Vision
‘Expect the Best, Achieve Success’ provides a direction for our school vision – we strive to do our absolute best so that every single child, irrespective of gender, culture, socio-economic background, leaves our school with optimum academic achievement, but more importantly, life skills to enable them to be successful in their next stage of learning and adolescent life.
Context
Coming soon……
We are a very large primary school (admission number of 90 pupils per year group) located in the heart of South Shields on the north east coast of England. Built in 2004 as part of the Westoe Crown Village development, our school offers children a lively, friendly environment in which we enable children to flourish, enjoy and achieve. Although our children range from 3 years old to 11 years old, we would like to think we can offer lots of positive learning experiences for all community members irrespective of age!
Ethos & British Values: What makes our school so special?
Our school is a family school with strong community values. Underpinning all our actions, behaviour and learning is a strongly held view that respecting the faith, beliefs and opinions of others fosters a culture of tolerance and freedom for all views to be expressed. We value and promote the principles of a democracy where each person is valued for their contribution to our community, including our little people, which is why our school council is so successful!
As a fully inclusive creative school our most important stakeholders, our children, have been working hard to articulate what values we most treasure in our school. Firstly, they have written a poem to convey the key messages:
School Environment
We are very proud of our learning environments and our outdoor environment is just as important as our indoor learning spaces.
At Westoe Crown you will find outdoor spaces have been zoned to cater to the needs of our children:
- Our Nursery and Reception classes have their own outdoor space flowing directly from their indoor environment. We have created an imaginative and stimulating space in which children can explore and learn using water, sand, pebbles, hills, tunnels, writing boards, a stage area, mud kitchens and a water activity wall.
- In KS1 we have an outdoor classroom for children to enjoy as well as a castle to challenge the children’s climbing skills, a very popular games pad and tyre trail.
- In KS2 we have an outdoor classroom, trim trail, games pad, climbing wall and outdoor gym to help keep us healthy and active!
Our Reading Village from Year 1 to 6 is a huge success and we are enjoying quiet reading times during the school day particularly during playtimes and lunch times. Please keep donating used books and comics to help us build up our bank of reading resources.
- KS1 and KS2 have their own fields to run all that energy off and to play football on! In KS2 we also have a ‘hardcourt’ area designated for football, netball and basketball games.
- We encourage our children to walk and cycle to school and have bicycle stands located in both the KS1 and KS2 playgrounds.
- If your child enjoys gardening we have a fabulous allotment/garden area with a greenhouse, raised flower beds, seating areas and outdoor music area.
- We have built a new community room in the KS2 playground to provide even more space – finished product, courtesy of our children’s fantastic design and technology skills!
- We have 2 tyre parks (KS1 & KS2) designed by our children, following 2 years of fundraising by our children and their families.
We are also very fortunate to have a wonderful modern indoor learning environment which includes:
- Purpose built nursery unit with cloakroom and toilet area for the exclusive use of nursery children as well as small group rooms.
- Our three Reception classes are designed for children to enjoy the various areas of learning.
- We have a range of technology in school, each classroom has an interactive smartboard. In addition, laptops, netbooks, ipads, digital cameras and even Nintendo DS’s are in continual use across the school.
- A newly designed library has been created in school over the past year (with the help of our children!). We encourage our children to make their own choice of books, comics and magazines and how they wanted them organised within the library.
- We are proud of our coal mining heritage, with our school being built on the site of Westoe Colliery, and this is celebrated in school frequently; you will see our Miners’ Gala Banner on display in the main entrance and we have a ‘Miners’ Corridor’ which the children painted with a local ex-miner artist.
- Our classrooms are vibrant and highly personalised and should reflect the children’s interests, learning and personality. Our children are encouraged to take great pride in their environments and are crucial in the development of their learning spaces.
Please take a little time to read on and learn a little more about our school and our wonderful children, staff and governors. We hope you find the information on this website easy to use, easy to understand but above all we hope you get a real flavour of the vast range of opportunities on offer at Westoe Crown.
Finally, feedback is really important to us so if you think of any ideas which would improve our website or communication, please contact us… we’re learning all of the time!!!