeing on a final idea
- Deciding the name of their Fiver team
Week 2 - This week saw the children working together in teams and preparing to sell their items to the community.Â
The key tasks for this week included:
- Identifying opportunities to sell to their local community
- Sourcing and buying materials or products
- Planning selling events
Week 3 - This week saw our pupils being business ready! But of course, running a business isn’t all about fun and the children had to get to grips with the finances related to running their own business.Â
The key tasks for this week included:
- Preparing their product/service ready to sell
- Keeping track of spending
- Deciding how to advertise product/service
- Promoting their selling event(s)
- Creating checklist to get team ready for selling
Week 4 - The final week and by far the most enjoyable for the children as they became entrepreneurs and did a fantastic job at making their businesses a reality.Â
Year 1 and 2 - The Shaftoe scrubbers car wash was a resounding success. The children looked brilliant in their uniforms and were the ultimate professionals. A seamless operation which saw many happy customers from the local community.Â
Year 3 and 4 - The Lower Key Stage 2 children spread their money wisely and created several smaller business ventures - a plant sale (with guidance as to how to care for your plant), figurines made from mod roc, friendship bracelets, super slime and even a cake stall!
Year 5 and 6 - The Upper Key Stage 2 children also decided that several smaller ventures would bring in the most profit and they were right. They enjoyed the success of a sweet stall, a book stall, a toy stall as well as some activities that the other children could participate in such as ‘wet ball’ and ….
Once the children counted up their money, they each paid back their initial fivers and every class made more than £100 in profit!
Bring on the Fiver Challenge 2022!
Forest School
We are excited to have begun our Forest School here at Shaftoe as we have lots of beautiful ground to explore with the children.Â
We are passionate about the ethos behind Forest school and how the Forest School association sets out it’s intentions:
‘Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process that offers opportunities for holistic growth. The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering - it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it. Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience. We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School therefore, helps participants to become healthy, resilient, creative and independent learners.’
You can find the risk assesments for Forest School here
Skills Builder
We’re really excited to share with you a new initiative that we are starting at Shaftoe - Skills builder!Â
The Skills Builder framework is broken down into 8 skills and research has shown that building these eight essential skills can support the emotional wellbeing and academic success of children and young people, as well as preparing them for life beyond school.
Skills Builder has developed a Universal Framework that breaks each of these essential skills down into 16 teachable steps. We use this framework to teach and practise each of the eight skills at the appropriate level throughout school life.Â
Skills Builder has a resource platform dedicated to helping parents and carers to build their child’s essential skills at home: Skills Builder Homezone (skillsbuilder.org/homezone). From Weekly Skill Challenges, to family activities and guidance to share with older children to access independent tools for their own skill development, Skills Builder Homezone can be enjoyed at a time and pace to suit all families.
Here is the link if you would like to have a look.
We are starting with the ‘Staying positive’ skill. Here is the link which will take you to the ‘Getting started’ page for this particular skill.Â
Here you will find a short ‘getting started’ video and links to different activities which you may like to try as well as books to share and a skill of the week.Â
We’re looking forward to getting started with our Skills builder journey and we hope you will enjoy exploring this with your child(ren) at home too!Â