Vision and Principles
Our School Motto
Challenge. Achieve. Aspire for more.
These words were chosen following surveys of our children, staff, parents, carers and governors.
What we mean by each word is as follows:
Challenge
We want our children to learn through making mistakes and overcoming them with support and guidance. So we seek to provide challenging work that will be difficult for them and that will prompt them to reflect and overcome the challenge.
This challenging work must be accompanied by positive messages about mistakes, messages that enable learners to feel comfortable working on harder problems, making mistakes and continuing on.
Achieve
If children are getting everything correct all of the time, they are being given insufficient opportunities to learn and achieve. Children are often given the idea that the most important thing is to get all of their work correct – and that correctness is a sign of intelligence. This can lead to situations where achievements are hollow and come easily – and children can get fixed on this idea of achievement/success.
Achievement in Willowtown will mean:
getting things wrong;
celebrating mistakes; and
teachers providing (and learners taking) the correct steps to find the right answers.
Aspire for more
We are creating a “no excuses” culture in which we do not accept second best for our children. The idea, set out in our vision, is that our learners can achieve at least as well as or better than learners anywhere.
As a school and as learners, we are always:
looking for the next challenge;
seeking the next steps for self-development and learning; and
wanting to make a difference to: ourselves, our community and our world.
Our vision for our learners
Our vision has been written in close consultation with our children, parents, carers and governors (including a parental survey, a pupil survey, three teacher sessions, a support staff session, a governor session and a whole school assembly).
We are the vibrant beating heart of our community.
We will achieve as well as or better than children anywhere.
Willowtown Community Primary School is at the heart of our community. The happiness and wellbeing of each child is central to the ethos of the school. Children are encouraged to cooperate with one another, respect diversity and treat each other as equals.
We are a highly motivated and caring team. We are committed to providing opportunities for our young learners to develop into respectful, compassionate citizens, who contribute positively to the wellbeing of others and society.
We aim to deliver a stimulating, exciting and challenging curriculum. Through outstanding and enthusiastic teaching, we will empower children to lead their learning, so that they become motivated and independent.
We want our children to grow in confidence and to develop a love of learning that will stay with them throughout their lives.
Our school principles
Our school values have been worked out through extensive consultation with staff, governors, parents/carers and, most importantly, the children of the school who contributed the sentences describing each value and what it means to them.
Confident Learners
This means we have a go, keep on going, concentrate hard, be brave and love school so that we make ourselves better learners.
An Engaging Curriculum
This means we help to choose interesting, exciting, enthusiastic things to learn full of trips and visitors, and that we use teamwork to help each other and put our hearts into our learning.
Challenging Activities
This means we use perseverance to get through frustrating and exciting activities that make us think lots, and that we share activities to get confident and find our way out of the ‘Learning Pit’.
Fun and Excitement
This means we play with and make new friends, have lots of trips, sports and exercise and that we try experiments in a nice learning environment.
Child-Led Learning
This means we have the chance to tell the teachers what we want to learn about, ask questions, try things out with experiments, think about different ways of learning and use our School Council and Eco Council to make ourselves heard.