Ribbleton Avenue Methodist Junior School

Ambition is at the heart of our school starting with the training delivered to staff, right down to the walls around the school.  We passionately believe in championing children in our school to be the best they can be and we are beginning to see this in activities of our children both in school out beyond.

(See our Inspirational Children)

We have been able to support one of our young people to secure a training contract with Manchester Unit and working alongside AFC Fylde (a local football club and charity) we are constantly looking out for the next sports person of the future.

-We have designated a scheduled music lesson on a weekly basis for every child, taught in a small group to encourage a love of the arts whilst identifying talented youngsters with a musical ear.  To promote this further, singing underpins much of our school day with children coming to and from worship singing, attending choir after school, guitar or recorder clubs and one of our favourite activities is to attend Young Voices, a singing concert, at Manchester MEN where we join thousands of other schools and celebrities and making the north wests largest choir.  This gives our children both an amazing experience but the opportunity to perform in a professional arena.

We attend local award ceremonies for an amazing achievement for one of our Year 6 boys both staff and children together, so that our children can experience a formal event with dignitaries in attendance.  When we don’t win, we still celebrate as we recognise the importance of taking part.

-Our ICT teacher teachers our children cutting edge technology which is transferred into real life focuses.  This includes designing and making things to print on our 3D printer which are then sold at our school fair to raise money for school or for local charities.

-Our Children are learning to speak French as a whole school focus but we have a language teacher who also runs several language clubs to broaden horizons.  Our school are finding ways to allow our children to converse with children from other countries and a Pilot Pen Pal link has been established with a school in Hong Kong where children will be able to make links around the world.

Our children are encouraged to try, fail and try again through our growth mindset culture, as John Wesley encouraged through the Methodist culture, and we see this level of determination on a daily basis e.g. when our children have made a poor behaviour choice, they accept responsibility, attend their restoration session, rebuild the trust and links with their peers and teachers and recommence their learning.  Our robust behaviour system (See Behaviour Policy) ensures a restorative approach is used and staff are continually developing their understanding through research and reading.  Where needed, we adapt our approaches, ensuring that relationships are at the heart of all we do and lead how we manage situations. (See Behaviour Information)

-The Impact of our Behaviour strategy has encouraged our children to establish a Playtime Charter where we promote successful breaktimes, working with staff in school to make playtimes purposeful.

We have daily groups running across school to build our culture of resilience, providing counselling if necessary and working with our most vulnerable children to develop their skills for life.  Our worships, both whole school and class, focus on our hopes and aspirations, using stories within the bible to underpin our messages and modelling examples from school life (staff / children’s experiences) to put them into context.  Our school values include both Hope, Ambition and Courage (all chosen by our school community) as the optimise who we are and what we are hoping to achieve for ourselves and our wider community.

-We have built links with our community where our school children can be pillars of hope for example; writing prayers and poems in remembrance of the world wars and those living in war torn countries.  We recognise the sacrifices of our local Ribbleton Soldiers and share their names along our fences in November along with Poppies that we have made.

As part of our curriculum development, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our children’s outlook and improve their understanding of the world and the issues within it.  From deforestation debates to green screen ‘news reports’ our children are passionate about making the world a better place.  The school provide opportunities to explore key issues, such as the plight of refuges and asylum seekers and some amazing work was undertaken with Onjali Rauf to raise the awareness in school of this real-life issue impacting on so many children and their families. 

In our worship assemblies we cover key world issues that are linked to religious celebrations.  In our harvest assembly we celebrated the journey our food makes but also the impact this had on the wider world.  Using Jigsaw (our PHSE Scheme) we are also looking at the wider world and link this with our British Values that run hand in hand with our Christian values. 

Using social stories, we explore social injustices and debate the fairness of the different cultures within our country.  With topics such as WW1/WW2 explore the other faiths that joined to fight and the fact that they are rarely recognised or celebrated for their contribution. 

Using role models such as Greta Thunberg, examples of her work and the impact a young voice can have on the world.  The impact of the global warming and learning about plastic pollution has already encouraged our children to set up systems for recycling in our dinner hall, taking the lead to reduce plastic and paper waste as well as reduction in food being thrown away.

Covid Reflections:

Covid has provided a wonderful opportunity for the children and families to build Hope and encourage courageous advocacy.  Sir Captain Tom Morgan was a huge inspirational character for school and we joined the nation by sending him birthday cards to celebrate his 100^th birthday.  School was decorated using chalk to colour the bricks in with rainbow colours and the KW/V children wrote messages of hope on the playground and on the walls.  They decorated banners and made Rainbow Art to brighten the school surroundings.

Children at home were encourage to undertake courageous acts; an example being To Challenge Littering, where we looked at the significant impact lockdown was having on local beauty spots.

https://ribbleton-avenue-methodist-junior-school.primarysite.media/media/courageous-advocates

We have continued to use remote ways to provide worship opportunities for our school community which are focusing on the school values and bringing about world issues that we want the children to challenge.

As part of our All We Can focus, children are looking at ways to fundraise to support families in Indian being impacted on by the devastating death toll in India.

Next Steps:

To build further opportunities into our curriculum for pupils across school to demonstrate ‘courageous advocacy’ and promote awareness of key world issues through actions or fundraising activities.