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Personal Development at Linden Road Academy
The personal development of our children is a huge priority at Linden Road. Our broad, rich and diverse curriculum and extra-curricular offer aims to provide children with new and exciting experiences that will mould children into confident and successful young adults. Our aim is to enhance the cultural capital of our pupils, develop talent and ignite passion.
Ofsted 2023
"Leaders have developed a highly effective programme to promote pupils’ personal development."
"All pupils play an active role on the school council. This enables them to have a say in how the school is run. For example, pupils recently voted on how money should be spent to improve the school environment, choosing to buy cushions and beanbags for the library. Older pupils are eager to take on positions of responsibility, such as acting as class prefects. This helps to foster pupils’ feelings of belonging to the Linden Road Academy community."
You can view all of our learning linked to Personal Development on Twitter by searching @Linden_PDev or take a look at our Learning Showcase!
Weekly Personal Development time
We have added a weekly timetable slot dedicated to Personal Development at Linden Road. In these sessions, children are exposed to a broad range of activities that go beyond the national curriculum.
These include: Survival skills, Cards clubs, STEM, Dance, Lego, Recorder, Sketching and Sewing!
Rewards and Celebrations
Praise and rewards are key elements to allow us to celebrate the success of our pupils. “Proud to be Linden” oozes out of children every Friday Celebration assembly.
Children receive a range of weekly awards: Kindness, Most Progress, Behaviour, Reading, Music, Sports Stars, Attendance…to name but a few!
Our merit system encourages children to earn merits for learning and behaviour allowing them to climb the ladder from Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diploma, Degree, Doctorate, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Diamond! The children love achieving their next merit badge and wear their badges with Linden Pride on their school tie.
360 Immersive Classroom
Our Immersive classroom is 360 degree projection space, used as a resource in school to allow children to experience the world around them. From Space travel to going back in time, our Immersive classroom, without doubt, contributes towards the personal development of our pupils.
Take a look on Twitter by visiting @Linden_360
Competitive Sports
Linden Road Academy is committed to supporting aspirations to represent the school at competitive sport. We are proud to be part of the Tameside Sports Partnership which allows us access to a broad range of competitive tournaments throughout the year. We track, monitor and promote attendance at these with the aim that any child that who wishes to represent the school will get the opportunity to within KS2.
Extra-Curricular Activities and Clubs
It is essential that our pupils are given the opportunity to engage in activities beyond the classroom and beyond the curriculum.
One way that we enhance our children’s offer is by providing additional sports coaching at lunch times. Each class benefits from expert coaching, covering a range of sports and team games in addition to our PE curriculum.
Our after-school clubs cover Survival Skills, Team Games, Choir, Computing, Science, Reading, Yoga, Art, Homework to name but a few. Children at Linden Road thoroughly enjoy taking part in our after-school clubs, allowing them to expand on their learning from in the classroom and unleash their potential and talents.
Trips and visitors
We make it a priority for children to venture out of the school grounds, into the local area and on educational trips.
Trips linked to our Science, History and Geography topics include visits to Tatton park to experience life and an evacuee, trips to the Roman Discovery Centre and the Sea life Centre. In-school visitors include Egyptian workshops, Pirate visits and visitors such as Survival experts and expeditioners.
We also believe it is vital to offer children trips beyond the national curriculum. These include trips to the beach or the orchestra, which hugely contribute to our children’s personal development and cultural capital.
School Council
We have a SMART school council, led by pupils. Every week we hold class meetings and children vote on the answer to a key question or debate. This session aims to expand children’s leadership and democratic skills. Each week, a different child from the class leads the class meeting as well as having a weekly note-taker. Feedback and responses from the meeting are shared, votes are counted and actions follow. The sessions allow every child in school to have a voice and contribute towards the continual improvement of our school.
PSHE and RSE
Our PSHE and RSE curriculum supports pupils on their journey through life and provides them with the skills, knowledge and experiences to help them through the challenges of modern society. Through the teaching of British Values, we give our children the tools to make their own informed opinions, choices and decisions and help them to develop their own set of values that they will take with them through life.
Our curriculum also supports children to develop their understanding and tolerance of others – promoting pupils to be respectful, considerate, empathic and understanding of people’s differences. Children learn about Protected characteristics across a range of subjects, for example in History and RE as well as during PSHE and our sessions on Current affairs. Our outstanding behaviours and attitudes are as a result of this teaching.
Our children are brave and empowered individuals who celebrate individuality and are confident to be themselves. Throughout all of our PSHE themes there is an overriding emphasis on tolerance and respect. We advocate kindness and celebrate this throughout school, praising children for acts of kindness and for being supportive to others.
Safety is paramount and our curriculum covers many aspects that aim to keep children safe. Themes such as Respect and Privacy and Family cover complex and sensitive content, which aim to educate children on forms of abuse and where they can find support networks if they are worried about anything in relation to this. Online safety is a growing concern that our curriculum tackles, supporting children to keep safe online as well as in the real world.
Many of our themes within our PSHE curriculum at Linden Road are taught within the context of a fiction book. These books are used as a stimulus to start conversations in the classroom. Children empathise with the characters in the books to talk about their own experiences in a safe environment. Whilst the fiction books provide a starting point for our learning, it is vital that our children are able to apply this to real life so we ensure that we make explicit links to real life contexts to support children in their own social and character development.
Staff, parents and the safeguarding team at Linden Road work closely together to support children in every aspect of their lives and our bespoke programme of study helps us to achieve this.
Pupils are taught about mental health through our book-led PSHE curriculum. They are given strategies to support mental health and it is something that is constantly referred back to. Since the introduction of our comprehensive PSHE curriculum our pupils are confident in discussing the importance of caring for their mental health and they are able to suggest a range strategies to aid their mental health. They show an awareness of everyone having mental health in the same way that everyone has physical health.
Understanding of good health and healthy lifestyles in the curriculum are expanded on through our extra-curricular offer for after-school sports clubs, weekly lunchtime sports activities and class participation in the ‘Daily Mile’. Healthy habits are formed when all children apply learning to their DT projects for designing nutritious food and snacks. Further good habits are developed during lunchtimes when children sit down to eat their meals and the expected behaviour that goes with that.
You can also follow our Personal Development by searching on Twitter @Linden_PDev or check out our Learning Showcase!