Nadeen School welcomes ‘Buddy’ Classes.
4HS and RLH are buddy classes. Today, we came together to give Year 4 pupils the experience of supporting the reception children in the learning they have been doing this week. This was a great opportunity for both younger and older children to develop their communication and confidence skills as they played and talked together. Some of the children already knew each other, or were very excited about talking to new friends. Others were a little less confident to start with. This was a great chance for both the older and younger pupils to challenge themselves a little as they worked with a new group of children. We saw older children showing empathy and a kind, gentle approach as they talked with younger children. Many of the reception children were confident and proud to show Year 4 around their classroom and join in an activity together.
There were lots of opportunities to support friendship skills, learning how to take turns and work together. Popular activities included a dice number rolling game, matching number cards as well as sharing roles in the role-play area. It was lovely to see Y4 pupils working with reception children on writing simple cvc words, helping the children to sound the sounds out and form the letters correctly when writing them. The children also worked together to solve simple maths problems and some even stretched and challenged the younger ones to double digit addition!
Year 4 pupils reflected fondly on their own time in reception class. They could see how those early experiences were the foundation for the learning they are experiencing now. Both classes had a great time and are looking forward to joining together again, some great new friendships are beginning to develop!
Click here to see the Collaboration article from Year 7.
Buddy classes, communication and building relationships together is an area of Nadeen School we are proud of. Along with our students working with one another across the year groups, we also have an excellent programme in place to support students who are anxious or worried when they first join the school, this includes:
- A very supportive pastoral system
- New student buddy programme
- ‘Meet the Teacher’ event
- ‘Settling in’ email at the end of the first week
- Weekly emails home on a Thursday
- Friendship bench in the playground
- Student Leaders
- Extra-Curricular Clubs
There will be many more exciting opportunities for all classes and their buddies to collaborate so keep an eye out for more of these fantastic experiences to come!
“The school promotes a very friendly and welcoming environment, and pupils demonstrate an exceptionally positive attitude to school. One pupil stated, ‘it is very easy to be happy in this school’.
