Vision, Aims and Values

Our Vision at Burneston School centres around the theme of bees. Bees work hard.  They work effectively together.  In our school, we celebrate our hardworking children, collaborating together to create a buzz about learning, and pollinating as they take their learning and our values further afield into the wider world.  We feel strongly that our children are like bees – they are seemingly small and insignificant, but actually without them, our planet would have no future.  The metaphor of bees enables us to value the small but also to recognise its importance in the bigger picture.  As part of this theme, we have developed three key concepts:

Celebrate, Collaborate and Pollinate

These concepts encapsulate our approach to teaching and learning.  They represent the learning experiences teachers and leaders plan for the children in our care.  They work in synthesis, deepening and securing the children’s knowledge and understanding, giving them opportunities to drive their own learning, learn for purpose, and share their understanding. Over each pupil’s time with us in school, these three areas will work together to develop the whole child, nurturing their character and supporting their personal, social and moral growth. The three strands thread through many processes in school for example: curriculum planning, subject leadership, monitoring will all evidence these areas.  Every adult and child in school will be able to elucidate these concepts in an appropriate way.

Celebrate: high standards, positive learning behaviour and tangible engagement

This concept is embodied by high expectations and aspirations for every learner in our school. It can be on a pupil, class or whole school level, but primarily seeks to influence individual responsibility for learning behaviours.  Metacognition and Learning Culture has been identified as a potential barrier to learning, and the Celebrate strand addresses this through direct teaching about metacognition, repeated planned opportunities to embed successful learning behaviours and the development of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards and motivations for success.  It goes beyond certificates and celebration assemblies (though these still have roles to play), and looks at clarifying and normalising positive, accountable learning behaviours within our school culture.  As a result of this, children will be able to talk about their learning, link wider concepts and wring every drop of learning out of their time in school.

Collaborate: teamwork, effective participation and building positive relationships

In addition to intrinsic learning motivation and the metacognitive skillset rewarded through Celebrate, we would like the children to be able to work effectively with others.  Again, this is developed through planned, sequenced teaching and learning opportunities using the National Curriculum programmes of study and is adapted to address the identified potential barriers to learning in our setting.  As part of this children will learn how to work effectively with other people.  They will learn to become team workers and resourceful thinkers, supported and challenged by a vibrant and engaging curriculum.  This forms part of teaching and learning around character development, and also supports the teaching of effective learning behaviours.  Through Collaborate, our children will be able to confidently articulate their learning, support others and continue to take ownership of and responsibility for their own learning.

Pollinate: understanding, exploring and contributing to the wider world

This element links closely with the other two, but adds the nuance of taking a bit of Burneston, and what it means to be a Burneston learner, out into the world.  We want our children to feel that they have agency, that they can make a difference, and that the skills they learn in our school will help them to do this.  This could be through initiatives such as the Duke of Burneston, becoming a School of Sanctuary or even being inspired by the books we read to make a global difference, eg Trash by Andy Mulligan leading to fundraising for children in Manila.  Pollinate fits closely with our vision, and our Christian values, and the idea that although we are small children, from a small village, we have rights and responsibilities too, and we can orchestrate or be part of large-scale change.  Our curriculum is geared towards giving children the skills, knowledge and cultural capital to be able to do this.  We want to light fires, not fill buckets – our children are have the potential to be anything they want to be, and Pollinate throws the challenge to them.

References:

Paul Dix

Tom Sherrington

Dylan Wiliam

Rob Carpenter

Will Ryan

Andy Buck

Carol Dweck

Barack Rosenshine

Benjamin Bloom

Our Christian values suffuse a vibrant, engaging curriculum, inspiring learners to flourish.
Celebrate
High aspirations and expectations enable children to rise to challenge and take pride in their
achievements.
Collaborate
Strong partnerships nurture children who learn and grow together.
Pollinate
Secure roots nourish future citizens who make positive contributions to the wider world.