Good practice at Castletownroche school and recommendations made

The Department of Education has published its most recent report on Castletownroche NS where it assessed the teaching of English at the school. While the evaluation took place in last January, the report was published only last week.

With 85 pupils enrolled in the school, the report deemed that both the quality of learning and enthusiasm shown by the pupils was good, including those with special educational needs. However, there were some recommendations made, including that systemic teaching of oral language should be adopted, and a ‘whole-school approach’ taken to the assessment of pupils’ writing skills, to the presentation of their written work, and to their penmanship.

The writing, grammar, and punctuation of students’ was commended, but recommendations were made around oral language development.

Effective exploration of class novels that contributed to the extension of the vocabulary of the middle and senior class pupils was reported. However, it was recommended that in terms of material, “greater focus should be placed on the exploration of a wider range of reading texts including poetry.”

Writing skills were also considered to be “good” and amongst the infants, “well-developed”. However, the report said there was “scope” to develop the quality of pupils’ presentation of their written work, as well as confidence and competence to write independently.

The school environment was described as ‘stimulating’, linguistically diverse, and print-rich: “pupils had access to well-stocked libraries”. While the quality of teaching of English was described as ‘good’ with ‘some very good practice observed’, some other recommendations were made to allow for different abilities.

“High expectations for learning were set and communicated to pupils… good quality individual recorded preparation was noted. The learning activities that teachers design and provide for pupils should be further differentiated to cater for the range of pupils’ abilities and learning needs in the school’s multi-grade context.”