Our Partner school in the Netherlands

In October, Landywood pupils and staff were delighted to welcome visitors from our International Partner School in The Netherlands, OBS Juliana van Stolberg.

Four members of staff from the Dutch school enjoyed two action-packed days with us, meeting pupils, staff and parents. This important partnership promises to help children in both schools become global citizens, giving them an insight into a different country and culture. Using technology (iPads, Teams) and face-to-face interactions, to allow children to experience what life is like for school children in a different country, to see the similarities and differences and celebrate the different cultures and special events.

Children enjoyed a special welcome assembly with our visitors, meeting the four Dutch staff members, including Directeur of OBS Juliana van Stolberg Mrs Van den Akker (pictured presenting). During the assembly, the children of Landywood got to learn more about the partner school, seeing pictures and clips of the school and the children. Our visitors were very impressed with how calmly children entered the assembly hall.

After their welcome assembly, our visitors enjoyed time with our children in class. They learned about our AFL (assessment for learning) cups which enable children to express their confidence in the tasks they are given and signal whether they would like additional support. They also enjoyed seeing our focus tables which reinforce and scaffold key elements of lessons for children.

Outdoor learning forms a key part of our curriculum at Landywood so it was important that our visitors explored our new outdoor classroom and our Forests and grounds. They also learned about our new Natural Curriculum, which will take even more of our children’s learning outdoors. Our visitors enjoyed exploring our grounds and learning about our transformational new programme.

Our children enjoyed showing our visitors around the Landywood library and sharing with them their favourite books. At Landywood, our children love reading for pleasure and we believe encouraging this at a young age helps support a life-long love of reading. Our visitors enjoyed hearing children read and were interested to see which books were their favourites.

Our visitors got into the swing of things, dressing up for our PTFA Halloween disco! Our children love taking part in these and they raise vital funds for our school.

Our visitors were impressed with how our PTFA transformed the hall and made the disco such a wonderful and memorable experience for the children.

At Landywood, our School Council play an important part in influencing school life, giving a crucial pupil view. Our visitors enjoyed a breakfast meeting with pupils and learned all about the important decisions our School Council make.