On Friday 4th December I was able to join with Mrs Buttress, Miss Dawson and Liz White, our external school improvement advisor, touring the classrooms and watching lessons in phonics, guided reading and also story time. In January last year I had joined a group of external advisors to observe reading across the school. They gave us some points for improvement and this was an opportunity to see how effective the training for staff has been.

We saw a total of nine lessons across the school. The work in phonics, which had been the main area to work on, was excellent. We saw children engaged and enjoying learning sounds and letters. The teaching was really snappy and kept the children ‘on their toes’.

We heard some wonderful story reading with pupils sitting on the edge of their chairs waiting to hear what happened next.  Mellers children are certainly continuing to develop a real love of books and reading!

In their guided reading sessions we heard children being asked some really deep and searching questions about the books being read. It showed that they understood the characters in the stories and the plot.  It would have been great if we could have heard a little more of the children reading out loud.

At the end of the day we concluded that the progress made with this area of school improvement had been significant. However at Mellers we never just sit back and think we have accomplished something we always strive to make things even better.