I recently had the pleasure of working with a delightful bunch of 24 pupil premium children at the St Thomas More RC Primary School in Peterborough. Their levels were between 2c and 4c so each exercise had to be tailored to the most effective use of differentiation to give them the best possible chance of learning.
The children were from years 3,4 and 5 and are at the age where they love to share their ideas – and in fact they had some great ones!
At break time one year 3 asked her teacher if they would be doing this until the end of the day. When the teacher said ‘yes’ she jumped up in the air and whooped and all the children around her started cheering. I went and got a coffee and thought ‘I must be doing something right – they are loving it!’.
The enthusiasm continued throughout the whole day and I will always remember this group as the ones that wanted to carry on and on and on…. Just before home time I started getting questions as to whether I was coming back tomorrow…. Sadly I wasn’t, but it was lovely to leave them knowing they had not only learned lots, but had thoroughly enjoyed the day.
Their Pupil Premium Champion Francesca Trono sent me an email the next day with some lovely comments from the children.
One of them, Sophia (year 4), said: “I thought it was kind of inspiring because we practiced interviewing people and writing our ideas. Then we made them into an opening paragraph.” Rhonda (year 4) added: “I thought it was cool when one of us pretended to be Jessie J and the other was a reporter. I liked it because if we want to become reporters when we’re older it will really help us.”
She also wanted to add her own testimonial: “The workshop was an interesting introduction into the world of journalism. The children were engaged in their activities and their confidence grew throughout the day.”