Welcome to The Piper Centre
My name is Mandy Walton and I am Head of the Piper Centre, our Specialist Resource Centre. I am excited to be working with our children and families to support them to reach their personal and academic potential.
It is a privilege to be part of each child’s journey, supporting them as they discover and develop their passions and interests in life. We aim to work with each child as an individual to ensure that their educational and therapeutic needs are met so that they can flourish both within Centre and when they leave.
Here you will find a Centre that is positive, warm and welcoming with staff that have a can-do attitude. We are here to help and support families and children by recognizing their abilities, creating opportunities and removing barriers to see them achieve to the best of their ability.
It is our key priority that we support our children to develop successful ways to communicate so that their wishes are heard. We aim to foster a love of storytelling and reading so that our children enjoy and can engage with books whatever their interest and ability.
Get in touch
Our Mission
Our mission statement is ‘a strong foundation of communication grows a home for learning’ as we believe providing a happy, creative and secure environment inspires our pupils to communicate, to explore, and learn. The Piper Centre recognises that pupils learn by developing self help skills and improving their personal development which we believe improves children’s ability to access learning.
We recognise and value the importance of the Early Years Foundation Stage approach, which is used to deliver an appropriate curriculum to pupils. Its developmental approach and ethos is embedded throughout our The Piper Centre. The prime areas of learning cannot be taught in isolation and overlap with each other; they are equally important and depend on each other. The specific areas also interlink and are taught alongside the prime areas also in an overlapping way.
All children need opportunities to play, learn and explore. A variety of approaches are used and vary according to each child’s learning needs and abilities; some will be supported by an adult, whereas others may be more child initiated and child led. There will come a time in the child’s development, where a more structured approach and an introduction to more ‘formal’ teaching will take place, in order to prepare them for the next step of their learning.
Our Classes
We have three classes within the Piper Centre, Rainbow Class for our youngest pupils, Blue Class and Green Class.
The Centre offers pupils a bespoke curriculum with a focus on their interactions, language and communication. Our aim is for the children to develop their basic skills and foundations for learning in a playful and fun way. Towards the end of the children’s time in Piper Centre, we prepare them for the transition to secondary school by working on the independent life skills needed for the future.
Many of the children travel to and from school in a taxi, to keep in touch we use class dojo as the main vehicle for communication however, if you would like to meet face to face, please contact school for an appointment.
Click here to Meet our Team
P.E. is taught on Tuesdays. The children are encouraged to begin to change their clothes themselves as part of their personal development. Please provide tracksuit trousers/leggings or shorts and a plain white t-shirt that they can keep in school.
Forest school is taught during the week. Please provide Wellington boots and waterproofs to keep in school. Please label ALL items of clothing.
Our Curriculum
We endeavor to adapt the curriculum to best meet the needs of the pupils in all areas, we set high expectations for the pupils and provide support to reach them. We have a suite of diagnostic assessments to identify more specific needs and to form the basis of the measure of success within an intervention.
We aim to complete interventions within the classroom whenever possible to ensure that they are inclusive. The interventions and support offered are designed around the individual needs of the pupil and links to their specific plans.
Reading and Phonics are a key part of our curriculum at The Piper Centre. We believe that the key to success in education is developing sound reading skills that unlock the rest of the curriculum.
Phonics
At The Piper Centre we consider enjoying and experiencing books and reading to be one of life’s most enriching skills. We aim to create a stimulating environment where children are encouraged to engage with and experience books and all forms of written material. The reading and literacy opportunities that we provide reflect the unique learning needs of our pupils which range from individualised pathways to Government approved formal phonics schemes.
We provide a range of experiences that include multi-sensory approaches and encourage practical application of reading to support the development of both communication and life skills. Every pupil participates in a wide range of language activities, auditory development, phonics and regular story-telling sessions that are fun-filled opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills, and where the emphasis is on children’s active participation.
At The Piper Centre we follow a whole-school phonics and reading readiness pathway which is based on robust assessment and on choosing the right pathway and tools for each individual pupil. It is essential that pupils have a firm foundation of early phonics skills at whatever point they enter our school family. This includes the teaching of sound discrimination – environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body percussion, rhythm and rhyme and voice sounds.
Reading is a life skill, which lays the foundations for all other learning across the curriculum. Therefore, we value the importance of early reading and make it a priority, as soon as our children are ready.
“Teach a child to read and keep that child reading and we will change everything. And I mean everything.” Jean Winterson.
This quote epitomises the intent of the Read Write Inc. programme (RWI), which we use to teach phonics at The Piper Centre. RWI is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme that explicitly teaches children to read accurately and fluently. The ability to decode quickly makes reading effortless. This makes reading more enjoyable and enables children to develop their comprehension, so that they can begin to read for pleasure. We have a pre phonics pathway and readiness for Read, Write Inc assessment programme.
The RWI reading books that the children access in their daily phonics sessions at school are matched to the children’s phonic knowledge and are fully decodable. Reading at home should be enjoyable. It should be a time where children are able to ‘show off’ their reading skills to their family!
The systematic teaching of phonics takes place when children are ready to engage in a phonics programme. Pupils work within ability groups, which are defined by their performance on RWI assessments. The Piper Centre is committed to ensuring every pupil will learn to read, regardless of their needs, background and abilities.
Each RWI lesson is consistent and is based on the 5 Ps –
Pace – Good pace is essential to each lesson.
Praise – Children learn quickly in a positive climate.
Purpose – Every part of the lesson has a specific purpose.
Participation – All pupils are involved in all parts of the lesson through choral response and partner work.
A strong feature of RWI lessons is partner work and the partners ‘teaching’ each other (based on research which states that we learn 70% of what we talk about with our partner and 90% of what we teach).
Passion – This is a very prescriptive programme. It is the energy, enthusiasm and passion that teachers put into the lesson that bring the teaching and learning to life!
Children are taught to:
recognise sounds and blend them together (Fred Talk using our character – Fred Frog);
- decode letter/sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly;
- read ‘tricky’ (red words) on sight;
- read fluently and with expression;
- understand what they read;
- spell quickly and confidently when writing, by segmenting the sounds within words;
- acquire a fluent handwriting style.
Pupils start by learning Set 1 sounds during speed sounds sessions. These are sounds written with one letter:
m a s d t i n p g o c k u b f e l h r j v y w z x. ‘Set 1’ also includes sounds written with two letters (‘special friends’): sh th ch qu ng nk ck ff ss ll. They will read words containing these sounds, by sound-blending, e.g. m–a–t mat, c–a–t cat, g–o–t got, f–i–sh fish, s–p–o–t spot, b–e–s–t best, s–p–l–a–sh splash. They will also learn to spell these words using their ‘Fred Fingers’. Whilst learning set 1, your child will bring home sound blending books, ditty sheets or red story books.
Pupils should also be confident with ‘Set 2’ sounds. These are special friends and include: ay ee igh ow oo (long) oo (short) ar or air ir ou oy. They will continue to read words with these sounds and write words in their speed sound sessions. Whilst learning set 2, your child will bring home green, purple and pink story books.
Pupils should be confident with ‘Set 3’ sounds. These are alternative spellings for the sounds already learned: ea oi a-e i-e o-e u-e aw are ur er ow ai oa ew ire ear ure. They will continue to read words with these sounds and write words in their speed sound sessions. During set 3, we start to get the children using the letter names, rather than the sounds. Whilst learning set 3, your child will bring home orange, yellow, blue and grey story books.
Safeguarding and Child Protection Information
Find out more about safeguarding at Willow Primary Academy and The Piper Centre by clicking here.
