At the end of the Summer term, our school was awarded the Gold Award for our development with our OPAL scheme. OPAL is an award-winning, mentor supported school improvement programme that addresses all the areas that schools must plan for if they want to strategically and sustainably improve the quality of their play opportunities. OPAL is the only programme of its kind that has been independently proven to sustainably improve the quality of play in British primary schools.
Our children are still loving our 'Wheeled Zone' during playtimes. Before using any equipment, the rules and responsibilities are introduced during our playtime assemblies. All equipment is risk assessed before use and the children are becoming brilliant at being dynamic risk assessors during their play.
As you may be aware, nearly all schools provide wheeled play for children in Early Years in the form of bikes, trikes and scooters. As with much of the early years offer, these opportunities are withdrawn far too early on in children’s school life. Anything with wheels can be used by children in their play to for transporting themselves, others or play resources about the site. Locomotor play, role play, socio-dramatic play and fantasy play are all supported by having a rich selection of wheeled play available.
A good selection of wheeled play resources will provide for many kinds of muscle development, arms, legs, shoulders and core. They will help increase coordination, balance, spatial awareness and prediction.
As part of our development plan we have introduced buggies and scooters. The children have to stay in the allocated area and only use the buggies and scooters that we provide.
Due to this area being so popular we are in need of more buggies and scooters. If you have any to donate, please drop them off either to the main office
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