Teaching Assistant

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Welcome to Shafton Primary Academy and thank you for your interest in our school. Shafton village is a small rural community easily reached from Wakefield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield.

Here at Shafton, we are a proud member of the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) and have just been judged as a good school with outstanding leadership and outstanding Early Years.

Our very creative staff have a real love of teaching and we are looking for a future member of our team who can develop that sense of awe and wonder in children. The children at our school are happy, confident, fun-loving and energetic. They are passionate about their learning, be it in the traditional classroom or through drama, music, dance and painting. We are looking for someone who can embrace these aspects of the curriculum as well as literacy and numeracy.

Leadership at our school is forward thinking - and the well-being and work-life balance of our teachers is very important. We give autonomy to teachers and will not dictate planning, marking or teaching styles. We want you to give us your best and our non-negotiables are outstanding attainment and progress for every child, coupled with kindness and warm-heartedness, not what colour pen you use to mark books!

Our school has been recently refurbished and is a modern, bright and attractive place for us all to work. We have a new Early Years classroom and outdoor learning environment.

We welcome visitors and hope that you will come and see for yourself what a happy place Shafton Primary Academy and what makes us the school of choice in our local area.

Thank you for your interest in our school and we look forward to meeting you.

Mrs Jo-Anne Charalambous and Governors.

Our aims and expectations

We have a high expectations for all children and a commitment to ensuring all children achieve high standards. We will achieve this by -

Supporting the development of children who –

• Feel safe and know that if they have concerns they are listened to and are supported so that they thrive
• Who can create, reflect, persevere, are resilient and aspire
• Are able to work independently, collaboratively, as part of a team and to lead
• Are thoughtful, have the ability to listen, are responsible and supportive of each other and have a strong work ethic
• Are creative, analytical, critical and innovative
• Have high expectations of themselves and each other
• Respect themselves and others
• Have endless curiosity, enthusiasm – who want to experience as much as possible and find out all they can

Creating a staff team who –

• Are an expert workforce with shared determination to do their best for every child
• Question practice and continually try to better meet the needs of all children and are supported in this by a detailed professional development programme
• Equip children with the life skills they will need to be independent, reflective, resilient and resourceful learners as well as continuing to raise standards in literacy and numeracy
• Provide exciting opportunities for children to use and apply their learning to enquiry and problem solving so they develop their understanding of the world
• Plan, monitor and evaluate teaching, learning, the curriculum and progress in the academy to ensure the development of the whole child
• Are proactive and highly skilled at identifying vulnerable children and collaborating with other agencies so that barriers to learning are removed and all children succeed
• Help children acquire a range of personal, social and emotional attributes essential to their health and well-being and to life as a responsible citizen
• Develop children so they can actively participate in and contribute to the academy where they feel respected, safe and supported

In an academy which –

• Provides a caring, stimulating and enjoyable learning environment in which all children feel respected, safe and supported
• Provides a flexible, challenging and purposeful curriculum that is relevant to our children and prepares them for the responsibilities and experiences of life
• Offers opportunities to engage with a wide range of cultural experiences
• Provides a broad rich curriculum that excites them about learning and the world, is rich in IT to help children participate fully in a constantly changing world
• Equips children with the life skills they will need to be independent, reflective, resilient and resourceful learners as well as continuing to raise standards in literacy and numeracy
• Values and develops a supportive partnership between home, school and the community
• Provides opportunities to engage in a wide range of activities – social, the arts, sports and cultural, that will enrich their lives and develop their confidence, social and moral skills and self-belief

So that the local community has pride and confidence in our academy and trusts that their children will succeed and do well here.

Our Curriculum

Shafton Primary Academy is a dynamic and vibrant school, full of character, love and life. It provides a good standard of education as well a range of wonderful experiences through our inclusive curriculum which includes every child.

It is a school full of warmth, energy and enthusiasm where children feel nurtured, happy and valued. This calm, purposeful atmosphere is palpable the moment you step into the environment. We pride ourselves in having a committed staff team who are relentless in their drive to offer a curriculum which is broad and challenging. Expectation is high and children are motivated to ‘be the best that they can be’. All children work as hard as they can – it is our norm.

We follow the National Curriculum 2014 in all our subjects. Please click on the link below which will take you to a more detailed explanation about the National Curriculum.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210969/NC_framework_document_-_FINAL.pdf

However, we deliver the content of the National Curriculum through a variety of different ways which allow our children to learn in creative and richly engaging environments. This allows them to find a love of learning in everything they do. Our school curriculum is carefully designed to ensure coverage and progression through exciting, broad and balanced learning experiences. The curriculum provides pupils with memorable experiences, in addition to diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills. All planning builds upon prior learning to ensure that every child achieves. Pupils know the purpose for their learning, how to refine their work, the links between the subjects or themes and the relevance of these to their everyday lives.

Literacy - we have a traditional approach to literacy learning whereby children have lessons in spelling, grammar, handwriting and reading comprehension. Twice a week, the children in Year 1-6 write a longer piece of writing based on all sorts of things from traditional story-telling, to creative writing, from non-fiction writing about the Vikings to information texts about food and nutrition. Learning is always driven by what the children need to do next in order to get better and better. We make Literacy fun and you will see the teachers writing as much as the children as they guide learning through their marking.

Reading and Phonics- we use Oxford Reading Tree as our reading scheme and our phonics work is based on Letters and Sounds.

History and Geography - we try to make these subjects as lively and hands on as possible as we believe that if subjects come to life, children will remember them. In History, for example, we dress up and role-play about famous people from the past. We invite visitors into school and we go out on trips and visits.

Art - we have a specialist art teacher who teaches all year groups. He is a water colour artist in his own right.

PE - we have a specialist PE and Sports coach who leads our PE curriculum. We strongly believe that activity, team work and fair play are the foundations of so many things in life, building towards a happy, healthy and active future as adults.

Music - we have a specialist music teacher who comes to school for two days a week and teaches all year groups. She is passionate about singing and our school choir is outstanding. Our music curriculum inspires our children to take up piano, key board, drums, guitar and individual singing tuition as well as to perform in concerts and plays both in school and out in our community.

Ofsted

We are delighted to be currently judged as a 'good school' with outstanding for 'leadership and management and for our 'early years provision'. We were last inspected in October 2019. To view all our Ofsted reports please click here

WHY JOIN OUR ACADEMY?

Staff Benefits

Development:

We are committed to developing all staff at all levels through high quality development opportunities, resources, and experiences  that will support you on your professional learning journey with AET.

Lifestyle:

We champion agile/flexible working across the Trust to help our people achieve an optimal work/life balance.

Money:

All staff have access to our pension schemes (Local Government Pension Scheme and Teachers’ Pension Scheme).  Everyone has free access to financial advice & support and can access a wide range of retail discounts through our AET Benefits scheme. We also offer Technology Loans to help with any big digital purchases.

Wellbeing:

We recognise that mental wellbeing is just as important as physical and have set up employee assistance programmes which offer free and confidential counselling 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our employees can access our health cash place scheme from BHSF.