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Woodside Primary School is part of Hales Valley Trust. Our Trust is an all-primary academy trust, based in Dudley, West Midlands. At Woodside Primary School and Nursery, we make every moment count, for every child. This is underpinned by our school values of Care, Aspire & Achieve. In our school, we actively promote these values in everything that we do, and the Skills Builder essential skills provide a framework to explicitly teach and apply this.
Overall impact
At Woodside, we encourage the development of kind and compassionate individuals who care for themselves, each other and the wider world. We provide a culture for aspirational learners who embrace opportunities and strive to be the best they can be. Furthermore, we celebrate success, champion curiosity and build resilience to provide the foundations for life-long achievement. The Skills Builder essential skills are a key part of our aim to ensure that our children develop skills and values to work and communicate well with others, appreciate equality and diversity and prepare them for life in the modern world in which we live. Through character development, we encourage our children to take risks and embrace new opportunities. We also encourage them to achieve challenging goals and celebrate their personal successes, as well as the successes of others. The essential skills are intertwined in all that we do and serve as a solid foundation for which our children can build success during their journey here at Woodside and beyond. As our recent Ofsted inspection report quoted, `Whatever their needs, all pupils receive teaching and support that enable them to feel good about themselves and what they can achieve.'
Keep it simple
The language of essential skills is now ingrained in our Woodside community. It serves as a universal communication tool, understood by all stakeholders. We always reference the essential skills in both our whole school and class assemblies, and we celebrate children’s successes using Skills Builder language through positive praise and focus skill certificates in year group assemblies. Our policies incorporate Skills Builder. For instance, our behaviour policy features a stem sentence that guides staff in structuring praise sentences when giving positive feedback to children verbally. This ensures all adults can consistently reinforce these skills. Each classroom exhibits Skills Builder icons and posters (inc widget for SEND and EAL) as visual aids, highlighting the monthly skill focus along with the associated steps. Teachers integrate these skills into their teaching across all subjects, making them tangible by explicitly delivering lessons in various contexts.
Start early, keep going
All pupils are provided with carefully structured chances to acquire and hone vital skills from EYFS up to Year 6. Woodside recognises the significance of commencing the acquisition of these skills at the earliest possible age, affording each child a span of 7 years to proficiently navigate through every developmental stage at an appropriate age. In EYFS, skill icons are strategically placed throughout our learning environment, with corresponding # used on Tapestry to enhance parental engagement and skill stories have been introduced in our nursery setting. This approach fosters a culture where children are now able to articulate and demonstrate the skills they are developing. Throughout school, only the relevant steps related to the current monthly focus are exhibited in each classroom, indicating children's current focus and the subsequent steps for them to aim for. Homezone has been shared with parents to enable them to further explore these skills at home.
Measure it
All teachers regularly assess students' progress in essential skills using the Skills Builder Hub, conducting monthly evaluations to prioritise and guide future teaching strategies. These assessments are carried out at the conclusion of each monthly focus skill, with students present to keep them informed of their development. The Skills Builder Leader monitors whole-school progress throughout the year, and regularly meets with teachers to assist in implementing students' next steps. The assessments also determine which resources from the Skills Builder Hub are utilised by each teacher. Each year group's display board features a poster highlighting the current skill focus and the corresponding developmental steps. Essential skills are also referenced in the end-of-year report, and the assessment from the Skills Builder Hub serves as a baseline for the new academic year when transitioning to a new teacher.
Focus tightly
A dedicated 15-minute weekly session is delivered, utilising materials from the Skills Builder Hub, tailored to suit the needs of the pupils. Students do not acquire essential skills by chance; they receive planned, regular, and explicit opportunities to develop them further. The assessments carried out with the Skills Builder Hub assessment tool inform next steps, ensuring that all teachers pitch their teaching at an appropriate level. Focus skills have been selected based on events throughout the calendar year: listening skills upon returning from the summer break, maintaining a positive attitude upon returning for the new year, and teamwork as children transition to secondary school and participate in Sports Day.
Keep practising
Skill Builder abilities are "learned not acquired." All of our teachers intentionally include the application of the fundamental skills into the curriculum and beyond; this is part of our HVT writing curriculum. For example in MFL, children are encouraged to use their speaking and listening skills, as well as showcasing their ability to stay positive whilst attempting to learn a new language. We provide a variety of options beyond the curriculum, including residentials, HVT oracy debates, sports competitions, as well as a range of after school clubs that allow children to practise the skills in different contexts. Furthermore, our World Book Day adopted a Skills Builder theme, giving children across school the opportunity to utilise the essential skills throughout the day, whether it be writing their own poems or reading aloud to a small group of children from another Key Stage.
Bring it to life
As part of our whole school transition week, children took part in the `Crash Landing' Challenge Day. This provided them with an excellent opportunity in which to utilise all of the essential skills they have been developing throughout the year. Not only does this enable the new class teacher to get to know their new class on a pastoral level, it also helps them see children applying the Skills Builder essential skills, so that they can see how they can build on these with their class in the new academic year. We also invited a number of reputable organisations to our school to explore how they use the essential skills in a professional environment, for West Midlands Ambulance Service, Sports Plus Coaching and Hingley Transport - who are the largest steel carrying hauliers in the West Midlands, located less than a mile from our school. Children also had the opportunity to run Q&A sessions and complete a number of problem solving activities linked to various roles within each company.
What's next
In the upcoming academic year, we aim to enhance our Skills Builder programme by integrating ‘virtual trips’ to provide children in our school with an additional avenue for developing their essential skills. Furthermore, we plan to facilitate participation in career insight days to offer students valuable exposure to various professions. We will strengthen our relationships with local organisations to provide more opportunities for our pupils. Additionally, we will focus on the development of our pupil leadership teams, including Digi Leaders and Sports Leaders, to further enrich their skillsets. To ensure effective organisation and tracking of progress, we will incorporate a dedicated Skills Builder section into our school planner.
