Project

Why are Communities Important?

Reception

The children developed an understanding of 'community' and what it means to us at school and in our home lives.

The children investigated the vital ‘ingredients’ of a community. What physical features does it need? They also explored the people that exist in our communities, who helps us? To help us build our understanding, we walked around Sugar House Island to identify the places and people that make it a community. A visit to the island’s architects, Vastint, revealed that the island isn’t finished yet and the children were very excited to make their own suggestions as to what places would help build a thriving community for the future. Junk modelling was a key component of this project, as children developed their skills around 3D art-making and used it to design their own addition to the Sugar House Island community, ready for an exciting exhibition at the end of the half term.

If you cannot see our 3D model embedded below, please view it here.

Curriculum links

Head

Problem solving and critical thinking

Foundational skills

Taking control of your learning

Heart

Care and respect

Working collaboratively

Happiness in body and mind

Hand

Creativity and the arts

Expert skills

Design thinking

Underpinned by our seven
key principles...

We choose problems that matter: to us, to our families, to our community, and to members of the global community. The problems we seek to solve are authentic and important.

We work on our projects in collaborative partnership with peers, children and adults, and experts from within and beyond the community. Our partnerships enhance and deepen our learning.

We learn best when we work together, talking about our learning and sharing ideas. In our classrooms you will hear lots of productive talk as we explore and debate learning.

We learn through play and enjoy exploratory learning. We practice curiosity and risk taking, play roles and tell stories. Our projects offer playful self-driven learning experiences in a range of settings, but especially outdoors in nature.

We know that we can all be challenged, think deeply and solve tricky problems if we work together. We can all learn from each other, even if we are achieving at different levels.

We practise and perfect the skills we need for our projects over time, being persistent and resilient when our practice becomes challenging. We see mistakes as learning opportunities. We believe the learning journey is as important as the outcome.

We strive to produce beautiful and valuable work which addresses important issues in our proiects. Our products or performances are reworked and redrafted until we are proud of them and ready to use them to trigger learning conversations.