CASE STUDY
Castle Douglass Primary School is a large rural school of 360 children, who are also the resourced learning centre provision for children with additional support needs in Dumfries and Galloway. We visited them to find out more about their exceptional Hi5 programme.
In 2020, Castle Douglass Primary School incorporated our Hi5 Award into their learning centre provision. We met with Mr Whan, the Principal Teacher of the Learning Centre, Mrs DeSilva, the teacher running the Thursday Hi5 programme and Head Teacher, Susan Davies, to talk about their school’s experience with Hi5. Mr Whan explained:
“As a staff, we agreed that we needed a more structured provision in the learning centre to support children to develop their skills for life. We recognise that we need to provide these opportunities to develop life skills but we’re sometimes too constrained by the standard curriculum. The reason that we bought into the Hi5 is that we felt that it allowed us the freedom and flexibility to follow the children’s interests as well as providing opportunities to develop their soft skills, opportunities to apply learning from the core curriculum.”
The enthusiasm, not just of the children and the staff, but also the parents and the families. Children come into school particularly on a Thursday morning buzzing and excited about their Hi5 programme and you’ve got children knocking on the office door asking when is it their turn.”
The school has reflected on their aims as teachers is to make sure children go home at the end of the day they can tell their parents what they did. And after a session on the Hi5 programmes the children leave and they’re buzzing and the feedback we get from the parents is that they come home and they are so full of chat. The school sees the next steps for Hi5 as continuing to build on what has started.This involves targeting engagement, making it sustainable and ensuring that funding is in place. That also means having a staffing allocation in place, and up-skilling learning assistants so that they can support the children.
Headteacher, Susan Davies explained that
“For us, the Hi5 awards are a way of recognising attainment and achievement in a different format. We’ve got a lot of children in our school who don’t necessarily reach the benchmarks in terms of their academic progress and could very easily be turned off school… the Hi5 is a way of giving them the opportunity to achieve in a different way and also to learn new skills for their life.”
She continued:
“post-pandemic, it’s not just about having a framework to work with other people but a framework to be more confident about expressing yourself and stepping into something that's unfamiliar…post-pandemic there is a real need for an alternative way of accessing the curriculum because potentially some of these children didn't access as much as we would have wanted them to."
“I would strongly encourage other schools to look into how a Hi5 programme could work in their own context… It really does allow for individuality and freedom to deliver the Curriculum for Excellence and everything that it stands for. For us, the Hi5 awards are a way of recognising attainment and achievement in a different format. ”
Mr Whan added:
“I would strongly encourage other schools to look into how a Hi5 programme could work in their own context… It really does allow for individuality and freedom to deliver the Curriculum for Excellence and everything that it stands for
Hi5 Awards in Castle Douglas Primary School
The school emphasised, that particularly for those children with additional support needs, small-group settings provided essential nurturing environments for their learning and their confidence. Her Hi5 sessions ranged from cooking and crafts to exploring in nature and handling money: It’s a really good opportunity for all of our kids to mix together no matter what their abilities and support needs… they learn from each other and work together as a team.
The school was excited to observe one of her Hi5 group sessions and chat with participants. The children collaborated to build bird feeders and were able to
hang them up in the school’s own nature garden, as part of a larger rewilding project. Whilst they were cautious about talking to us at first, by the end they
were all very excited to tell us about their projects, their friends, and their favourite teacher, Mrs DeSilva!
In one stand out session they wanted to try foods from five different countries around the world. This was a very big challenge because quite a lot of them are very limited in their diets but they decided they wanted to make sushi as their last challenge and they all tried it; they all made it and they were chuffed to bits with themselves that they ate seaweed!
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