Enrichment

Enrichment is an important part of daily life at Eastfield Academy.

Roots of Empathy

The Roots of Empathy programme focuses on raising levels of empathy amongst young children, resulting in more respectful and caring relationships and reduced levels of bullying and aggression. As part of the programme, which originates from Canada, pupils observe how a baby develops over the course of a school year. The children see the love and care that the baby receives from the parent, and begin to understand the baby’s feelings and emotions.

Our Year 5 pupils will enjoy visits, every 3 weeks, from baby Finley and his mother, giving pupils the opportunity to track the infant’s milestones.

Before and after each visit, pupils are encouraged to discuss their own experiences and share ideas during a positive and respectful discussion.

Mrs Dunkley is our trained Roots of Empathy Instructor and she will gather the children in the classroom around a green blanket, and together they watch the baby grow.

Singing School

The Singing Schools programme is supporting us to embed daily singing into school life - both through the curriculum and through extra-curricular choral enrichment. There are two parts to our Singing School status:

1. Musical Foundations – Developing musicianship skills through singing

This strand supports all staff to develop the foundational skills and understanding of music (phrase, rhythm, pitch, etc) to enable them to provide a progressive and high quality music education in the classroom.

2. Choral Excellence– Accelerating musicianship and vocal development through ensemble singing

Wrapped around this in-class provision, the choral strand is direct delivery with our KS2 pupils. This moves beyond the Musical Foundations strand and starts to look at children’s vocal and musical development through a broad repertoire of songs. We are lucky to be regularly joined by Charlotte Brosnan, a professional singer with a wealth of teaching experience who leads this provision and supports Mrs Ford, our Music Lead.

Through this holistic and integrated singing strand, every class becomes a choir, and an ‘aspirational’ choir is established for children who wish to take their learning further. Our weekly whole school singing assembly is an opportunity for our pupils to develop and show off their fabulous singing skills!