Day #3 PM The Grange School

The Head Teacher at this school was quite impressive!  His name is Barry Carney and he is one of the most enthusiastic educators I have come across. His spirit of constant learning is quite fantastic.  

Check out their website!

The Grange Website

This school is a 'through' school.  This means that students ages 4-18 are served.  In all practicality, a student could spend their entire career in the same school.  This was quite a unique situation.  One year ago, The Grange consisted of four separate schools; 4- 5 year olds (reception), Primary (6-10), Secondary(11-16) and Sixth Form. Sixth Form would be equivalent to the USA system of the Junior and Senior years of high school.  They opened an incredibly beautiful, brand new building in the community that houses all four schools under the same roof.  You might imagine the opportunities for collaboration that are now available.  In this time of change, the school is challenged with keeping on with the good things that they all have been doing with merging the incredible thinking from all four schools to form a cohesive school.  

A major focus for the secondary school has been to integrate literacy skills across the content areas.  They new students needed to be applying literacy skills all day.  They have these 'Literacy Alert' flashes that attempt to grab the students' attention.  Staff has created these posters to convey this around the school.

Another example of this includes a speaking and listening aspect for holding conversations.  

The Grange strives to get students involved in their literacy push.  They have set up different structured opportunities for students to be involved in leadership roles with Literacy.

More later...I'm soo far behind on sharing everything I've seen and taken away from this trip soo far!