About our School

 

 We are a highly inclusive school with a diverse school community. We pride ourselves that our children leave us as great responsible citizens, with a firm knowledge of the skills necessary to be critical thinkers, problem solvers and independent thinkers.

 

As of the PLASC in Autumn 2021, our 2FE school community is made up of:

·    55 different languages (EAL/ English being the second language) 

·    37 different ethnic groups (our main communities are white UK British, Turkish, Caribbean, Indian, other European,          Bengali and Black African)

·    34% Free School Meals (not including Nursery as yet)

·    6% EHCP/ 31% other SEND 

 

 We work with families to ensure that all children achieve their potential across our diverse community, having relentlessly high expectations of ourselves and others. An emphasis is very much on the development of the whole child at Queensbridge. We work with parents and carers so that together we can build children’s confidence and self-esteem.

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 We opened our Autism Resource Provision (ARP) in Sept 2020. We have many children throughout the school with other additional SEND needs. We do have many high quality interventions, but this does not mean that the curriculum is narrowed for pupils with SEND. The interventions are carefully planned to their individual needs and the children are very much a part of the class cohort. Meticulous planning is done with all outside professionals (Education Psychologists, Speech and language therapists, Specialist Teachers for Downs, Cerebral Palsy and Hearing Impaired) to ensure that each child get’s exactly what they need to reach their full potential.

 

 Aims, Values and Ethos

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 Our values support the development of children as reflective learners within a calm, caring, happy and purposeful atmosphere. They permeate the whole curriculum and act as the basis for our social, emotional, spiritual and moral development.

 

  Our school values are:

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·    respect

·    collaboration

·    perseverance

·    possibilities

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  At Queensbridge we have three simple rules: 

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·    Ready

·    Respectful

·    Safe

 

 Learning at Queensbridge is defined as an alteration in long term memory. Our curriculum is our progression model, well planned and sequenced. We have chosen our content carefully so that it builds on previous skills learned, with lots of drip feeding (recapping, to build memory skills) and practicing those skills. We aim for what the children learn now to equip them for what they will need to make them ‘ready’ for future learning. 

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 Our bespoke quality curriculum is intended to drip feed skills right through from Nursery and Reception to Y6, in all areas. We build strong foundations in our EYFS developing social skills, cooperation and problem solving. We prioritise language development from the very beginning and have an emphasis on rich vocabulary from the outset. We recognise that there is a wide variation in young children’s exposure to vocabulary and through Early Language and Communication, as well as other areas (such as Understanding the World), we carefully plan for children to be able to express themselves but also pick up language that they will need later on their learning journey. EYFS is the starting point of our progression model. We aim to give the children what they need here in EYFS to succeed in KS1 and KS2 and beyond.

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 As an Artsmark Platinum school, we celebrate all forms of art including musical and performing arts. From the very beginning we nurture our expressive arts and design from EY to Y6 ensuring rigour in our planned curriculum choices, sequenced carefully and structured accordingly to enhance imagination and creating with materials from age 3 upwards.

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 We ensure teachers have a thorough knowledge through a regular, high quality CPD programme that is based on the needs of our children, using much research based learning. We have piloted several DFE research projects including Mark Less, Mark Better (May 2021) and this is now a published case study.

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 Our Early Reading programme (Systematic Synthetic Phonics-detailed strategies to decode words for reading and writing) starts in Nursery/ Reception and carries up into Y1 with a strong Daily Supported Reading programme again tailored to the needs of each individual child. We lead for Hackney as the DSR hub and do much tailored outreach across the UK supporting schools with our reading programme. This continues into KS2 with SPAICE which is our own developed reading programme, building on what the children have learned from Early Years.

 

Please look for more information about how we teach the curriculum in that section of our website.

 

We have done many research projects as a National Teaching School into how our children learn best so please also take a look at our section on Cognitive Load Theory here