On Wednesday, I visited Great Yarmouth Charter Academy and I was truly blown away by how extraordinary the school has become in the space of 5 weeks. This blog post will summarise what I witnessed to be excellent practice:

Chanting Poetry: Invictus

Whilst pupils were entering the hall to go to assembly, I could hear lines from Invictus being chanted with such rhythm and passion. The drama teacher would recite a line in an animated fashion and he would project his voice to resonate to every corner of the room. Pupils would recite back the line or complete the sentence of the line. If it wasn’t good enough then the teacher would repeat the line and get the pupils to recite it again.

Peaceful Corridors

Pupils walked in silence, single-file, on the left hand side with their bag in their right hand. Pupils transitioned through the corridor smiling and greeting their teachers wishing them ‘Good Morning, Sir!’ ‘Good Morning, Miss’. There was no chaos. Pupils would arrive at their teacher’s door with a sense of urgency, purpose and desire to learn. I saw the transition between form time and period one and it was incredibly peaceful and pleasant. Teachers stood in the middle of the corridor reminding pupils of the corridor behaviour expected. One of the teachers remarked that this transition took one minute where in previous years pupils would be arriving 15-20 minutes late to class.

Uniform

There has clearly been a huge push on uniform because pupils looked incredibly professional. Pupils’ shirts are tucked in, skirts at the knee, ties are immaculate and also hiding their shirt’s top button. I didn’t see any pupils wearing hoodies, coats or trainers. Pupils with scrappy uniform would be dealt with straight away.

Silent lessons

The school’s headteacher,  Barry Smith, took me around to see lots of different lessons. This was the highlight of my visit. Every classroom I walked into I saw pupils SLANTing. They were in silence listening to the teacher talking or watching the teacher writing on the board. I didn’t see any low level disruption in all of the classroom I walked into. I didn’t hear or see pupils whispering to each other, passing notes or speaking rudely or being disrespectful to their teacher. More importantly, I didn’t see a difference between how the kids were SLANTing before Barry entered the room compared to after he had entered. Why? This is because they were SLANTing throughout the lesson.

I went to two English lessons, and in one lesson pupils were in silence writing an essay about different overarching themes of the play, Romeo and Juliet. In the second lesson, I saw a pupil detail the context behind the poem, London, using a wide range of sophisticated language. I was almost brought to tears hearing an eleven-year old pupil share accurate insights into the poem in such a confident and articulate manner. His teacher was so pleased and she showered him with praise.

I watched the Head of Maths teach and she was the respected authority in the classroom. Her pupils were listening intently, they were SLANTing and speedily working away to complete their worksheet of questions. I saw a full 40 minutes of teaching and learning. No disruptions. Every second mattered and every second was utilised for learning.

Pursuit of Happiness

Pupils and teachers are genuinely happy at Charter Academy. Pupils are learning because teachers are able to teach with a clear and consistent behaviour policy being implemented in the school. I ate lunch with the pupils and lots of them shared their joy of being able to learn. More importantly, teachers are beaming with pride over how well-behaved and keen their pupils are to learn. One pupil was very honest and admitted to being the pupil who would truant and hide in the toilets. She admitted how behind she is academically due to the hours she spent outside of the classroom and is now doing extra revision at home and attending after school catch-up classes.

One of the Prefects I found standing in the crowd during break shared with me “I am really loving school. I am learning more than I ever thought possible. My teachers are great. Mr Smith has turned around my school. I am proud to be Charter.”

It is very early days but the school is a wonderful place to be for pupils and teachers and I’m very excited to see what Barry and his team achieve. Thank you to all who had me in theirclassroom!