At Collis, we prioritise strategies to address social disadvantage and aim for all children to experience ‘the best that is’ in our world. We achieve this through focusing our curriculum and pedagogical approach on the development of cultural capital and the broadening and deepening of children’s vocabulary. (Cultural capital is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said, and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.)

We know through research that often a ‘word gap’ can open between disadvantaged children and their peers before school begins (Sutton Trust Report, 2010). In fact, this achievement gap can start early in a child’s life and continues to widen as children get older (Hart and Risley, 1995). Research indicates that this has a negative impact on reading success, attainment, a child’s behaviour and their mental health. We have a duty to close this gap for our pupils through prioritising phonics and reading, through high quality vocabulary instruction, through engaging parents and developing a love of language. This is evident throughout our teaching. For example, we have a curriculum centred upon quality written and visual texts, we carefully build on pupils’ prior knowledge (their schema), teach guided reading and share texts aloud, use semantic mapping and have a phonics and spelling programme founded upon the developing an interest in and attentiveness to words. Across the curriculum, our teaching of active listening, speaking in full sentences, use of ‘stem sentences’ and ‘sticky vocabulary’ in maths and the foundation subjects, and progression in Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary exemplifies our systematic approach to vocabulary instruction.

We promote an understanding of the value of diversity in our school community and in wider society, exploring ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity with our pupils throughout our carefully planned curriculum and with quality texts.

A snapshot of our Collis literature lists

A snapshot of our Art progression

A snapshot of our overview of artists

A snapshot of our History progression with sticky vocabulary highlighted in yellow

November 2023: We warmly welcomed our Ukrainian teachers who will be with us on Tuesday afternoons to support the children from Ukraine. They met the children this week, introduced themselves, and engaged in some games. The children enjoyed speaking and hearing Ukrainian. On Tuesday, 14th November, they will be meeting parents at 2:30pm for coffee and biscuits in the school (please meet in reception).

In PE this term Year 4 have been learning how to choreograph and perform their own dances. As a reward for all their hard work, a professional dancer came in and delivered an inspirational and engaging dance workshop to all the children. They thoroughly enjoyed learning routines and competing against each other in order to win the final!

YEAR 1 - AFRICAN DRUMMING WORKSHOP

Learning About Different Faiths In RE

Anthony Peebles Piano Concert

On Friday 30th September 2022 World Famous Concert Pianist Anthony Peebles played a range of classical pieces (Chopin/Rachmaninoff) for the children of Collis. In between the musical pieces Anthony talked about the structure, content and history of the pieces.  Mr Peebles won the 1971 BBC Piano Competition and has performed in 131 different countries around the world.

Class Book:  Diversity Books for every class as our whole class sharing book

We celebrated Black History Month. 

Here is a display of the art work we did inspired by inspirational black role models.