Download the GREEN’UN

Past copies of the GREEN’UN are available on request

Our School Day

Punctuality is an important life skill for children to learn. Please help your children to arrive at school on time so that they can avoid having to miss the start of their day’s learning.

Start of the Day

Breakfast Club starts in the Meadow Cafe at 8.00am, to book a place email office@watercliffe.sch.uk • The school day starts at 8.45am for Nursery pupils. • For all other children, classrooms are open from 8.45am. • Registration for all children is at 8.55am. • Any children arriving after 8.55am will need to come into school through the main office. • Please note that from 9am children will officially be late and recorded as such on the register.

End of the Day

The end of the day is staggered to allow parents who have children of different ages in different places at Watercliffe Meadow the time to collect them: • Children in Nursery (Foundation Stage 1) finish at 3.00pm. • Children in the downstairs classrooms (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) finish at 3.05pm. • Children in the upstairs classrooms (Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6) end the day at 3.10pm After school clubs will start at 3.15pm.

Changes to Our School Week

From September 2023, there is an expectation from the Department for Education that the school week will be 32.5 hours. For us, this will mean extending the school day to 3.15pm for all children from Y2 to Y6.

OUR SCHOOL UNIFORM

The decision to have a school uniform and P.E. kit was made by our whole school community including parents/carers, staff in the school and the children.

• All pupils must wear a sweatshirt, cardigan or fleece that is embroidered with the Watercliffe Meadow logo. • Polo Shirts can be either sky blue or royal blue and these can be worn with or without the school logo • PLAIN black or grey trousers, tracksuit bottoms, shorts, pinafore or skirt (no denim) • Sensible shoes • Girls can wear a blue gingham dress in the summer. It is important to put your child’s name on all of their clothes – with almost 500 children in school it is very difficult to identify lost clothing if it has no name on it! Uniform can be ordered directly with our suppliers click here.

INDOOR SHOES

Because our school is carpeted throughout and we have 500 children using our school every day, children will be expected to change into some indoor shoes when they go into their classrooms. Thesecan either be plimsolls, a pair of flat full slippers or flat sandals.

PE KIT

All children must bring a PE Kit into which they will change into for PE lessons and lunchtime/after school clubs. This is really important for reasons of hygiene. Our PE kit is very simple: • Plain black shorts • Plain white t.shirt, with or without our school logo • Children must have appropriate footwear for outdoor PE – plimsolls or trainers • Plain black leggings or tracksuit bottoms for outdoor PE • Plain sweatshirt /tracksuit top for outdoor lessons

JEWELLERY

We operate a no jewellery policy with the exception of one pair of stud earrings which your child needs to be able to remove for PE. If your child is planning to have their ears pierced please do this at the beginning of the Summer Holidays so they have time to settle down before the new term begins.

Our Pupil Premium Strategy

Every school or academy has a duty to ensure that every individual child is given the best possible chance of achieving their potential. Pupil Premium, which is additional to main academy funding, is carefully managed to enable us to offer personalised support for children in a range of ways.

School Overview

There are 4 key areas where we use pupil premium money to try and ensure maximum benefit for as many children as possible.

1. Early Intervention in Speech, Language and Communication Needs

Aim

We work closely with our speech and language therapist to accelerate speech, language and communication skills of our children in Foundation Stage. Stage appropriate language groups are part of our core provision in nursery and reception and we use some pupil premium funding to enable these groups to happen. Additionally, we have appointed a family support worker to engage and work with families to encourage talk and play in the home environment and help to remove barriers to being ready for school.

Impact

By the end of Foundation Stage our children have been in line or have exceeded national results every year since opening. From much lower than average baseline starts, this shows accelerated progress for our youngest learners. We also assess children’s language development and acquisition using BPVS and Renfrew tests.

2. Targeted Intervention and quality first teaching in Reading, Writing and Maths

Aim

We are a Read, Write, Inc school and have appointed a reading lead to work with staff responsible for teaching RWI as part of her daily role. In addition, we have a Literacy Consultant who works right across school to ensure quality first teaching is effective in meeting all children’s needs and continues to develop staff’s teaching of literacy. We have a KS1 and KS2 maths lead and a day of their time each week is used to ensure the teaching of maths at a whole class and intervention level remains effective.
One of our outstanding teachers also runs interventions in reading, writing and maths across the week with targeted pupil premium children. We also run Fresh Start as a targeted reading intervention for Y5/6 pupils.

Impact

85% of Y1 children in 2018-19 passed the Phonics Screening Check with 90% of Y2 children who didn’t pass in Y1, successfully passed. Reading, writing and maths at KS1 & KS2 were broadly in line with national results for pupils reaching the expected standard. The children who reached ARE in reading, writing and maths combined at KS2 was 66%, slightly above national.

3. Support for Vulnerable Children and Families

Aim

The group of children at WCM who struggle the most to make progress are those where family life is chaotic, there are often other issues such as debt, attendance, struggling with boundaries, lack of early attachment, etc. We work hard with these children and families to give support and guidance and try to help them re-dress the balance of their difficult start in life. Our learning mentor team work tirelessly with identified children and families to remove these barriers. Every day, our attendance officer spends a quarter of her time in school following up on attendance, phoning parents and undertaking home visits.

Impact

All children within school are assessed using the Boxhall Profile on line twice a year. These profiles are used to allocate Learning Mentor interventions for individuals and groups, as well as the support that can be given in class. Most pupils made progress against their emotional and social targets last year.
Despite the best efforts of our attendance officer and other staff last year, our overall attendance last year fell by 0.3% from 95.3%, this is below the national attendance figure of 96%.

4. Opportunities to enhance pupil’s life experiences

Aim

We offer a range of opportunities throughout children’s school experience to enhance their life experiences. All children from Y2-Y6 have the opportunity to take part in a residential. The residentials are planned to give a progression of experiences that our children would rarely access otherwise. The vast majority (between 80-95%) of our children take up this offer, which is subsidised for our families on low income. We offer numerous clubs and activities both in school and as extra-curricular activities. We partner with the Sheffield Children’s University so that our pupils gain accreditation for the activities that they take part in. We offer weekly music lessons for all our Y4 children and the opportunity for weekly lessons for all Y5 and Y6 pupils with an interest in music.

Impact

80-95% of pupils take up the residential offer each year. 267 pupils took up opportunities through Children’s University in 2018-19 with 59 of them completing more than 100 hours. All our Y4 children accessed the music offer and 10 pupils in Y5 and Y6 had additional weekly lesson.

PE & Sport at Watercliffe Meadow

School Facilities

As a new school (opened in September 2008), Watercliffe Meadow has a purpose built sports hall and considerable grounds, which include 2 multi-use games areas (MUGAs), 2 traditional playground areas and a field. In 2013, our community raised money for an all year running and cycling track on our school field. Together with money from our school fund and grant applications this enabled us to create an additional all weather track and ‘PE circuit’ around the outskirts of the field.

PE and Sport Government Funding

As a healthy school we are very driven when it comes to providing our children with opportunities in sport both socially and competitively. There is a particular emphasis on fitness and enjoyment of sport. Having a specialist sports coach in school means physical activity in curriculum time has significantly increased. We have been able to provide children with a greater range of sporting experiences both for fun and competitively. The range of sports we cover in curriculum PE is very wide from traditional games football, rugby to alternative sports such as tri-golf and ultimate Frisbee. Our key aims are to continue to increase the amount of time children spend being active both through the curriculum and through a wide range of activities on offer at social times and as out of school clubs and activities. We will continue to make use of our running track and challenge all children to beat their PBs each term in a number of recorded physical challenges.

Evidencing the Impact of Primary PE and Sport Premium

School Sport Monitoring Toolkit