SCHOOL OF THE WEEK: St Gabriel's Primary School

WELCOMING me into the school, head teacher Claire Russell says that the school offers more than meets the eye.

“One of the things the Estyn inspection report picked out was that for such a small school we do so much,” she said.

Indeed they do, as the school which has just 141 pupils, caters to every child’s interests with a variety of school clubs including cookery, choir, fitness and fun, and a newspaper club.

In newspaper club, which ran successfully last year, children became journalists and produced their own newspaper proving them with literacy skills in a fun and unique way.

“We run the clubs once a week after school,” Miss Russell said.

“They really enjoy it.

“We also have gardening club, an eco committee and school council.”

Pupils who are on the school council must apply and are interviewed by existing school council members.

The school also runs a Meaningful Work programme which sees pupils take on various roles such as milk monitors and librarians, to benefit the school and develop skills.

The school is also health conscious and was one of the first schools in Newport to adopt a healthy eating policy back in 2007.

“The children are not allowed to bring sweets, coke or crisps into school,” Miss Russell said.

“But we do have a treat day on a Friday.

“The parents have been really supportive about it and we have run workshops for parents in the past and we do a lot of things like this with parents.”

Children have to have healthy lunch boxes and can take part in a Big Breakfast event annually which sees pupils bring in their cereal bowl and have breakfast together.

This healthy approach means infant children have milk every day and pupils snack on fruit, vegetables and toast together as a class communicating certain words in Welsh.

Taking me on a tour of the school, Miss Russell shows me how the pupils are IT savvy, with many opportunities in class and play to access the school’s 20 iPads purchased by the PTA.

“It is one of our future goals to purchase more iPads,” Miss Russell said.

“Children are using them a lot for activities and it does engage them.

“They do writing and word processing on them and use a lot of apps.

“Foundation Phase also use them.”

The school also focuses heavily on literacy and numeracy with pupils learning vital literacy skills from the school’s ‘Talk For Writing’ programme which sees them talk through a story before they write it down to make their writing more comprehensible.

“Maths was one of the school’s improvement targets and staff have had a lot of training on it,” Miss Russell added.

Teachers use lots of engaging methods with children such as maths games and the school has seen an improvement.

Walking into a classroom, children are sitting in a circle with a teacher doing guided reading.

This approach sees children take half an hour to focus on specific skills either with a teacher, such as guided reading, or individually.

“When I first became head standards of reading were quite low,” Miss Russell said.

“But now we have strict plans in place, we have workshops, and reading skills assessments.

“We also have big assembly where we give out certificates to children who have improved and even to parents to say thank you to them for helping their child to read at home.”

The head also stressed the school also has a strong focus on the arts and encourages pupils in this area.

“In the foundation phase there is a strong focus on learning through play,” she said.

Some children are playing with bikes, which helps to develop their motor skills and the numbers on the bikes helps them to learn numeracy by asking them to order the bikes numerically.

Other interesting activities include going on an ‘egg hunt’ for St David’s Day, where pupils had to follow clues and a map given to them from a ‘dragon’ to find its egg on the school grounds.

This is part of the school focus on ‘literary engagement’– that children will perform better in literacy when it comes to writing their own stories if they can base on experience.

The school has invested in nine teaching assistants, spread across its five classes.

“Teaching assistants can have a positive effect in the learning of children so were investing a lot in teaching assistants at the moment,” the head added.

The practical approach to lessons also extends to PE where the children have had swimming lessons, after the head teacher realised their skills were poor.

St Gabriel’s Primary is a school where both the staff and children work hard for optimum results.

“The school has been through huge improvements over the last six years,” Miss Russell said.

“We are now a Green School and have our third eco flag.”

The school also shares its facilities with Little Angels Nursery, which is managed separately, but works with the primary school to ease the transition period.

Miss Russell also has high hopes for the school’’s future and said as the school grows in size they hope to meet demands with more equipment and continue to improve standards of literacy and numeracy.

“(We want) to be a place where our children are happy to come and learn,” she said.

“For us it is through educating the parents as well with the idea of helping them to support their children.”

Fact file:

Head: Miss Claire Russell

Deputy head: Vanessa Vickery

Chair of governors: Hillary Cameron

Pupil: 141

Ages: 4-11

Mission statement: “As part of Gods family living, loving and learning together to be the best we can be.”

Estyn report 2011: The school received ‘good’ for its performance.

The report said pupils at both key stage 1 and key stage 2 have achieved well when compared to pupils in similar schools.

Pupils display enthusiasm and pride in their school

The curriculum is well planned and offers a good range of interesting learning

experiences that successfully meet the needs of most pupils.

Most teaching engages learners well and ensures good pupil progress.

The school’s values and ethos are reflected in all aspects of its work.