Objective:
Teaching Active Learning at St Peter's School
Teach Active Opportunity
We were lucky enough to be chosen as one of 12 schools in Hertfordshire to receive a Teach Active membership from April 2021-April 2022.
We understand the importance of keeping our children engaged in their learning and already embed activity into lessons or 'brain breaks' to keep our pupils focused in lessons. However, these resources have given teaching staff a huge bank of resources and ideas to take this one step further! The clear objectives make finding an activity appropriate to the lesson or national curriculum areas easy, and the ideas are varied and inclusive.
Teach Active Club
8 pupils in Year 5 participated in a pilot after school club during Summer Term 2, to give them exposure to the resources and for our subject leader, Miss Honour, to trial sessions before rolling out to the whole staff. The children loved the variety of activities, which focused mainly on elements of the SPAG and Maths curriculum for Year 5. Their favourite were activities involving relays and teamwork, as they were able to encourage others in their team and still recap their learning.
Miss Honour targetted these activities to parts of the curriculum which they were not as secure in, such as demarcating commas for clauses, using Punctuation Dash! There was an increase from these pupils in using commas in the correct place after this activity, as it combined group learning, vocalising sentences and really drew their attention to the amount of commas needed in paragraphs!
Staff Meeting
Through the staff meeting, teaching staff were shown the intent of Teach Active and were able to access the website and resources. It was clear Teach Active had thought of the different ways this would save teachers valuable time, both in finding appropriate activities and through fully resourcing them!
Many teaching staff had not accessed the website prior to this, and without this session, perhaps wouldn't have! However, they all agreed it was a wonderful resource which could be used alongside our schemes of English and Maths, Herts Essentials and Talk for Writing. Our EYFS staff were particularly impressed with the range of learning and teaching opportunities they would be able to also use, to supplement their curriculum. The feedback from all staff was positive, and we hope to fully embed this into our lessons next academic year.
Embedding into the curriculum
We will be trying to embed the Teach Active resources into our teaching and lessons from September 2021, at the start of the new academic year. A reminder of these resources and logins will be sent prior to the start of term and a check-in point mid-way through Autumn term to reiterate the importance of using these to keep our pupil's health and wellbeing at the forefront of our lessons, alongside the academic elements.
"The Teach Active resources show how easy it is to embed activity into lessons and activities, which in turn increase the engagement of pupils and help them to learn in new ways. I've seen a real increase in confidence from those that participated in my club, as they are more aware of their successes in the activities and as a result feel they can apply this to their writing or Maths in lessons."
Miss Charlie Honour, Year 5 Teacher and PE Subject Leader