Acorns to Oak Trees

Article 29: Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights, as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures, and the environment.

Personal Development Programme: Acorns to Oak Trees.

We are delighted to share our personal development programme: Acorns to Oak Trees Graduate Award program. It has been written with our pupils and for our pupils. It is unique to The Acorns and offers experiences and achievements that go beyond the National Curriculum.

Why have a Graduate Award Program?

• To make our curriculum even more exciting and geared to what our pupils like to do and learn
• To help pupils to develop characteristics of effective learning that are used across school and life
• To encourage pupils and families for supporting our ethos
• To make our school an even better place to learn
• To help pupils contribute to our school, their family and the local community
• To give our pupils a rich and varied diet of experiences
• To involve parents in their children’s development

Two Mirrored Aims                                                    

1. Develop personal skills, health, wellbeing and knowledge to make a contribution to our school community, and our local community
2. Understand and enjoy our school and local community, and in doing so, develop personally by valuing and respecting others

Rich experiences

Every year, pupils will enjoy new challenges and develop skills in exciting ways. It could be singing to residence at a local care home, building a campfire and experiencing a sunset, performing to an audience or enjoying a trip to the theatre.

Tracking Progress

At three points across the year pupils will reflect on the experiences they have had, and those they are looking forward to. In July, pupils will look ahead to their next year and the experience they will have access to; December will allow a look at what has been done in Autumn Term and look forward to which experiences they have left to do; June will allow pupils the chance to review their year.

The experiences that we offer are centred around further development of our Characteristics of Effective Learning.

We want our pupils to be able to:

• Be confident and ready to try new things
• Be respectful to those around them, in school and in the wider community
• Know how to stay safe
• Be health-conscious, eat well and stay active, swim and compete in sports
• Perform or sing a simple piece of music, dance and drama and appreciate others’ work
• Design and make artistic and practical objects and appreciate others’ work, including work of celebrated artists and architects
• Learn with increasing independence and have ambition
• Show empathy and understanding of others in school, at home, in our town, our country and overseas
• Know what is happening in the wider world and express an opinion on current affairs
• Speak clearly and confidently using Standard English
• Read well, for pleasure, for study and for information
• Communicate in well-written, grammatically correct, accurately spelt sentences and paragraphs
• Use numbers confidently to solve problems when studying and in daily life

The booklet that follows sets out the experiences on offer. You will see that we need your help if children are going to succeed and gain the full benefit of the program. The experiences that are perfect to do at home are highlighted.