School partnership: Isle of Wight
Published: 14 October 2019
I joined Broadlea School in the Isle of Wight in 2016 and revised the science curriculum for the whole school, working with my colleagues to ensure exciting learning opportunities were embedded for all classes. In 2018, The Ogden Trust endorsed my Primary Science Teacher Award, in recognition of the work I had done. I have been fortunate to work with the Trust since then and now lead the Isle of Wight School Partnership.
The Ogden Trust is like a big extended family. There is always someone at the end of the phone, or on email, and everyone is so warm and welcoming – it helps to make you feel valued, supported and in turn, encourages you to make a real difference.
Since starting and leading the Isle of Wight Partnership, the Trust has provided a real support network, and people who are confident in my skills and ideas. This has made me feel much more confident in the role of driving physics forward, particularly on the tough, busy days.
We now have more schools wanting to be a part of our partnership and the profile of physics is definitely being raised! The schools directly within our partnership have benefitted from the ongoing support, Phizzi CPD and meetings. However, I have noticed that each school is starting to take ownership and lead their own ideas – working with their own local schools to involve them in wider initiatives, such as our Dark Skies Carnival.
The partnership funding and meeting time means that as a group, we have specific time to explore and develop our ideas, something that it would be really hard to plan for without that support. Having time as a partnership makes us all feel important and valued and helps us recognise that the work we are doing is impactful – it has also helped us to develop our identity as a group.
As a partnership, we have been able to take part in the Phizzi electricity training, which has enhanced our resources and our expertise. The Phizzi electricity boxes have proved hugely successful across all year groups in our school, who have used them to develop problem-solving skills and scientific enquiry. The boxes enable us to run lessons with ease, with access to the detailed lesson plans and the resources ready in a matter of minutes. We can’t wait to complete our forces training this year.
Since starting our partnership in September 2018, we have worked with over 24 schools, supporting them to run Space Camps, Physics Clubs and the First Lego League: Mission Moon. Quite a few of our schools have achieved Bronze, Silver and Gold Space Marks this year; we would like to support others to achieve this too, so we will be continuing with Space Camps and Space Weeks in all schools in 2019/20. We will also continue to develop our Physics Club Kits, with the hope we can get six half terms worth of boxes together which we will rotate across the schools. We also want to develop science capital and understand how to increase the science capital in our children, families and communities, so we will be working on better understanding this over this current academic year.
Claire Loizos
Isle of Wight Partnership Co-ordinator
Broadlea School,
(September 2019)