WORKING FOR OUR CHILDREN

Spire Infant School

http://spire-inf.derbyshire.sch.uk/

Parkside Community School

http://www.parkside.derbyshire.sch.uk/

Derbyshire County Council

You can find more information regarding Education Services and a wider range of council services by visiting the Derbyshire County Council website:

https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/

Ofsted Parent View

https://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/

DFE Performance Tables

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk

Gussies

Gussies Kitchen is a community eating cafe in normal times open to everyone which opened in 2016 operating on a Tuesday between 4 p.m - 5:30 p.m. 

A team of volunteers lovingly cook and serve a 3 course meal using food that is surplus to supermarket requirements and would in past years have gone to landfill but is still perfectly good to eat.

A meal can be purchased with a suggested donation of £2.50 for adults, 50p for children aged 5 -15yrs and FREE for unders 5's. 

Currently during the Covid period we provide food parcels to households with needs (we do not have criteria, every household is different). 

To apply for a food parcel please complete the following survey and read the information given. 

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FGC7P9Z

ActivALL

We are very fortunate and grateful to be sponsored by ActivALL. Each week they buy a new book for our reading vending machine, which helps encourage our children to read. Each week we upload our scores on the ActivALL board and our teaching staff have even been known to enter online competitions against other teachers in the UK. 

Greggs 

We work very closely with Greggs Bakery who have funded some excellent initatives for our children. They are sponsorsing a summer school trip to the beach for some of our children, they provide breakfast supplies for our children and they recently sponsored our board game library. Each week a child from each year group is allowed to choose a  board game from the library to take home. This initative is aimed to encourage communication, sharing, fairness and quality family time. It has been a huge success so far!

Magazine articles and Podcasts 

Click here  to read an article published by Promethean about our use of technology to enhance leanring at Spire.

Click here to view an article published in the Derbyshire Times about our Year 6 end of year photo gallery. 

Click here to read about our work with the local council to esnure our children are protected from bike theft. 

Click here to view an article published in Derbyhire Life. 

Click here to view a recent article published in the Education Today magazine and written by Promethean about our use of technology in the classroom to engage learners. 

Click here to listen to a podcast from the Pearson's Teaching Awards which features Mr Bramley discussing challenges schools have been facing and ideas for best practice. 

Click here to view a video produced by the BBC commending Spire Juniors on their innivative approach in ensuring happiness and healthy well-being of our children during exam periods. 

Click here to read an article in the local newspaper celebrating Spire Junior School's approach to 'plastic pollution', describing them as 'leading the way'. 

Click here to access a newspaper article thanking Spire children for litter picking in the local area and taking care and pride in their environment. 

Click here to read an  interview with Headteacher,Dave Shaw, as he explains the excitement around school when returning after the national school closures due to the Covid pandemic. 

Click here to watch a 'School Case Study' video prodcued by Promethean. 

Click here to read an article in The Derbyshire Times about Spire's recent award nomination. 

Click here to read a post from Derbyshire and Proud about the sculpture 'Coralee' made with the help of Spire Junior Pupils. 

Red Nose Day 

Our 2023 Red Nose Day celebrations involved our children dressing up in red and taking part in numerous physical activities across school all to raise money for a great cause. Some of the activities included a penalty shoot out against Mr Bramley and a squat challenge with Miss Higginbottom. 

Aspirations Week 

Here at Spire we strongly believe in raising children's aspirations and providing them with life skills to be equipped for the future. Tpo help broaden horizons and open our children's eyes to opportuntiies we held our very own aspirations week where a variety of occupations held inspiring assemblies for our children. These people included nurses, firefighters, cruise theatre performers, florists, football CEOs, a surgeon and the police and it was a great opportunity for children to ask questions and learn about the required skills for the role. 

Chatsworth Estate 

We are very fortunate to have formed a partnership with Chatsworth Estate. They have supported us with resources for our 'Create' art and D.T.topics. Next year, the children across school will also undertake a two week local studies project, which will focus on Chatsworth. For example, our Year 6 children, who as part of their 'Discover' topic are studying the Ancient Greeks, will look at the ceiling murals at Chatsworth which contain many Greek Gods. They will then look at cretaing their own ceiling painting, pictures of which will be displayed on the Chatsworth website. 

Here are a few pictures of the mermaid sculpture our children helped make at Chatsworth as part of their Radical Horizons sculpture trail. 

Mini Police 

We are really excited to be the first school in North Derbyshire to be working with Derbyshire Constabulary in launching Mini Police with our Year 5 children. The aim of the programme is to introduce children to a positive experience of policing and to get them involved in the local community. Below is just a few examples of the work done as part of this programme. 

Click here to view our Mini Police Graduation Ceremony, 

School Fayre 

Our school fayre took place on Saturday 25th June 2022 and after 2 years without such an event it was a really good turn out for the local community. There were representaives from the Infant School, Police, Firebrigade, Foodbank, Chesterfield FC and local Karate Club to name just a few. The event was a huge success raising iover £1000 for 'Friends of Spire'. Thank you to all those that came. A highlight for many was when Mr Shaw, Mr Davies and Police Officer Lee took to the stocks for children to throw wet sponges at their faces. 

Jubilee Celebrations 

At Spire, we celebrated the Queen's Platinum Jubillee in style with a huge picnic on the school field. We lined up the tables and chairs to create a huge banquet table down the school drive. Children wore red, white and blue clothing and children across school made decorations to hang up. The event was a huge success. 

National Lottery Community Funding

We were very fortunate to be awarded Community Funding by the National Lottery in January 2021. This has helped fund many great extra-curricular experiences for our children including robotics clubs, craft club, street dance and cookery lessons. In addition to this, we were able to use the funding to provide holiday clubs for our children. 

Harvest for the Community 

Click on this link to see our harvest domino cereal box attempt https://youtu.be/Rv5N5_YE0wk

Chesterfield Community Trust

Some of our Year 5 pupils have worked closely with Chesterfield Community Trust to complete a 'Reading Stars' support programme. This has helped both inspire and improve their reading. 

Children in Need

This year to help raise money for Children in Need the children took part in a penalty shoot out against Chesterfield FC Chester Mouse. It was a great event and raised lots of moeny for charity. 

Pathways  of Chesterfield

Pathways of Chesterfield is a service for the homeless, and those at risk of homelessness with the vision that everyone in the community has a place they can call a home. Here at Spire Juniors, we have been working closely with the charity to help support them. We recently made some blankets from crisp packets to donate to those in need. We are now looking into other ways of raising money to help others in the future.

The NHS

We are excpetionally proud of all the key workers and how hard they have worked throughout this national pandemic. We have shown our support and respect in many ways such as making 'Thank You' cards which we sent to the Chesterfield Royal Hospital. We have also created a NHS mural on the side of our school building in addition to placing a nurse statue outside the school premises. 

North MIdlands Community Hub

We are thrilled to host a variety of computing courses here at Spire led by Teach Computing. The latest course to be deliver was 'We are Computing Leaders of Primary Computing' and was a huge success. 

Chesterfield Rotary Club 

A huge thank you to Chesterfield Rotary Club who donated some laptops to support our learning. It is greatly appreciated and your kind gesture will have such a postitive impact on our children's education. 

Shoe Aid 

Spire Junior School took part in an event run by 'Shoe Aid' a Nottinghamshire charity. We did 'our bit' in helping 'STEP UP' to footwear poverty. We donated over 75 pairs of shoes to the charity. 

Promethean Partnership

We are very fortunate to have been asked to become a partnership school for Promethean. They will be using our first-hand knowledge of technology in the classroom to support with several advertisements, showcasing our knowledge in magazine articles and guidance documents. Our partnership may in turn help develop other teachers across the country with their own teaching methods. As a previous winner of the competition, Mr Bramley has also been a guest judge on the Classroom Stories competition this year, where has has judged all the online entries and choen winners for a Promethean screen. 

Links with the local Care Home

We have a strong link with a local care home in Chesterfield. Usually, at Christmas time, our school choir visits the home to sing carols to the residents. This year, due to Covid regulations and with no visits permitted, it has not been possible. Instead some of our pupils wrote letters to the residents. They were thrilled to get responses, addressed directly to them. 

Lamp Post Orienteering

To encourage exercise and families and friends working together, we have set up a lamp post orienteering course for local members of the community to partake in. This involves reading the map to locate the numbers on each lamp post. Complete it all, and you could be in with a chance of winning a prize. 

Community Picture Hunt

During the National Lockdown we set up a picture hunt for the local community to help keep spirits high and to encourage both a healthy mind and body. The aim of this activity was to find the photographs located around the local area. This was shared on our social media platforms and used by members of the public in addition to our own pupils and families.