Member Article

SNAKES ALIVE! School Celebrates Success With Special Learning Experience.

PUPILS celebrated their school’s return to fortunes in style in the company of a host of weird and wonderful creatures.

Snakes, spiders, hairless guinea-pigs and bearded dragons brought dread and delight to staff and pupils at Beaumont Hill Academy, part of the Education Village Academy Trust, Darlington, as they celebrated their latest Ofsted report with an immersive learning experience.

Crazy Creatures North East brought in a host of creepy and cute animals ranging from fluffy rabbits to a caramel coloured Burmese python for pupils to study.

The immersive learning day, which took pupils off the traditional timetable, also saw them study dinosaurs with Stockton creative education company Apollo, which ran a variety of sessions including a drum workshop, creative crafts, music, drama and stop-frame animation.

Project officer Harriet Lowes said: “It was such a great day with the pupils dropping into the various sessions which tapped into their creativity and got them interacting with each other and people from outside the academy.”

Staff from the Life Centre, Newcastle, also worked with children on the human digestive system turning food into faeces with a close look at burps, bottoms and bile.

Ofsted inspectors recently hailed the special school ‘good’ also highlighting the value of immersive study.

Staff, governors and pupils have been working tirelessly to restore standards since its last inspection two years ago, when it was deemed to be inadequate.

The result is a learning environment now considered better than ever before for almost 300 children with complex needs, aged two to 19.

Principal Caroline Green said: “Achieving good again has given us the very best start to the year and we wanted to celebrate with an event which our pupils would be remember for years to come.

“There was an incredible buzz throughout the school all day and our children benefitted massively as it stimulated their learning and boosted their communications skills and self-confidence.”

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