We are proud to have a range of pupil led groups across the school. Here are some of the groups that we have in place:
Play Leaders
Play Leaders are made up of a selection of Year Five and Year Six pupils who support their younger pupils and their own peer group in positive and purposeful play by teaching and encouraging engagement in playground activities. They are responsible for and willing to give up some of their spare time in order to help and play with other pupils in their school.
They work from 12:10-1:20pm on a rota basis and lead by example. Support is provided in the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 playgrounds and the play leaders may work with targeted individual students or small groups.
Our play leaders show that they are patient, able to teach others new playground skills and are willing to help other children to develop and extend friendship groups, also increase in pupil self-confidence.
Eco-Warriors
At Downsell Primary School, we ensure all children develop an awareness of environmental topics in the classroom that will impact our world. We provide children with an opportunity to take leadership of environmental issues in our school. Additionally, we educate children on topical, global, environmental issues. This enables the children to have local and global responsibilities of environmental issues. Being an Eco Warrior develops a variety of skills: leaderships, communication skills, speaking and listening, resilience and team work.
Children in Year 3 - 6 can be chosen to be eco-warriors.
The Eco-warriors carry out activities such as:
- Collating ideas from each of the classes of things we could implement across the school
- Ensuring that as a school we are recycling effectively
- Gardening club
- Promoting Energy Efficiency (eco-warriors check classes everyday)
- Organising Eco-friendly activities
- Working towards the Eco Award
- Helping school leaders to make decisions about Eco related issues
- Meeting with Governors of our school to update them on the progress of our school in becoming an Eco-friendly School
- Litter picking
- Making sure lunch hall is clean, tidy and reminding their peers of the expectations
- Creating posters around the school to inform the children about. e.g. use of less paper, saving energy, food waste etc.
Sports Captains
At Downsell we firmly believe that PE develops students' competence and confidence to take part in a range of physical activities that become a central part of their lives, both in and out of school.
Therefore, our key aim for PE is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to take part in physical activities and are exposed to high quality PE curriculum that allows them to shine and demonstrate their skills set in a range of different sports.
Sports Captains at Downsell play a vital part in how PE is shaped at Downsell as they are the link between the children and teachers and provide the feedback from their peers. This informs the PE Lead/teachers on how to make PE lessons even better at Downsell. The Sports Captains are selected by their peers from each class as the teacher explains to the class about the roles and responsibilities of a Sports Captain and based on the criteria, the children vote for their choice of Sports Captain from each class. The Sports Captain then represents their class and helps run events such as Sports Day, carry out Pupil Voice and various other duties.
Digital Leaders
Our Digital Leaders are pupils from KS1 and KS2 who meet every half term with the Online Safety Leader to discuss Computing in the school, online safety and any special events related to Computing.
KS1 Digital Leaders are selected by their teachers and KS2 Digital Leaders fill in an application form and are shortlisted for a group interview.
Our Digital Leaders work hard in ensuring that ICT equipment such as laptops are working for Computing lessons and help to deliver assemblies and workshops. They play an important part in delivering Online Safety Breakfast Mornings and helping to plan Online Safety Days.
SMSC Reps
Our SMSC Reps are pupils from KS1 and KS2 who meet every half term with the SMSC Leader to discuss SMSC in the school and any special events related to SMSC.
KS1 and KS2 SMSC Reps are selected by their teachers who demonstrate good communication skills and interpersonal skills.
Our SMSC Reps work hard in ensuring that all classes deliver SMSC assemblies, embed SMSC vocabulary and support in SMSC events such as fundraising for Red Nose Day and Macmillan Coffee Morning.
History Detectives
At Downsell Primary school, we want our children to have an awareness of their immediate local area and how history contributes to a greater overall understanding of the bigger picture.
At present, the detective’s club consists of KS2 pupils who were selected by invitation, with the intention of expanding this further to include KS1.
The previous Victorian junior school building was replaced by the school you see today. We are very fortunate to have memorial plagues linked to the World wars and the role of honour with past pupils of that school, who fought for the country. With such a wealth of history to discover, the History detectives club was established, with the aim to use these historical artefacts to carry out investigations to make links with our school’s past. We meet once a term to carry out research relating to our school and the local area regarding the war and the consequential effects.