Castle School Enrichment Offer
On Wednesday afternoons we introduced an exciting new element to the Development of Me offer on the Castle School curriculum. Students will be taking part in enrichment activities and have the chance to choose three options from the option block available. They will then follow this for a term. New options are available to select after each term to give the students a broad variety of different experiences.
Students will select from the following experiences:
Outdoor Education Board Games
Animal Welfare Jewelry Making
Sign Language Sport
Weird Science Gardening
Enterprise Activities Lego activities
Arts & Crafts Local Historical Landmarks and Geography
Travel Training
The options have been designed to engage our young people to develop a broader range of skills and develop a wider set of interests. Student voice has also shaped this offer. Students also will get the opportunity to engage in the Unit Award Scheme. This is where students are rewarded with a certificate when they successfully complete a unit of learning, as evidence of their skills, knowledge and experience. The scheme aims to boost confidence, increase engagement and improve motivation, helping learners of all abilities to make progress on their lifelong learning journey. Students will build up a portfolio of certificates to evidence their skills, knowledge and experience.
The benefits of the enrichment opportunities boost confidence, increases engagement, improves motivation, helps students to make progress and develop new skills on their lifelong learning journey.
For children who have experienced trauma/ACE’s they may not have had the opportunity to develop their language, social engagement, self-management, self-esteem, coping and play skills. This for many students results in significant gaps in the social emotional building blocks they need in everyday life.
We believe our enrichment element of the curriculum is a chance for students to engage positively in learning that they have had the opportunity to shape themselves. It helps develop relational practice across the school with their peers and trusted adults. This enrichment element of the curriculum underpins Personal Development and our FAGUS Framework and feeds into the bigger picture of developing each individual student.
Fagus is a unique educational framework which provides a system to identify, monitor and support children’s emotional and social development, setting goals and targets that fall outside of the academic curriculum. The Fagus framework is underpinned by a theoretical base in child developmental theory, principally developed for pupils who have attachment and trauma-related difficulties but also has a wider application and can be used with all school-aged children. It allows Castle School to identify underlying unmet needs for those students who may be struggling with a range of social, emotional and behavioural issues. We can then use our Personal Development scheme to provide opportunities to develop to work towards their own social and emotional goals.
