Welcome

From the Headteacher, Mr Morris

Welcome to Warmley Park School!

I hope that you will find this website attractive interesting and informative.

Warmley Park believes that learning should be fun as well as challenging and should you visit the site over the period of year you will see some of the whole-school projects that we organise to stimulate creativity, an understanding of the wider world and independence.

We are committed to working and supporting parents in their quest for the best for their children and continue to develop new roles for staff and new opportunities for out-of-hours experiences.
If you would like further information please contact me via our School Business Manager, Lorna Boyd.

How to improve learning

We have been grouping pupils in the primary department for four to five years in an effort to improve pupil learning. The evidence shows that grouping pupils, not just by age but also by ability, makes teaching and learning more effective. Due to this result in primary groupings we extended grouping into the secondary department (Key Stage 3) last year and, again, pupil results improved.

Things that we know:

Pupils have different paces in learning

Pupils have stronger preferences in certain aspects of learning, eg.

some pupils need to be more physically and actively involved in lessons than others.
some pupils need to learn through highly visual and very structured routines to the lessons.
some pupils need to experience the world through sensory learning and at their pace.
all pupils need to be socially engaged through language and interaction - this element runs throughout.

In the past we have attempted to provide all of these approaches in one class and in one lesson. Now we would like to focus these learning approaches. We have called them ‘preferred learning styles’. We are providing three groups, kinaesthetic (practical hands-on), visual verbal - supported by ICT and direct teaching and sensory, involving all our senses. We do understand that pupils can use a range of learning styles but often they have one or two they prefer to use and which are more effective for them. This is based on research over ten years. We are, therefore, extending this into the whole school and an action research project is underway, involving all staff.

Pupils will still be in their classes but go to their groups for some subjects.

Primary (Not Foundation Stage or Key Stage1) – Literacy, Numeracy

Secondary (Not Key Stage 5) – Literacy, Numeracy, Science, ICT

Primary pupils - there is little change to the existing organisation but the Headteacher, leadership team and all the staff are monitoring its effectiveness. We will be measuring the impact of this approach on pupil learning, behaviour and the ability to be adaptable.

Secondary - we are expecting many of the benefits that primary pupils have experienced in the past to expand and extend into the secondary way of working, eg. improvement in:

learning outcomes
self help
independence
self organisation
confidence and responsibility
the ability to work with a wider range of adults, which will prepare them for the post-school world and meet the aims of the school.

Specialist School Bid
We will be resubmitting a bid to become a specialist school this year. In light of the feedback from the submitted bid and the changes in financial circumstances we will be refocusing our bid - more details will follow in late Spring 2010.