BOUGHTON HEATH ACADEMY CHESHIRE ACADEMIES TRUST

Issue: 5

Boughton Heath Academy

Chronicle

“...and they get them for being special in wonderful ways...”

Principal's Report 2015

Welcome to our Chronicle for this term.

The front page of our Chronicle this term shows some of the many children who have received “pink

cards”. These are such an important part our work on building positive character traits in children as character matters! Fundamentally, our school is built on ensuring children leave our school feeling

confidence, resilient, demonstrate empathy and cooperation as well as, and importantly, politeness

and respect. All of these traits are so important in order for children to be successful in secondary school and later life.

This school is not built on ensuring children reaching a prescribed level of attainment by the end of

Year 6. If I could go even further and say that the bedrock of this school is not teaching to the test and governors and leaders within this school are very clear about this not being our main agenda. The facts are that

the school attainment based on the 2015 Year 2 and Year 6 SATs scores are the highest on record and put us in the top 1000 primary schools nationally However, this is not due to the teachers in this school over testing children. They

plan, teach and assess children very carefully and provide an inspirational curriculum based on tangible learning. Our learning wheel seeks to develop children’s understanding of concepts and knowledge on a deeper level. No longer do

we have stereotypical large topics such as Africa. These gave children a very general view of an entire continent. Our

view is that this is not the way in which primary school children should be taught. We believe that topics should link to our locality (Hibre Island in Year 2), give real life experiences (Trench digging in Year 6) and deal with science

experiments challenge children’s thinking (Bouncing eggs in Year 1). All of the staff at school will be going even further with our commitment to tangible learning and we have set out these topics in new year group overviews which can be

found on our website. These detail the topics and learning sequences that children will access throughout the year.

Along with twitter, the monthly newsletters and this newspaper parents can see the wonderful lessons that children have taken part in. As an academy we are committed to teaching the entire Reading, Writing and Mathematics

curricular but only a large proportion of the science and less of the foundation subject objectives that are set out in the National Curriculum. We do less, but in more detail. This is a critical difference to being forced into teaching the entire

National Curriculum as a local authority school as we believe it is impossible to cover everything in the deeper way we desire.

At parents evening we sent out a letter detailing our new assessment system which replaces levels. Our hope is that

parents understanding of the new system will be supported by information evenings in the Spring term. I am pleased

to tell parents that we will be running 3 such meetings. They are detailed below and will be one hour in length giving parents a detailed understanding of assessment and testing in 2016.

Monday 18 January 2016: 6.30pm. Wednesday 27 January 2016: 6.30pm. Tuesday 2 February 2016:

2pm

It is governors and leaders hope that parents will get more information on a more frequent basis moving forward into 2016 because we want parents to understand how much progress their children have made and what standard they

have reached.

In January I will be taking staff to Port Sunlight to the base of Unilever to hold a two day strategy event, which will be supported by Unilever staff. This will enable us to review our vision, values, aims and objectives of the school and will

be looking to see what promises we can deliver to children and parents at our school. We want to continue to strive to be the best and in order to do that our objectives as a school, in an ever changing educational landscape, need

examining in detail to ensuring we make the correct choices to be unique. We will endeavour to put a spot light on

what Boughton Heath Academy stands for with a clear eye on the children, parents and community. My thanks go to our Chair of Governors, Joanne Lucy for supporting the event.

Our Trust work continues in earnest. Teachers have been meeting each other, sharing their methods, assessing their judgements against our Trust colleagues and driving up the overall quality of teaching, learning and assessment. Can I

take this opportunity to say thank you to our Trust school councillors who have worked together on our 11 by 11

entitlement. What a wonderful opportunity for these very intelligent and articulate young people. Their work will impact on the way in which our curriculum embeds these activities.

May I also share a worrying development with parents. I had numerous accounts of cars mounting the pavement next to the school fence and it has on some occasions nearly hit children and residents. Please be carefully walking along

this section of road and as a result I have contacted the local police so that they may consider an assessment of this

portion of road and traffic around school in general.

Finally, I wish Mrs Woods well with parenthood and although as I write this she is still teaching in the school, I know

all of the parents and governors would wish her well as she enters parenthood in the next month .

Merry Christmas to one and all,

Steve Ellis, Principal

Philosophy for Children

What is P4C? P4c is short for ‘Philosophy for children’. You might be surprised to find philosophy on the primary curriculum but P4c is not about teaching the academic subject of philosophy but about engaging children in a special kind of discussion: philosophical dialogue with their classmates, in short, teaching them how to philosophize. Practical philosophy! We often talk with children about ‘being good’, ‘being fair’ or ‘doing the right thing’ and P4c gives children the

chance to express and defend their own ideas on these important topics, to respectfully examine other people’s ideas and make up their own minds. Teachers and pupils work together in these lessons to come to a greater understanding of the ‘big ideas’, such as truth, change, value, knowledge and reality, to name but a few.At Boughton Heath School, the pupils have been enjoying P4c lessons for a while and the enthusiasm that the pupils have shown, plus the way that they have already progressed in terms of skilful debate has prompted the school to arrange more regular sessions this year. Many classes are beginning to use a ‘philosophical’ approach in other lessons and we hope to encourage this as it

potentially leads to higher order thinking, better questioning and greater understanding across the curriculum. (If you want to find out more about P4c, visit the websites of www.sapere.org.uk or P4c.com)

This term the pupils in Key Stage 1 have been practising their listening skills and learning to make choices, backed up by thoughtful reasoning. We had a heated discussion prompted by the question, ‘Are boys better than girls?’ The Book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ got us talking about dreams and reality.

On God, Year 2 had this to say:

‘God made the universe. He’s

magic.’ Noah

‘God makes the rain and sun,

makes the sky blue or grey, he has

powers.’ James

‘It’s unlikely to not believe in any

god at all. If you did, you’d get no

luck. It’s very, very true that you

can’t see or feel the gods.’

Year 5 ‘Do aliens exist?’

‘Aliens could be any creature, not just

like the ones in the movies.’ India

‘Just because it’s another life form, it

doesn’t mean it’s an alien.’ Thomas

‘Nobody has been to all places in space,

so how can we know what’s there?’ Ben

Reception

The children’s first term at Boughton Heath is nearly over. Where have those weeks gone? The children

have settled into school exceptionally well and have started to become independent learners. Staff,

visitors and buddies have commented on Reception’s fantastic manners and their positive attitude to

learning. It has been lovely to see all of the children settle and blossom over the past few weeks. They

are already applying their new skills – well done Reception. Keep it up.

Painting fireworks Mark Making Block Play

Forest School

The children have thoroughly enjoyed the first

terms Forest School activities, they especially

like having hot chocolate outside to warm

them up. Thank you to the parents that have

offered to help. The children have made

autumn kebabs, hedgehog pictures, applied

mathematical language to sticks and leaves,

made scarecrows and much, much more.

Remember to check Twitter for Forest School

updates on a Friday!

Building Scarecrows Sycamore helicopters Autumn Kebabs

Class time

We have used several different books to help us with our learning this half term; the Little Red Hen, the

Gingerbread Man and The Stick Man. The children have also learnt the difference between fiction and

non-fiction books. Through children’s interest they wrote postcards, walked to the Post Office, bought a

stamp and posted them. The have been keen bakers too baking bread rolls and Gingerbread Men. The

children’s confidence has grown each day. During the harvest

festival their confidence shone in the dances they performed in

front of the whole school. The children are now writing

phonetically plausible words and captions. They are fantastic in

phonics and are enjoying applying these skills when reading and

writing. We have lots of labels in class that the children have

written. Any work completed independently at home please

contribute to their learning journey! The children are also been

recognising ordering and working out missing numbers! Our first term has been

packed full of experiences, learning and wow moments. We look forward to lots more after Christmas.

Reception

A note from the Governing body.

We started this new term with earnest with all staff, governors and CAT board members meeting at Chester racecourse to come together to design our 11 by 11 framework, a great

opportunity to bring our whole CAT team together, share experiences and deign a significant

framework for all our children

I was impressed at the way the CAT teams are really starting to work together to innovate and maintain the desire keep pushing for the highest standards across our 3 schools

We have also completed our 3 governing body meetings this team, reviewing pupil progress and attainment, school finances, Staffing and premises and overall whole school review in our Full Governing body. We

have some great supporting evidence that our attainment standards remains consistently high as does attendance and parent engagement.

We work closely with Steve and the senior leadership team to ensure we are cost effective in the way the school

finances are managed and continue to do so in some challenges economic circumstances.

A member of our governing body also met with our new chair of PTA to look at how we can work more closely and generate income for the school. Ideas are welcome as this is an importance stream of income and very well received by

the school. Please do let us know if you are working in any areas where bank matching or funding is available to support any of our initiatives.

I'm delighted to welcome Elyn Rigby to our Local Governing Body (LGB) as parent governor, Elyn brings a vast amount of business and finance experience to our LGB and we look forward to her contribution and challenge. Our next

Cheshire Academy Trust (CAT) meeting was held on 2nd December where we look further to consolidate how we operate as a trust and look for opportunities to collaborate and raise standards across our 3 schools

Finally I would like to thank all the staff for their continued dedication and hard work this term and wish them and you

a very merry Christmas and a happy new year

Best wishes

Joanne Lucy, Chair of Governors Boughton Heath Academy

Are you signed up to Twitter? We put many pictures, stories and messages that parents can view on our Twitter page. You can find us on Twitter at @BoughtonHeath.

Year One

In Year 1 this term the children

have enjoyed learning all about

birds. They have learnt about the different features of a bird and the science behind them.

What makes a bird a bird? The children discovered lots about feathers, eggs, nests and beaks

through a variety of experiments. They explored what type of birds live in our environment

through bird watching. To help to attract birds the children made bird feeders, wrote the

instructions to go with them and then hung them out for the birds.

The children enjoyed a fantastic trip to Delamere Forest during the Autumn Term. The session

started by discussing the types of birds found in the Forest. The children then learnt about nest

making and had a go themselves! They

then talked about how they could survive

in a Forest and the children worked in

teams to build a den. The children then

took a senses walk through the forest -

they supported each other wearing

blindfolds and enjoyed listening to the

sounds of the forest! At the end of the

day there was still time to create their

own Andy Goldsworthy art.

In the classroom this term

the children had the

opportunity to work with

our Artist in Residence

from Kelsall School. Mr

Clayton worked with the

children on Art involving

the idea of birds migrating

in the Autumn and Winter

months. The children then

followed this up with

learning about swallows

and where they migrate to.

The children were amazed

to find out facts like -

“Swallows fly for 45 days!” “Swallows sleep while they fly!”

Year 6

In Year 6 our History Topic has been ‘War’, with a

focus upon the First World War. Our thinking

began with the question; ‘Why War?’ The children

were able to generate a large number of reasons

why conflicts occur around the world. As we are in

the centenary years of WW1, the children

investigated the reasons for the outbreak of the

war and the consequences of alliances and their

obligations. The children wrote play scripts to

describe to alliances process and each country’s

commitment to their allies – a tricky political

situation!

This term we had a T-rex day, again following our war topic. The children were tasked to dig and

construct their own World War trench, including sandbags and firing step. The day was spent digging,

measuring and fully emerging themselves into the mentality of trench-life. Each child was given the

opportunity to be in command, organising their troops to ensure that their trench met the required

specifications. Following on from the day the children then experienced the feeling of ‘trench foot’

submerging their feet in

the cold, muddy water

(don’t worry, no child

caught ‘trench foot’ –

they’d tell you that your

foot needs to be

constantly wet for at

least thirteen hours!)

Linking with our science topic of electricity, the

children investigated the different ways in which

troops would be able to communicate important

information across the battle field. They

investigated the use of semaphore as a visual form

of communication – which they decided was quite

risky as you

would have

yourself in

the ‘line of

fire’! They then investigated the use of Morse code as an electrical

method of communication. The children were tasked to

communicate to each other, designing a circuit and switch with

which they can control the flow of electricity. We have linked our

literacy this term to the theme of war. We have written our own

‘shifts in time’ narrative inspired by the ‘Piano’ animation. We have

looked at ‘Walter Tull’s scrapbook’ – a fictionalised diary, and

Michael Morpurgo’s ‘War Game’. The children have written their

own versions of the Christmas day football match held between the

fighting British and German troops.

Year 5

Year 5 were again invited to attend the lantern parade through Chester city centre

this year. The lantern frames were constructed out of graden canes and masking tape. The children realised that a knowledge of different triangles was helpful!

Sheets of tea bag paper that were soaked in PVA glue were then draped over the pyramid and decorated with reflective silver foil. After hanging them up to dry in

the home bay for a couple of weeks, the big night arrived. Wearing Christmas

jumpers and hats, Year 5 met in Chester City Centre to follow the Lantern Queen through the Christmas Market and the City Centre singing carols as they went.

In October Year 5 went

on a school visit to Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. The

children were able to complete the planet walk which enabled them to visualise

how far away the planets were from each other and their varying sizes. In addition, we completed experiments on

forces with the Whispering Dishes and the Water cyclone

being the firm favourites. The children enjoyed tangible experiences in the creation of craters, light measurement

and moon rock identification. After a dinner eaten outside in the amphitheatre under the shadow of the Lovell telescope,

the children worked in teams to design new packaging for a

new space probe (an egg) before launching it from a height

to see if their design was successful. An excellent day!

The investigations completed about gravity and air

resistance led to the children wondering if there was air

in water. It was decided that this had to be true because fish need air to breathe . . . or do they? Mrs Tabb, ever

eager for a dissection, was more than happy to spend the morning helping the children understand how fish

breathe while they are under water. The children learnt

about how the oxygen got into the water in the first place and learnt about the process of diffusion. With Mrs

Tabb using the dissection kit, the children were able to remove the gills and examine them in great detail. Some

children even dissected the fish eyes too to scrutinise the lenses!

Mr Clayton has worked with

Year 5 this term. Using our

Science theme of Earth and Space, inspiration was taken

from the Big Bang and the constellations. Using a variety

of mixed media including: wax, ink, water colour,

charcoal and oil pastels, the

children completed work both in groups and individually. The

walls in Year 5 are all looking fresh and vibrant now.

Year 2

At the very start of the Autumn Term, Year Two went on a

field trip to Hilbre Island. They walked from the coast of

West Kirby over to Hilbre Island. This was an amazing, tan-

gible experience where the children saw how tides work,

how islands are formed, explored rock pools and saw Grey

Seals gathered on a sand bank! The children sketched the

landscape of Hilbre and collected descriptions of what they

could see, hear, smell and feel. They used this to produce

a stunning piece of artwork back at school. It was a rather

blustery day so we found a cave to shelter in whilst we ate

our lunch. The caves and rock formations fascinated us

and inspired us to find out more. We were amazed to find

out that waves are so powerful they cause rocks to erode to

form caves.For literacy this term Year Two have been read-

ing books by the author Jeanne Willis. They linked to our

science theme of living things and habitats. The Bog Baby

made us realise that every living thing is suited to its’ habitat and if you take it away from its’ habitat it

may not survive. We also

learnt that living things

have characteristics to

help them survive and to

help us focus on the Bog

Baby’s features we all

made a Bog Baby with big

goggly eyes, wings no

bigger than daisy petals

and a spiky tail. After we

had read the Bog Baby we

went into the school

grounds to find our own

fictional creatures which

we designed a habitat for

and then wrote our own

story using the structure

of The Bog Baby. Next

we went onto read The

King of Tiny Things. We soon found out that the main

character ‘The King of Tiny Things’ looks after living things

that need help, for example a slug who has lost its’ slime!

We thought we could help by becoming mini-beast vets!

We wrote first aid books for mini-beasts.We enjoyed hav-

ing John Clayton in our class to teach us new art skills.

Using wax and ink resistance we created a Hilbre Island

display. We were fortunate to see at first hand the Grey

Seals on the Island, so we used this experience to as the

basis for our project. Step by step we built up our pieces

of art, understanding that with patience and a level of

technique we could create our final masterpieces! We also

had to work as a team and make sure we delegated jobs

and listened carefully to instructions. It was a busy few

weeks, but with what started as a tangible experience

soon led to a whole array of new skills and information

being learnt.

Year 3

Pizza Express

At the beginning of the year, Year 3 looked at a

healthy diet and creating a healthy food plate. To put

this into a real life situation Year 3 took a trip to pizza

express! The children were able to create their own

pizzas, looking at each element and discussing what

food group it belonged to. They chose their topics and then set the restau-

rant whilst their pizzas were baking in the oven. During the visit, the chil-

dren showed outstanding manners and patience whilst in the restaurant

and represented the school well throughout the whole visit. After, the chil-

dren were able to sit and enjoy their delicious pizzas. Back at school, we

looked back at our healthy food plate and evaluated the pizzas we made.

Leon and the place between

Year 3 and 4 were amazed by a surprise visit from the circus at the start of the Autumn term.

Our circus leader introduced us to a wide range of activities from stilt walk-

ing, the diablo, juggling and many more. The children were able to learn

each different activity and then practice the skills, The circus leader and the

music set the scene of an enchanting day which lead us into our literacy top-

ic. The children studied the book Leon and the Place Between where a young

boy and his family get lost in a world of magic at the circus. From this, we wrote newspaper re-

ports, diary entries and

fantastic descriptions of

the characters, setting and

plots from the story.

Ancient Egypt and the Liverpool world museum

In the Autumn term, Year 3 took a trip back 4000 years to Ancient Egypt where we discovered

some of the many mysteries of world. Year 3 looked at the why people

settled in Egypt and importance of

the River Nile and compared this to

the River Dee. The children loved

learning how the Egyptians prepared

their bodies for the afterlife and how

and why the built the pyramids. During our visit to the Liver-

pool World Museum, we were able to look at many different

artefacts from Egyptian times and spent time discovering the

hieroglyphic alphabet. We were then able to use these skills

with Mr Clayton when creating our own Egyptian Art work.

Year 4

At the start of the year,

we started our topic

designing, making and

evaluating a Greek salad.

Firstly looked at what

would be traditional found

in a Greek Salad and

tasted each one to see if

we liked them. Next, we created a bar chart

recording everyone’s favourite food in the Greek

salad. Once we had done this we designed what

food we would like in our

salad and wrote our

recipe. Next came the

fun, the making and

evaluating part. We

worked in teams to chop,

mix and stir all the

ingredients together and

then we evaluated our salad by saying what we liked and what we could change

for next time. During our trip to

the World Museum in Liverpool, we

took part in a Greek story telling

workshop where the children learnt

about a painting which showed the

story of the ‘Caledonian boar hunt.’

The story was all about a Greek

heroine, Atlanta, who was

abandoned by the king, who was

her father because she was born a

girl and he wanted a boy. She was

then raised by wolves and become

the best hunter in all of Greece. As

she was a great hunter, she

decided to enter the boar hunt as

did another Greek Hero, Melanion.

Above you can see the children

acting out Melanion proposing to Atlanta with the head of the boars. As you can see we had lots of fun

acting out this scene. To inspire our writing which was based on a book called ‘Leon and the Place

Between’ which was set in a circus tent we had our very own circus workshop. Here we learnt a range

of skills like juggling, diablo and plate spinning. We had lots of fun learning about the different skills and

it helped us imagine the atmosphere of a real circus. Some of the different

skills we learnt, were hard and took a lot of practising and perseverance

but we were able to master

most of them at the end of the

workshop. I think our favourite

skills were the juggling and the

plate spinning as they were

very tricky!