Our Commitment to Our Primary Feeder Schools

As an Academy we are committed to supporting our primary feeder schools to deliver the very best education to the young people of East Cleveland.

To do this we offer a wide variety of support to them both here in the Academy and in their own schools.  This high level of contact with our primary schools ensures that students are familiar with the Academy well before they make the transition here at the end of year 6.

Please read on to find out more.

Specialist teaching, delivered by our experts

At the Academy we have many teachers who are specialists in their subject area.  These teachers are able to go out to primary schools to deliver workshops and master classes on a one off or half termly basis.

Mr Hukin (Advanced Skills Teacher for English)

Literacy and Creative Writing

Using well known Literature extracts as inspiration primary students have been encouraged to develop their literacy and creative writing skills.

An extract from Morpurgo’s ‘Private Peaceful’ combined with the challenging Wilfred Owen poem, ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori’, were used to inspire students to perform scenes and then to write creatively in role. Students also completed activities on language analysis, demonstrated their abilities to comment on the structure of the extracts and were able to explain the viewpoint of the character and then the writer.

Storytelling

Mr Hukin also organised for Skelton Primary (Y5) to visit The Bowes Museum where they met author and professional storyteller Adam Bushnell. This allowed students an insight into how stories are created and structured. The teachers at Skelton Primary have since commented on how this has had a positive impact on students’ story writing in school.

Dickens Creative Writing Project

Freebrough Academy were delighted to fund a series of trips to the Bowes Museum for students from our feeder primary schools. The students, accompanied by Mr Hukin, Freebrough’s Advanced Skills Teacher for English, took part in the Dickens Creative Writing Project.

The Bowes Museum offered a series of creative writing workshops connected to the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth. Dickens came to Barnard Castle in 1838 to research the growing scandal surrounding the ‘Yorkshire Schools’ whose reputation as cruel institutions was – after the deaths of many young boys – causing great concern across the nation. The Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby was the outcome of his investigations.

The creative writing sessions were run by Carina Rodney, an award winning playwright and writer who has worked on several school projects with the Bowes Museum. Using the Museum’s Dickens exhibition as a starting point, students joined in various activities designed to analyse how Charles Dickens created characters and settings to tell his stories. The group then wrote a piece of their own responding to images of portraits in the Museum’s collection.

Business and Enterprise – Miss Newton (Director of Business and Enterprise)

Zenny Zeebrough’s Enterprise Masterclass

Zenny Zeebrough (Freebrough Enterprise Mascot) has a mission – he wants everyone to be as enterprising as he is! Over 5 weeks Zennys master class teaches Year 5 students about the enterprise skills, why they are important and how they are used. Students learn about and practice the enterprise skills each week, leading up to them taking part in Zenny’s Swop Shop competition in week 5. The competition will require all students to use their enterprise skills to try and win the challenge and take home the stripy crown!

Who wants to be an Entrepreneur?

In this series of sessions Zenny is on the lookout for new enterprise apprentices. He needs a team of enterprising young people to become part of his new business venture – Double Z Enterprise. Over 5 weeks the students learn about key aspects of the business world such as creating a company, making a profit and advertising whilst creating, designing and making a new product for Double Z Enterprise to launch into the marketplace.

 

Other opportunities we offer to our Primary Schools

Promoting Primary PE

Mrs Bell, School Sports Co-ordinator, who is based part time in Freebrough Academy, will be continuing her work in our primary feeder schools this term through the Cleveland School Sports Partnership.

Activities on offer this half term include: basketball, football (in collaboration with Skelton United at Cleveland Potash), netball, swimming trials, athletics, hockey and cross country.

Mrs Bell is supported in her work with our primary schools by a number of Freebrough Academy students who have undertaken training as Sports Leaders.