Curriculum Enrichment

At Hawksworth Wood Primary School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing of every member of our school community. We recognise that children’s mental health and overall wellbeing can affect their learning and achievement and we are proud to be a Mindmate and PSHE friendly school as well as a Healthy School.

Positive wellbeing is promoted through the wider curriculum and all school activities. Through a carefully planned approach to PSHE, RSE and Citizenship our pupils are helped to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives, and to become resilient, informed and responsible citizens.

In addition, whole school approaches such as assemblies  and Mindmate sessions are used to further develop the pupils’ knowledge of strategies. For example, peaceful problem solving is taught in Mindmate sessions to help pupils learn to control and manage feelings when there are disputes on the playground. Whole school events are held including Mental Health Awareness Week in May, World Mental Health Day in October, and Anti-bullying Week in November. During these events, the focus is on mindfulness and resilience; teaching strategies for dealing with anxiety; and coping with change and transition.

• We are committed to creating a happy, caring and supportive environment. As well as a learning environment, the school ensures there is a positive, supportive and inclusive ethos where children can thrive and achieve their personal best. Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE)is a central to the curriculum across the whole school.
• Our school dog cookie supports our pupils in so many ways.
  Emotional well-being
  Cookie helps children develop empathy, improve self-esteem, and lift their mood. He can also help children regulate their emotions and relieve anxiety.
  Social skills
  Cookie helps children develop social skills and improve their ability to pick up on social cues. He has been a great support in encouraging children to express themselves and participate more.
  Learning
  Cookie can motivate children to learn and think, and can help encourage their learning needs in areas like reading, communication, and observation. This can be especially helpful for children with special educational needs. Some of our children enjoy reading to him and we have children at the early stages of language development who have learned to  give him commands!
  Focus
  Physical contact with Cookie like petting him has helped to improve focus and decrease restlessness in some of our children.
  Discussion
  Cookie has also encouraged more creative conversations as our children have engaged with him and shared ideas. Having Cookie in school has also provided a positive topic for discussion that encourages responsibility and focused interaction with others.
• PSHE & RSE assists pupils to cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world, manage transitions and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities.  The concepts covered in PSHE include identity, managing feelings and emotions, relationships, change, resilience and being healthy, which includes physical, emotional, and social well-being.
• Nurture Provision. Children who experience bereavement, anxiety, domestic violence, and any other life experiences that may affect their emotional well-being are identified and supported by a fully trained Thrive practitioner who will offer regular 1:1 or small group nurture support. We identify children’s specific needs, ensuring our pupils are at the heart of the school focus and their learning is understood developmentally.
• Physical Education. We supplement our PE curriculum with specialist Sports coaches and offer sport-related after-school clubs. Our pupils can also enjoy taking part in inter-school sporting competitions.
• A range of After-School Clubs support children’s social and emotional development, and their well-being all with a view to increasing the range of experiences that children have, enabling them to make informed choices for adult life.  Activities are designed to be fun and cater for a wide variety of interests.
• Healthy eating is promoted throughout the school. We have children’s garden areas with raised growing beds and as part of our OPAL and Forest School we are developing beds for a variety of fruit, vegetables and herbs which when harvested we will use in cooking and DT lessons.
• World Mental Health Day and Mental Health Awareness Week is celebrated across the school and ongoing events and activities are planned for the whole school community.Being a Centre of Excellence for IQM demonstrates our commitment inclusivity and supporting the needs of identified children.

Throughout the year, themed days/weeks are woven into the curriculum to extend and enhance the breadth and balance of opportunities we offer our pupils. These include, Anti-Bullying Week, science week, Creative Arts Week, World Book Day, Black History Month, RE Days and much more.

Forest School encourages and inspires our children through innovative, long term, educational approach to outdoor play and learning in a woodland environment.  As a school we are very fortunate in having our own woodland area and a teacher trained to deliver the Forest Schools programme.

Forest Schools is offered to children on a half termly basis and also as an after-school club. Sessions are designed around the needs of the group to ensure that they are learner-led.  Sessions are designed around a theme, themes are sometimes subtle such as evolving or exploring the site or more obvious such as butterflies, spies, fairies or nature investigators.  Many areas of the National Curriculum are intrinsically covered, in the Forest Schools experience without the programmes needing to be curriculum led. Teamwork skills are developed through games and activities.  Individual skills and self-esteem are heightened throughout activities such as hide and seek, shelter building, tool skills, lighting fires or environmental art, the list is endless.   Each activity develops intra and inter-personal skills as well as practical and intellectual skills.

We are also an OPAL school. Which helps schools improve the quality of play opportunities in a strategic and sustainably way.  We know that children are stimulated by the outdoors and want to ensure that during social time as well as curriculum time our children can can undertake a range of practical activities to support and enhance wellbeing, learning and social skills. All staff have been OPAL trained to ensure they understand and value the importance of play for all of our children.

Opportunities are also built into the curriculum for children to continue learning beyond the classroom including undertaking fieldwork and enquiry-based work in the local area.

School trips and visits are an integral part of the education of children at Hawksworth Wood Primary.  We value the opportunities such visits offer our pupils and the commitment of staff and adults undertaking them.  Trips include class visits aimed at bringing learning alive and providing first-hand experience; extra-curricular outings such as activities with the school choir, or sporting events; and attending or taking part in performances or competitions.

Children in Years 4, 5 and 6 take part in residential visits. Children in Year 4 make a 2 night visit to Lineham Farm; pupils in Year 5 have a 3 day residential in Whitby; and our Year 6 classes take part in a 3 day  activity residential to Robinwood where they experience orienteering, climbing, zipwire, raft building, archery and lots more. These learning opportunities go way beyond what can be offered in a classroom environment and teach problem solving, teamwork and personal challenge.

Visitors have a valuable role to play and can contribute to many aspects of the life and work of the school.  They deliver talks, workshops and full day activities across a wide range of subjects, giving pupils access to outside experiences and expertise. Visitors provide a link with the wider community – children have the opportunity to work alongside artists, musicians, authors, health professions and others.

We offer extra-curricular opportunities through various types of provision delivered by school staff, external providers, and independent clubs – all with a view to increasing the range of experiences that children have, enabling them to make informed choices for adult life. Activities are designed to be fun and cater for a wide variety of interests.

We want to offer the scope for each child to find a passion, develop a talent, spark an interest, or simply find pleasure in doing an activity with others. After-school clubs are a fantastic way of achieving this, and we are excited to offer a wide range of clubs, including sport, art and craft, lunchtime choir and orchestra, drama, construction club etc.

Hawksworth Wood Primary School provides opportunities for children to take part in a wide range of musical activities and performances where they are taught by our talented music teacher and former Opera singer! Bi-annually we have a whole school Opera Fest and the choir performs in Leeds performances. Visits to the theatre further enriches pupils’ cultural development.

As a school we appreciate and understand the importance of drama within our curriculum. Research reveals that drama had a positive impact on children’s physical, emotional, social and cognitive development. Drama is developed across the whole school in a variety of ways including storytelling, various performances, and assemblies.

Volunteering is an activity that everyone can get involved in and benefit from.  At Hawksworth Wood Primary we promote and encourage pupils’ active citizenship and positive contribution to the school and wider community. We offer lots of opportunities for pupils to take on new responsibilities and be involved in successfully supporting the life and work of the school.  These include elected representatives on our School Council where children are responsible for some of the following key areas of the school: subject specific leadership, Environmental Eco work, Health Eating ambassadors etc.  Pupils can also apply and be interviewed for positions such as Play Leaders and Librarians, and within classes children can volunteer to take on various responsibilities ranging from milk monitors, to helping with the organisation of seating for assemblies.

Involving children as volunteers is very empowering:

• It helps them to develop self-confidence.
• It promotes self-esteem.
• It develops their skills as leaders.
• It involves them in making their own decisions.
• It gives them a voice in the life and work of the school.
• It offers them opportunity to take responsibility
• It enables them to make a positive contribution to the work of the school and wider community.
• It helps to prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of adult and working life.

Pupils tell us that they enjoy the opportunity to volunteer to help make their school an even better place to be and rising to the challenge that additional responsibility brings.

Through the inclusion of an international focus within our curriculum offer at Hawksworth Wood Primary School, children engage in a range of experiences that enhance their learning and raise awareness of their national and international identity. A global dimension helps children to understand their role in creating a fair and sustainable world in the future and enables learners to explore links between their own lives and people, places and issues throughout the world.  This work is further extended through the ‘Picture News’ assemblies that we hold weekly which focus on current affairs.  These assemblies give our children opportunities to discuss and reflect on naturally occurring events or topical issues that are happening around the world.  The aims of this we hope will broaden the children’s knowledge help them to understand the impact of how events can affect others. Follow up activities from Picture News assemblies are shared on SeeSaw so that families can further discuss the weekly theme at home.

Children at Hawksworth Wood Primary School are actively involved in charity work and fundraising for various local, national and international charities.  We hold annual events such as Children in Need; NSPCC Number Day and MacMillan Coffee morning.  Often children will approach teachers with ideas to further raise money for different causes, in particular responding to an international issue e.g. the children led a fundraising event for Ukraine and are regular volunteers at our local food bank.