Cultural capital

Enrichment

Each year group receives the opportunity to participate in a range of additional activities to support the wider school curriculum.

Reception children participate in a weekly Drama session led by ‘The Little’s People Drama’ this develops their sense of imagination through role play, speaking and listening skills and confidence.

Year 1 children participate in an hour of Karate each Friday.

Year 2 and 3 have weekly bushcraft sessions which support their class topics as well as giving them opportunities to participate in a wide range of activities including: axe throwing, archery, fire lighting, cooking and much more. These groups continually work together to develop the bushcraft area at the top of our field. All these activities are fully funded for all our children throughout their time at Lingwood.

Year 4 learn to play an instrument as a class with lessons being delivered by qualified music teachers from Norfolk Music service. Each child receives an instrument to be able to practice at home.

Each year, pupils in Years 5 and 6 are invited to apply for a range of advocate roles and responsibilities to help support the rest of the pupils here at Heartsease Primary Academy.

Advocates

Pupil advocates are pupils that help around the school. The jobs they do are:

Playground leader
Office assistant
Dinner hall
Wet play
Tour guide
Playtime monitor
Horticultural health and safety
ICT supporter

Heartsease tour guide

Our tour guides show visitors around the academy. They greet them at the reception area very politely, respond articulately to any questions they have and report back to an adult member of staff when the tour is finished.

Dinner hall advocate

These pupils report for duty in the dinner hall four days a week at 11.50am.

They encourage children to eat healthy, demonstrate excellent table manners and try to reduce the amount of food that falls onto the floor.

They work as a team to ensure advocates are at the entrance and exit doors walking between the tables and at the recycle areas, and report any unacceptable behaviour to an adult member of staff.

Horticultural health and safety

These pupils ensure that plants are watered every day inside the academy.
They are very aware of health and safety risks tand will report them back to a member of staff immediately.

Play leader/play monitor

These pupils find friends for children that are lonely. They encourage children to try out different games, and initiate games for children to play.

Office assistant

Our office assistants report to the office at 12.15pm each day to receive their office jobs which may vary from day-to- day.

Wet play

All pupil advocates will be expected to monitor the academy and classrooms during wet play.

Gardening Club

Gardening Club is up and running again this term and will be involved in creating a fantastic garden this year with the leadership and guidance of Mrs Epurescu.

Previous efforts by our Gardening Club saw the pupils entering a competition ran by the John Innes centre to grow the tallest wheat plant. The children decided to investigate the effect of different nutrients on the wheat seeds. They used orange juice, energy drink, water, cola and plant food as nutrients and can conclude that, surprisingly, water is the best for plant growth. Plant food was unsuccessful because they didn’t dilute it.

They met with an arable farmer from the local area to ask him questions about the best methods for growth and how to encourage the wheat to grow tall; he suggested supporting it against a stake to encourage the leaves to grow up, not out.

Our tallest plant measured 59cm with the winning wheat being grown by the Clare school measuring 66cm. Well done to all those children who took the time each day to water these plants and plot their growth.

Eco-Green Warriors

As Eco-Green Warriors we aim to make sure that everyone at Heartsease is saving electricity, promoting reducing, reusing and recycling, and developing our school to become an environmentally friendly place to learn.

School Council

We have meetings every two weeks on Mondays at 1pm. We have a Chair, a Treasurer and a Secretary. We also have two Class Councillors from each class. We vote for Chair, Treasurer and Secretary every new school year. We vote for new class councillors every term.

In our school council we discuss how to make our school better. We want our school to look lovely and to be somewhere nice to come. In our meetings we talk about how to make lessons more fun, how to make our school tidier and how to make people kind.