ECM Cheshire

Springfield Special School

A community special school serving mid Cheshire and the surrounding area. The school provides for children with severe and profound learning difficulties and for pupils with autism (Age 2 – 19 years).

The school serves an extensive catchment area with children transported to the school from the outlying districts. The children are from a wide range of socio-economic groups.

Sandbach Primary school

The school is located on the edge of a market town and serves a largely white ethnic community.

The school has a pupil mobility rate of @ 25%.  There are aspects of social deprivation with poor attendance and behavioural issues. The school has high FSM and high SEN levels.

Focus of their project

  • To develop a joint programme of curriculum based activities through the School Linking Project to enrich pupils’ understanding of community and diversity.
  • To provide the pupils with opportunities to integrate and learn from their very different school communities.
  • To broaden parents’ perceptions and develop a greater understanding of the communities in which they live.

Outline of their project

  • The schools have chosen to develop an Arts based project – ‘Colour’
  • Sandbach selected a group of Year 3 pupils to take part in the project with a mixed KS2 age range group from Springfield.
  • The schools intend to contact each other via group visits to each others schools; use of webcam; digiblue; e-mail etc.

Planned Outcomes

  • The children will jointly produce a piece of performance art at the end of the project.
  • The children exhibit greater awareness and understanding of the similarities and differences within their communities.
  • Positive relationships and sustainable links are developed between the two schools.
  • The findings and a summary of the project would be made available for other schools. A summary could also be made available on the websites of each of the new councils once they were up and running as well as on the new DCSF WDWTWA database.

The Neutral Venue meeting

  • The initial neutral venue meeting was at Crewe Alexander Stadium. This was led by ‘Smartsteps’. The children undertook a range of activities aimed at getting to know each other and working together.

Children’s comments from Springfield after the first meeting.

  • ‘I really enjoyed meeting with the children at Springfields.’
  • ‘I was a bit scared before we got there but I’m happy now’
  • ‘I made some good friends today!’

Exchange Visit – December 2008

Springfield Special School invited the children from Sandbach Primary School to visit them at Christmas to watch their Christmas production.

Exchange visit – Sandbach visiting Springfield School, February 2009

This was a music based session. The children had a smiley face drawn on the back of one hand and a sad face drawn on the back of the other so they could show their feelings throughout the session in response to prompts.

The children learnt a joint school chant:

‘We like singing and we’ve found

Working together we make a great sound

Sandbach!

Springfield!

We’re the best!’

The Sandbach children also learnt to sign to ‘I can sing a Rainbow’ – the children at Springfield already being very familiar with signing.

The children had a break time in which they were encouraged to mix. They then worked in mixed groups to develop the ‘Colour’ theme further. Extracts from their work were used to make up a new song.

The children will be performing their two songs at another session and it is intended that a DVD will be made of their performance (copyright permitting!).

Exchange Visit – March 2009

The children from Springfield Special School visited Sandbach Primary School. The session was led by an artist and the medium used was ‘feltmaking’.  The children produced artwork based on their ‘Colour’ theme.

Back