Welcome to Willow Class! My name is Mr James Dickson, the class teacher for Year 4 and Year 5.

Willow is a warm and welcoming classroom environment where every child is given the opportunity to flourish every single day.

Our shared ambition within Willow class is to ensure that each and every individual progresses and develops to become healthy, confident individuals and importantly life-long successful learners.

To achieve this the children experience a wide range of learning experiences that encourages independence through developing a growth mindset and a desire to succeed within everything they do. I truly believe that every child possesses the ability to succeed and in Willow class we understand that success is achieved not through ability but through hard work, perseverance, and dedication and this mindset ultimately enables them to become ambitious, capable learners.

In the classroom, we deliver engaging, well-paced lessons with children having periods of quiet focused activity after lively and interesting introductions, enabling children to really focus on their independent learning. We provide children with structure and support so that they feel confident whatever their ability, but always allow pupils the freedom to challenge themselves and to reach their potential.

We welcome questioning and celebrate the inquisitive minds of our children, linking all our classroom learning to real world skills and situations; This not only promotes ambition but also encourages ethical and informed citizens through developing a real understanding of our world and the people that live or have lived within it.

Importantly, the pupils of Willow class also have a say in their learning and at the beginning of each term decide what aspect of the topic they would like to focus on, sharing what they already know and posing questions to plan their lines of enquiry.

Although we love being in our wonderful classroom, we also really enjoy taking our learning outdoors! Not only do we really enjoy being able to go outside during our Physical Education lessons on Wednesdays, but we also enjoy using the outdoors to encourage real-life contexts for the children. The outdoors is also an excellent environment to promote well being and this is also very important to us in Willow class, our children can only learn once they are ready to do so and good, strong well being is key to this!

Through instilling these values within the class children will undoubtedly become healthy, confident individuals. The children in Willow Class are very appreciative of the fact that they are able to learn in such a diverse way, as they are so fortunate to have access to both a fantastic classroom and a wonderful outdoor learning space!

Home-school links are very important in Willow Class, which is why I post homework on Google Classroom every Friday, so that the children have the opportunity to show their families what they have been learning in school each week. It’s wonderful seeing how proud the children are when they announce to me that they have completed their homework, the sense of achievement this gives the children is invaluable!

In addition to this, another element that has really impressed me with the children of Willow class is their desire to go above and beyond with completing additional work at home in preparation for future tasks, this not only demonstrates the children’s incredible dedication towards their learning but also shows the fantastic mindset that the children have towards their learning, and much of this I must thank you as parents for, for instilling a positive attitude towards their learning!

I hope you enjoy having an insight into our classroom through our class page, it shows a small snippet of the massive amount of incredible work that the children have done in class so far this year!

I am indeed a very lucky teacher to be able to teach such ambitious and friendly children in a warm, caring and inclusive learning environment.