Lyfta at De Lacy Primary School
Widening Horizons
At De Lacy, our motto is to Widen Horizons and this is the centre of our approach to our children’s personal development.
Our broad and ambitious curriculum ensures that children learn about appropriate relationships, both in the real world and online. Throughout the curriculum, children learn to be tolerant and respectful of people who are different to us – whether that be due to their religion or belief, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their race, their disability or any other protected characteristic someone may have. Similarly, children understand the importance of British Values, which are woven throughout our curriculum and wider school life.
Children expand their knowledge about the world through Lyfta: an online, immersive platform in which children are transported to a location on Earth and experience an individual’s life. This happens weekly in our story world sessions and is woven throughout the curriculum. Lyfta enhances children’s understanding of different faiths, cultures and lifestyles, developing tolerance and respect for our diverse world.
To develop children’s aspirations, Future Fridays happens once a month at De Lacy. This involves a visitor attending De Lacy (either in person or virtually) and explaining their job; the education and training they required to get the job; the knowledge they need to be able to do their job effectively; and the wider skills they use on a daily basis in their role. Already, we have had visits from a software engineer in America, a pilot, a submarine engineer, a project manager in London and a local solicitor. To further develop children’s life skills, enabling them to be effective citizens, Key Stage 2 complete Junior Dukes challenges. These involve developing children’s wider skillset beyond the academic. For example, first aid training, enabling the children to be able to administer basic first aid; developing children’s time management and organisational skills through planning a trip; developing children’s cooking skills through making a range of recipes; and developing confidence when speaking through performing a familiar story to an audience.
We believe that children need to understand and be able to make good money choices to have successful lives. We invite MyBnk to work with our children to undertake financial management workshops to develop these vital skills with our pupils. Children learn how delayed gratification will enable them to make bigger, more satisfying purchases; they learn about budgeting and the impact of spending (or saving!) within your budget; and they learn about interest rates in both borrowing and saving and the impact this has when going to the bank.
We want our pupils to live healthy lifestyles and promote this throughout school life. This is woven throughout the curriculum, in lessons such as Science, PSHE and PE, but also through sessions with Classroom Kitchen, in which the children create recipes linked to their learning. Children cook balanced meals, ensuring they have appropriate amounts of each food type from the Eat Well Plate. These sessions also involve foods from other cultures, further deepening children's understanding of different people. To keep our bodies moving, children take part in a range of sporting activities in school and then apply these skills when taking part in sporting competitions! We encourage children to try their best in every contest but develop good sportsmanship no matter the outcome. We offer a range of extra-curricular activities at De Lacy, driven by the children’s interests. These vary from Lego club, to wall climbing club, to computing club, to dodgeball club! As well as this, we welcome professional table tennis, rugby, martial arts and tennis coaches into school to provide our pupils with opportunities to develop their sporting abilities and encourage a healthy lifestyle.
At De Lacy, we ensure our children take part in 50 experiences before they leave our school. These experiences both enhance our curriculum and go beyond it, to ensure De Lacy pupils can experience and achieve a range of knowledge and skills to further develop them as individuals. We want to ensure that whilst at De Lacy, our pupils gain that awe and wonder from their primary education and be able to speak vividly of what they learn and the experiences they have had.
We ensure that children are given a voice. They are empowered by being given opportunities to make choices about things they believe are important. Our school behaviour systems encourage pupils to respect the idea of democracy and respect the views of others. Our school council as an opportunity to experience representation through a voting process. The pupils who are part of the School Council are involved in many aspects of decision-making processes such as deciding whole school behaviour celebrations, Meeting the designers of our new playground Trim Trail and meeting with the Chair of our School Governance committee. The school’s Sustainability Squad liaise with their classes to make school-wide decisions on how to make the school more environmentally friendly. Through class discussions which feed into meetings with the Senior Leadership Team, the Squad have introduced recycling bins in each classroom and have planted more trees in the playground.
Children are taught to understand the principles of rules, which enable a community – like a school – to work well. This is supported by our Community Police Officer. Children understand our behaviour systems and the rules we must follow, this helps pupils to make decisions and choices that are acceptable to the school community and society at large. We help pupils learn to manage their behaviour and take responsibility for their actions. We teach them to recognise right from wrong and why we have rules in school and society.
Within PE lessons and in the range of sports clubs which take place at De Lacy, children learn and follow the rules and regulations of the sport being undertaken. Pupils understand and follow the rules, insisting on fairness and sportsmanship. They then extend this to the games they play in their free time in the playground as well as when taking part in sporting events across the Trust as part of the PAT games.
We encourage pupils to become good and valued citizens. We do this by supporting each pupil to become as independent as possible. Some pupils will be able to take responsibility for particular roles, such as Junior Librarians, School Council Representatives, hall monitors or playground leaders. They understand that with certain rights comes a level of responsibility.
We celebrate achievements in assemblies and with certificates. We encourage children to be proud of their achievements, both in and out of school. We encourage children to take responsibility for their behaviour, to challenge stereotypes and to spread an anti-bullying culture.
The school motto of ‘Widening Horizons’ is embodied in all we do – this includes removing any barriers to the liberty offered by lifelong learning and employment. To promote pupils’ ambitions, we invite a visitor to school every month for Future Fridays to discuss their career: what their job involves; the training and qualifications they need to get the job and the skills they use to undertake their role. This exploration is developing children’s understanding of what the world could offer them – and what they can offer the world.
To further develop the children’s wider skills, Key Stage 2 take part in Junior Dukes. This scheme involves half termly challenges to develop pupils’ life skills, such as their communication and confidence skills through performing a familiar text to younger pupils; cooking skills through making a range of recipes; and first aid skills through taking part in workshops and practising the procedures. This development of pupils’ wider skills enhances pupils’ character, making them ready for the world of tomorrow.
The first and principle statement on our School Rules is to ‘Be respectful – to others, to the environment and to myself.’ Pupils know this and understand how to be respectful and to look after each other as well as our school and wider community. We promote each pupil’s inclusion in a range of activities, settings and locations. Our pupils go into the community to meet with a range of people in a variety of situations which include sports events, community events and shared participation with other schools. It is important for our school to be part of the community as the pupils, families and staff have much to offer in the development of community cohesion.
As we live in a multi-faith society, we promote the belief that each person is respected and valued equally without regard to ability, gender, faith, heritage or race. Cultural appreciation and development forms part of our curriculum. We celebrate faiths throughout the year with assemblies, workshops and drop-down days, where parents are actively encouraged to participate. We celebrate our differences and pupils are mutually respectful of these.
We teach Religious Education (RE) in each year group at De Lacy. Our RE curriculum offers a broad and balanced education on a range of faiths, religions and cultures. We have half termly visits and collective worship led by the vicar of All Saints Pontefract. We help children develop critical thinking skills to challenge prejudice and discrimination of all kinds.
Throughout school, we encourage children to discuss the differences between people, such as their faith, ethnicity, disability, gender and sexuality. We also help them to explore different kinds of lifestyle, including relationships and families and bodily choices.