Personal Development forms a vital part of our wider curriculum.  This takes many forms: trips and experiences, directly taught curriculum and our whole school club offer.  Personal development is planned around the Trust's four values in addition to the core curriculum of RE and PSHE.

Challenging

Your child will be challenged in a wide variety of ways:

• Every child learns an instrument - currently djembe drums in Year 3 and ukulele in Year 5.

• Performing to an audience - our children have multiple opportunities to develop confidence in public speaking and to celebrate their learning, show off their singing and instrumental prowess or to put on a play. This is planned for from nursery onwards.

• Sporting excellence: within the year, every child will have an opportunity to take part in a range of sporting inter- house competitions, such as cross country, and take part in the annual sports day. They are encourages to have a go, represent their house and to try their best.

• Academic Excellence and sharing success: children are encouraged to challenge themselves to explore different subjects.  All progress is celebrated and subject awards are held 6 times a year.  There are also house competitions in performance poetry. 

• Outdoor learning.  Our outdoor learning programme will challenge your child to learn new schools from Early Years onwards through a progressive curriculum. This will require them to make dynamic risk assessments in different situations, whilst immersing themselves in the wonders of the natural world. 

• Responsibilities: Thoughout the school, the children are given different roles of responsibility.  This could be an expectation to help tidy up, set up the hall for assembly or for lunch, be a librarian, Eco- warrior or Travel ambassador. 

Nurturing

• Relationships: We pride ourselves on the nurturing relationships that are present within the school.  Your child will be valued, cared for and considered in all that we do with compassion and kindness.  There is a well planned and comprehensive relationships curriculum to help children understand and be empathetic towards others - this is part of our taught PSHE programme.

• Behaviour: From our nursery onwards, children are taught the routines and expectations that are needed for calm and purposeful learning environments.  We have a positive behaviour management approach which is consistent across the school and linked directly to our rules of being both kind and brilliant.  Where children struggle and display challenging behaviours we see behaviour as communication and will work with both child and parents to tailor our approach to meet the needs of the class and the classroom. 

• Well planned assemblies: our assemblies are planned around our values, significant events and dedicated days such as: Martin Luther King Day, Deaf Awareness, LGBQT month and so on. 

• Kindness: Be kind is one of our two rules and is talked about, spotted and praised all the time.  Kindness is explained and expected by all the school community

Inspiring

• Enriching and inspirational programme of trips, visits and visitors: To bring learning to life, there is a comprehensive programme of experiences that should inspire your child to learn more, to persevere, to be resilient and to problem solve.  This has included trips to local places such as: Wittenham Clumps (Earth Trust), Sutton Courtenay Environmental Education Centre, Didcot Railway Museum,as well as further afield, such as  Hampton Court Palace and the beach!

• In addition to the trips there are a number of opportunities where the experts visit us!  This has included hands on workshops, living history experiences and regular visits from the team at Didcot Library to continue to develop the love of reading. 

• As part of our assembly programme, we often talk about people who have been inspiring and what they have done to change our world for the better. Rosa Parks, David Attenborough and many more.

• Clubs: There are a range of clubs on offer to children at Sires Hill. This includes an early morning football club and our Club Friday.  This is when we deliver clubs so that every child can be inspired to learn or further develop a challenge or interest from 2:85pm till 3:30pm on a Friday. 

Empowering

• We want children at Sires Hill to be empowered with knowledge to keep themselves safe and this is achieved through our PHSE programme: Jigsaw.  Children will be taught about keeping themselves safe in the world: relationships, physical health and online safety and to empower them to speak out and seek help when they have concerns. 

• Children will be taught about drugs, alcohol and smoking including vaping, and the detriment to health that can come from these activities so that they can make their own informed choices.  This is taught at an appropriate age and stage. 

• We use the NSPCC materials to help children to identify the difference between safe and unsafe touch this will mean that they can 'speak out and stay safe'.

• Throughout our Jigsaw programme and through assemblies, children are exposed to contentious issues: e.g. the right to an education, race equality, freedom of speech.  Children are given the tools to debate based on deep knowledge and the morality in order to do so.  We want our children to stand up for what is right. 

• Being an 'upstander' and not a bystander! Children are taught to stand up for what is right in school and beyond.  They are empowered by having a strong moral compass based on kindness and mutual respect.  We take about this in regards to bullying, but also identifying when things simply are not right and doing something about it by seeking help from the most appropriate person. 

• Being a leader - leading aspects of school life to have a responsibility and to forge teamwork. 

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