Children are at the centre of everything we do.

Here at Westmeads we have a child-led approach to learning where we place the child at the very centre of our curriculum.

We celebrate every child as an individual. Every aspect of our curriculum is carefully planned and sequenced around the specific cohort of children entering school, tailored to their interests, their prior learning and what motivates them as individuals. 

We use a curiosity approach with real life objects in our Early Years to promote awe and wonder and steer away from too many plastic premade toys. 

This approach filters through to our Key Stage 1 setting, where learning is led by thought-provoking over-arching questions that enable children to deepen their understanding of key concepts.

Parents as partners 

We believe the best way to do this is to work with our parents as partners in our child's education. As parents, you are invited into school as much as possible to work with us and fully share in your child’s educational journey. This includes a daily opportunity to settle your child into class in Reception and a termly showcase where you are invited to hear from your child what they have been learning about. The children themselves decide on and plan each showcase depending on their topic. Sometimes the children create plays or assemblies, and sometimes they design a quiz or curate a documentary... each and every one is unique and special just like our community. You have the opportunity to have input into the assessment of learning and share with us what your child has learnt at home as your child’s very first educator.  

Outdoor learning 

We have a level 3 Forest School trained teacher on our team who takes the children from every year group out to a forest for a term of forest school. We have our own onsite canopy area with fire pit where we learn to use a flint and steel to make a fire and toast yummy marshmallows. We also spend a term at Beach School following a carefully developed curriculum that uses our unique coastal setting to drive children’s learning in a meaningful and relevant way. Every classroom has its own outdoor area, which is harnessed to support learning opportunities throughout our curriculum, from growing our own vegetables to channelling water and understanding how materials work in Science. Research tells us that some children simply learn better by being outdoors! 

Infant School 

We are an infant school. This allows us to be specialists in early childhood education and to not compromise on any of our enabling environments. Our playground is designed for our young children to provide them with the very best opportunities for growth. As a Headteacher, I am an Early Years specialist with extensive experience in both teaching and training in Early childhood development. These really are the most important years of a child’s life. 

Inclusion 

Every child is welcome here. We very much believe in creating an inclusive environment where we explicitly learn about and celebrate what makes us different, special and unique.  

We celebrate everyone and we are genuinely interested in what makes your family unique and special. We explicitly teach about discrimination and provide a safe place for children to ask important questions about what can be perceived as difficult topics. We support our children through a diverse and engaging curriculum, with carefully selected Literacy Tree texts, to ask bigger questions of the world. 

Westmeads’ Little Kitchen 

We are very fortunate at Westmeads to have an in-house kitchen. We make all of our food from scratch in our very own kitchen with our very own team. Not only does this mean we can carefully cater for every and any dietary requirement in a sensitive and inclusive way, but also that our school smells of freshly homemade baked bread every morning... 

Enrichment 

We are incredibly proud of our enrichment offer here at Westmeads. We very much believe that a school is the heart of the community, so we take every opportunity to bring our community together to share in some exciting learning experiences. We have our star gazing evening where we use huge telescopes to see where Neil Armstrong landed on the moon; our sleepy story time where we bring you all back to school in your PJs to have a hot chocolate and share in the joy of a bedtime story together; our annual carnival where we create and make banners, costumes and instruments for our parade through the streets of Whitstable to the harbour stage to perform and our end of school show at the local community theatre to name but a few.  

Trips 

We have our own school minibus that we use to take the children on trips as often as we can. Every term, we start our topic with an immersive experience of either a trip out of school or a visitor in. We have recently been to Canterbury Cathedral and the Beaney Museum, Herne Bay Pier and a synagogue in Ramsgate. This year's plan is to take the children to Dreamland in Margate to explore design and technology! 

Our Unique Curriculum 

We believe that our children’s day starts from the minute they walk through our gate and we make sure we make good use of every minute they are with us. 

We are so fortunate to run our own wrap around care with our very own team who share in our values and vision. The team provide homemade snacks and a fun and exciting activity schedule throughout the week including karaoke and cooking.  

Our Wonderful Friends of Westmeads  

They organise discos, seasonal fairs and support the school by helping our garden look incredible and bright all year round. We really couldn’t achieve all we do without the support from our families.  

Break times 

We believe break times are an opportunity to support children’s interests. Our eldest children design clubs such as tag rugby and dance for their peers to join in on. We have our 'green' studio in the playground where children can design and create anything they wish from recycled materials during their break times and we always have fruit, milk and water available for children to help themselves to further developing the very important skill of self-regulation and promoting independence. 

This year we are redeveloping our library to include a sensory cave and treehouse. Once this is in place, children will be able to spend their break times enjoying a book, exploring the sensory cave or learning on one of school iPads. 

The Arts 

We have a full school Arts and Design curriculum which we carefully align to each topic, often inviting local artists and creatives into school to support with specific skills and inspire the children to pursue their own ideas We have our own onsite kiln we use to develop 3d art skills using clay. We have a specialist music teacher and a drumming teacher to support our children’s development in music.  

We value learning above all else 

Our entire staff team attend our INSET training days. We believe that at Westmeads, it is vital that everyone understands the learning that happens at school and so we invest in getting everyone, from our lunch time team to our support staff and office team, to training and create opportunities for us to work together to collaborate and learn from the very latest research. 

We know that every child has the potential to grow in the time they are with us.

Giles Andreae says in the children’s book, Giraffes Can’t dance, “We can all dance when we find music that we love.” 

We are all passionate, life-long learners and we model this to our children.