Current initiatives
As always – there’s a lot going on at St Peter’s!
Science is always at the forefront of our thoughts and we like to think we provide our children with an exceptional start to their scientific journeys.
Following on from our Space Celebration Day which involved over 200 children from across Thanet and Canterbury visiting St Peter’s to take part in a range of exciting space themed investigations, we have some incredibly exciting news to share! St Peter's are in the process of arranging a school contact session with The International Space Station through the ARISS program. This will allow our children to pose questions to astronauts who are actually currently onboard the International Space Station in orbit above our heads and will be a truly memorable event. The event will be broadcast to all children and staff in school and could inspire our children to be the next Tim Peake! We do not know the date this will happen – we are in the hands of NASA! – but it will be some time this year. At present we believe we are the only school in the UK to be given this opportunity in 2023!
Recently our Year 3 children highlighted that St Peter's could be more energy efficient after completing their Geography fieldwork unit. They are now looking at ways to help the school to be more any efficient and save money. We have already signed up to Energy Sparks which is an online, school specific energy analysis tool and education programme. Moving forward, the children will be looking at how solar panels could be used to help cut energy costs and hopefully applying for grants to have them installed. This work ties in with the important work our Eco School Council are doing this year.
The Arts are always close to our hearts at St Peter’s.
We are very proud of our Platinum Artsmark Award, which is an Arts Council accredited award to celebrate and recognise our high quality Arts and creative learning at St Peter’s. We are committed to giving our children with an arts-rich creative curriculum as part of their school day, as well in our varied and exciting extra-curricular clubs. We are very lucky to have an Arts Team of specialist teachers in Drama, Dance, Art and Music that are dedicated to providing engaging and inclusive Arts experiences throughout the school year. We take part in the Coram Shakespeare for Schools Festival every year and recently performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury.
We have an amazing team of Arts Leaders from Years 4-6, who lead and support arts activities at St Peter’s alongside the Arts teachers throughout the school year. They have supported our Year 3 children in their Nativity rehearsals and will be taking a central role in our Arts Festival workshops. We also host an annual Arts Leaders event for the Artsmark Day to Create and teachers and young people from local primary schools take part in a series of creative workshops together. We encourage our Arts Leaders to be confident and creative role-models and work together as young arts ambassadors.
St Peter’s are the lead school for the Thanet Artsmark Champions Network with four other primary schools in the Thanet area. We work together to share ideas and support for Artsmark activities as a local Arts hub. We have recently formed a group partnership with the Powell Cotton Museum and their Learning and Engagement Officer and we have hosted a loan boxes CPD session. Each of our schools will be borrowing museum loan boxes from Powell Cotton Museum to use as inspirational starting points for arts activities. We are also currently establishing a supportive network focusing on Art and Design, alongside an adviser from Canterbury Christ Church University and NSEAD and other primary schools.
We are excited to be taking part in Artswork’s Creative Careers programme this year, where our Year 5 classes will learn about the range of creative careers available in the film industry, make their own films and manage their own class budget in January/February 2023. We will be set creative challenges to meet in our film making process and have access to the industry professional’s resources to help us along the way. A Yr 5 class has also been selected to take part in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s research project, Time to Act. With funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the RSC is working with Year 5 teachers and pupils across England to assess the impact of rehearsal room practices for improving young people’s reading, writing, and perceptions of themselves as learners.
We will also be taking part in the Turner Contemporary’s Portfolio X Competition 2023, and we are enthusiastic to start creating artwork in response to the theme: Rising. The competition has joined up with Rise Up Clean Up, a local environmental advocacy group set up to help tackle the litter pollution on Margate’s beaches. We will be collaborating with our school’s Eco-Council as well as across our arts clubs to highlight this important environmental issue.
We are currently in the midst of planning our Arts Celebration Days for Wednesday 22nd March and Thursday 23rd March and this year we are working closely with our Eco School Council and will have a focus this year on eco-issues, particularly those connected to our coastline and marine life.