Pupils at Yeo Moor Primary School in Years 5 and 6 attended the first weekly lunchtime ‘Always Club’ session for outstanding attitude. The club has been set up for children who are always trying hard, always being polite and always showcasing good learning skills. They all enjoyed a mug of hot chocolate and the opportunity to make decorations for the classroom as a reward. It was lots of fun and a good time was had by all.

Head Teacher Roland Lovatt said: “It was a fantastic first ‘Always Club’ and the children fully deserved their awards for being so consistently excellent in their behaviour and attitude.”

Very well done to members of the ‘Always Club’ and may your numbers grow.

Since joining the Clevedon Learning Trust in 2014 Yeo Moor Primary School has been rated by Ofsted as good with outstanding fetaures. Yeo Moor is a wonderful example of how a school can become high achieving across the board.

Its innovative measures include creating an ‘irresistible curriculum’ so children are passionate about going to school, putting book stories at the centre of study, and implementing an ethos of ‘Reading – Inspiring – Writing’ in every subject, thereby helping children to become lifelong readers and writers using high quality texts.

At Yeo Moor Primary School topics are planned – whether history, science or geography based – around a high quality children’s book. For example a geography topic on continents might begin with ‘Lost and Found’ where the character journeys to the South Pole with a penguin. Work on World War Two might be built around Hanna’s suitcase, the story of a child who is evacuated. In this way, by identifying with the characters in the story, the children are able to connect with the events they are learning about, which otherwise could remain very abstract.

We also use texts as models for the children’s writing. This could be studying the writer’s use of figurative language to introduce metaphors, or it could be reading the diary of an explorer to help children understand the key points and structure of a journal.

Films, inspired by the book ‘Traction Man’ have been made by Year Two.

Year Six raised money to visit London to ride on the London Eye, thanks to ‘The London Eye Mystery’, and perhaps most memorably of all, SF Said, author of Varjak Paw, was invited by Year Three and Four to visit – his fee paid by money they had raised.

However, most importantly for teachers and children, is the excitement and inspiration the books have and that this is, then, reflected in their reading and writing.

Find out more about Yeo Moor Primary School here: