Tuesday 14th June 2022

Dear parents and carers of Stepney Park Primary School,

I hope you enjoyed the half-term holiday, and perhaps managed to join a street party to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee during this time.

The children enjoyed their special Jubilee assembly on the Friday before the half-term holiday, and joined in singing our National Anthem, before going back into class and taking part in some lovely Jubilee activities.

Exciting whole school events

As we approach the end of the year, we are very grateful and excited to be able to get back a sense of normality and have been organising a number of end of year events.

We will have a ‘Stepney Park’s Got Talent’ competition, a Spelling Bee, music performances  and some nice Year 6 leavers’ events.

We would like to warmly welcome you to a few events, they are:

• July 4th: sports day for Yr 1,2 and 3 (parents can join us in the afternoon)

• July 5th: sports day for Yr 4,5 and 6 (parents can join us in the afternoon)

• July 6th: Big Draw and Open afternoon - parents are invited to come to school from 2.30pm onwards and join us in a range of special activities, and tour the school

On Jun 20th children will have their class photos taken, and on Jun 21st they will have individual photos taken, please note these important dates in your diaries if you can 

Sports for Schools Fundraising

Well done and thank you to everyone who helped to raise money during our last Ambition Special Day!  Together we raised £1726 and the school has received a voucher for £646.20 to spend on sports equipment!

Occasional Closure Day

Here is a reminder that school will be closed for Eid al Adha on Monday July 11th.

The summer holiday will start on Wednesday July 20th at 1 pm. Please do not book a family holiday starting before this time. 

Parking and driving

I am getting increasingly concerned about the very unsafe parking and driving situation on Smithy Street and Redmans Road, as there are a number of parents who illegally and inconsiderately park, or who drive carelessly. I am very worried that there is an accident waiting to happen.

We are also getting a growing number of other parents and local residents who report to us that they share our concerns and that they are (rightly) very frustrated. This week there was even a report about a parent who had parked their car on the pavement. 

We have often reported incidents such as these to the Local Authority and have submitted photos and CCTV footage to them. The person we report to is Donovan.Thomas@towerhamlets.gov.uk. 

We hope that the Local Authority will support us in making our streets safer, by being more present and by issuing fines where appropriate. 

I sometimes get questions from parents and local residents about what else we can do about this as a school. I have tried a number of different things, including:

• Writing to parents on a number of occasions.

• Speaking to parents directly.

• Putting up signs.

• Speaking to the children and asking them to ‘help’ their parents.

• Asking the Council for a crossing patrol person (‘lollipop lady’).

Whilst these measures have occasionally helped for a short while, it seems that bad habits can be difficult to break, and I can only appeal to all parents to reflect on their driving behaviours and ask themselves the following:

• Do I really need a car, or could I walk/cycle/take public transport?

• Am I parking my car in a legal place? Is my car blocking anyone else from leaving? Is my car blocking someone’s view of the road and stopping them from crossing safely?

• Is my driving and parking behaviour courteous? Am I setting the right example to my children?

I know many of you will support us and I therefore appreciate your help in this matter. 

Website

I share a little segment of our website in this part of my letter each time. 

We believe all children are entitled to a broad and balanced curriculum: this will help them to develop into well-rounded individuals and informed, engaged citizens. As you will see from the details, at Stepney Park we are ambitious for our children. We know that children need, enjoy and deserve a demanding curriculum so this is what we provide in each subject area.

At Stepney Park, we have prioritised identifying the skills and knowledge in each subject area that are likely to offer the most benefit to our children and the local community. As a result, our curriculum is subject-specific rather than topic-based. This means that, although links between subjects may be drawn where these are relevant and productive, we have focussed simply on building a rich and demanding curriculum in each subject.

This week's focus is Curriculum- Other Subjects- Art and Design

Aims

At Stepney Park Primary School, we want children to see themselves as confident artists with constructive attitudes who enjoy being creative. We offer the children opportunities to engage with, be challenged by and reflect on art and the visual world around them. Importantly, we aim for children to learn that Art is a process: they learn to be resilient when they have setbacks, to see mistakes as powerful learning opportunities and to consider for themselves what ‘finished’ means. We believe there is a place for our children in the world of Art & Design if they choose it in the future, and we aim to help them realise this and understand the value of Art & Design in our world.

Our Art & Design Curriculum

Our bespoke curriculum is organised around three areas of learning. These are: 

• Linear, which includes painting, drawing, carving etc

• Crafting, which includes sewing, collage, wire manipulation etc

• Modelling, which primarily involves sculpture.

The children benefit from 3 art projects each year, each focussing on one of these areas of learning. The fourth and overarching area is about looking and seeing which weaves through the whole of the Art & Design curriculum. This is where the children look at and critique compositional elements of their learning as well as the artwork of known artists. Over time, children engage with a mix of celebrated and less well known artists for information and inspiration. In this way, we aim to give a balanced view of disciplines and backgrounds and build the children's cultural capital while also ensuring that they understand art is not the preserve of a famous few.

The Art & Design curriculum gives space to be creative yet also a clear focus to the learning in each project. It is organised to ensure children revisit learning throughout each year and over the years they are at Stepney Park. This gives the children the opportunity both to consolidate their learning and to develop their mastery of techniques. 

Our EYFS curriculum prepares children for the rigour of our art curriculum in years 1-6 in a number of ways. Importantly, the EYFS is the starting point for our fourth area of art: children are taught to take time to notice features of the world around them and discuss them with words to describe colour, shape, texture and more. Children also have access to a wide range of art resources to explore linear work, crafting and modelling. The school has developed a sequence of resources to ensure that this exploratory learning develops children’s skills progressively. For example, in sculpture children begin by exploring play dough, before later moving on to Plasticine and then clay, with each being more difficult to manipulate than the last. Our EYFS curriculum also contains specific opportunities that give children an understanding of important concepts that will support their later learning. For example, given the importance of portraiture in our art and design curriculum, we ensure that all children in reception have the opportunity to work on a self-portrait.

Art & Design Teaching

All Art & Design learning in years 1-6 takes place in our Art Studio, which is run by a specialist Art teacher. The learning is blocked into 3 main projects spaced over the year, each allocated a weekly 2 hour slot in the Art Studio for 4 consecutive weeks. 

During every project in the Studio the children will create a piece of art, learn about an artist, develop their sketchbook and self-assess. Once the project is finished the artwork will go on display either in the Art Studio, the classroom or around the school in order to share and celebrate the children's learning and to inspire others. The artwork will be accompanied by images and vocabulary that will support the children's learning as an aide memoir and will explain the learning to anyone viewing it for the first time. The artwork created will always go home with the artist in the end.

Sketchbooks and Assessment books are started in Year 1 and follow the children up to Year 6 and are kept in the Art Studio. They write in their assessment books once at the end of each project and these books will be displayed in their final exhibition in Year 6 before they take them home.

School Overview

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

Kind regards,

Edith Philipsen

Headteacher- Stepney Park Primary School.