Community Teams

Pupil Leadership Team

We are very proud to have our established Pupil Leadership Team. A group of children from Years 5 and 6 are nominated by their teachers each year and are instrumental in developing all aspects of IJS. The children have enthusiastically agreed to take on many roles and responsibilities around school including helping to supervise the dinner hall, manning the school office, showing visitors around and acting as ‘buddies’ to younger children.

The team also work alongside the school’s Senior Leadership Team in carrying out some monitoring and evaluation across the school. They look at the learning environment, in children’s books and meet with other pupils to gather their thoughts and views too.

Meetings are held regularly with a member of staff so the team have the opportunity to discuss what is working well here at IJS and where they have spotted areas for improvement. The children are really enthusiastic about this important role and we appreciate the impact of their work around school.

See what one of our PLT have to say:

I am part of the Pupil Leadership Team (PLT) which means I have some jobs to do around school such as:

Library (8.40-9.00am). The library job is basically making sure children put their books away properly and we help anyone who doesn’t know their reading level to choose an appropriate book.
Office Assistant (12.25ish-12.55pm). The lunchtime office assistant helps in and looks after the office when Mrs Pugh and Mrs Morris have their lunch. We answer the phone, welcome visitors and sort letters out for classes.
Lunch hall (12.25-12.55pm). The lunch hall job consists of handing out dinners, collecting plates when children have finished, and making sure water jugs are topped up. We stay in the dinner hall after eating and when everyone is done, we help clear up.

Coming soon: the Buddy Bench. Mrs Lowe has picked it out and ordered it already. It will be outside for all year groups to use. If children have any kind of friendship problem, bullying problem or even if all your friends are sick that day you can come and there will be at least 2 people there. If you have no one to play with they will help find you someone and you might make a new friend! If you have a problem or just want to chat about something that is going on, come to us and we’ll solve it. However, if it something serious you should go to your teacher.

We also make decisions in our PLT meetings, for example, the Buddy Bench was our idea. We also show visitors round and help with recruitment. We recently went to visit the Houses of Parliament to learn more about how democracy works and then were able to put this into practice when we met Liz Kendall, our local MP.

We all wear lanyards with our names and photos on so if you want to talk to any of us about anything, we are easy to spot.

House Sports Captains

Our Sports Council run a range of activities during lunchtimes. We have a timetabled schedule of events displayed on our sports board which communicates to the children which lunchtime activities will be ran on each day. The Sports Captains are responsible for overseeing the activities and for ensuring that they run smoothly. They also decide upon a manage house sporting competitions throughout the year.

Each house has a sports captain elected by their house members. During the first few months of each school year, year 6 pupils put forward their names to be a house sports captain. They go about campainging by making posters and stickers to encourage their house to vote for them. On voting day, sports captain nominees address their entire house with a speech to encourage members to vote for them. They also try to demonstrate a sporting skill. House members then have a chance to vote for who they would like to be their sports captain - democracy in action! Once selected, the sports leaders form the sports council.

Year 3 Testimonials

“They were energetic, they weren’t boring or saying “No you don’t do that” always put us first and tried to make sure we learned as well as having fun, they where very kind. All the sports leaders explained the rules of the game well and helped us when we were stuck and the two games, we played stuck in the mud and clear the area I never played before, so it was so much fun.”

– Lily-mae

“The year 5s were very energetic when they told us what to do in their sports lesson. It was very fun, and I was upset when it was over. It was the best day ever and was really happy with the two games we played because my team won both times.”

– Eirenie-Miya

Being a Sports Captain

“A sports captain roll in the school is if our teachers are not there is to be in charge of games and activities at break and lunch, we’ve came up with some games we think are the most suitable for everyone and can be played fairly and easily without any of classmates getting hurt such as, keep your tails, Clear the area, Bull in the ring. To become a sports leader, we had to teach the year 3’s with two of our favourite activities and the most challenging part for me was the questions we had to answer in out sports leaders booklets but really enjoyed having this opportunity and building my resilience But my favourite part was teaching the year 3’s”

- Sports Captain

“Sports captains teach people sports. We are able to take charge of sports games/activities at break and lunchtimes if teachers aren’t able to lead a game or we can also help our teachers and assist them and teach our peers how to play safely and fairly. We also teach games such as basketball-Bull in the ring. A game where players stand in the circle with one person in the middle: the players have to throw the ball around to each other without the person in the middle catching the ball. The number one skill I feel that is important for a sports leader is your initiative skills.”

– Sports Captain

Restorative Rangers

At IJS, our goal is to move away from a punitive culture to a restorative one, which has a greater focus on justice, and less on punishment.

Restorative practices are used to create systems of change, which promote respect, repair relationships, and re-integrate rather than isolate pupils. By helping the child think through their behaviour, its consequences and what they can do to make it better, we encourage children to take responsibility for their own behaviour.

Our Restorative Rangers are changed daily to allow all children the opportunity to learn the skills needed to resolve conflict in a restorative way. Using the key questions in the restorative process; Can you tell me what happened? What were you thinking and feeling at the time? What have you thought about and felt since? Who has been affected and in what way? How could things have been done differently? What needs to happen next to make things right? Our Rangers are able to use their own initiative, and experience using the practices in real world situations.

Testimonial

“The Rangers helped me by having a talk with me and someone who was annoying me in the playground. They asked us both questions, and the person stopped doing what they were doing and understood why he shouldn’t be doing it. I have had a turn being a Ranger too, I found it fun, and I helped lots of people by asking them the restorative questions.”

- Year 5 pupil