Dog Kennel Hill Primary School

Welcome to Dog Kennel Hill Primary School. We are very pleased to inform you that Rotherhithe and Dog Kennel Hill Primary Schools are now officially in a hard federation as of 2nd January 2018.

Academic progress, Art, Music, Spanish and Sports are particular strengths of our school. Teachers work hard to make learning interesting and relevant for the children. The school also aims to develop a really caring atmosphere, with older children being encouraged to help younger ones. All children are encouraged to take on some responsibility, appropriate for their age.

We believe that creativity should be at the centre of teaching and learning, enabling and inspiring all children to learn and contribute. We have a strongly inclusive ethos, and believe that the inclusion of children with special educational needs is of benefit to the whole school community.

Partnership with others supports learning throughout the school, and begins with building positive partnerships with parents and with each other. We have good international links, having taken part in Comenius projects with schools in Portugal, France, Italy, Finland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Guadelope, Iceland, Greenland, Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

Our Values & Ethos

• Creative
• Aspiration
• Respectful
• Empathetic
• Resilient

We have a large early years department that works together to support you and your child to have a happy start to school.

The nursery and reception classes are guided by the Early years foundation stage curriculum. This is a play-based curriculum built around teaching children skills and knowledge in seven areas of learning:

• Personal, Social and Emotional development
• Physical development
• Communication and Language development
• Literacy
• Maths development
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

Children are taught with a mixture of child led and adult led activities. We encourage independence, creativity and critical thinking.

We have invested in our early years learning environments and have excellent learning environments for the children to explore. The emphasis in Early Years is on ‘free-flow’, where children are encouraged to use both indoor and outdoor space in their play as much as possible. In addition to free play inside and in our outdoor areas , the children will be following the Letters & Sounds phonics programme to help them learn to read and write. This is started in the last term of nursery and then carries on in to the reception year.

Children are also offered a variety of additional activities. They will have access to activities such as Forest School, Phonics workshops, Music and Spanish (both taught by specialist teachers) and dance lessons.

Across the early years, children are taught through fun “centres of interest” chosen to ensure that children’s interests and the requirements of the curriculum are taken into consideration. Children are assessed every half term and these assessments help us to decide what to plan for the children.

At Dog Kennel Hill we pride ourselves on being a truly inclusive school. We welcome all children from all walks of life and with many different special educational needs. We work with children with needs that include Down’s syndrome, autistic spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and many others besides. From time to time any child may need additional help and we aim to provide this when necessary.

As a school we strongly believe that all children have the right to a quality education with a broad curriculum. We know that as a school community we benefit from welcoming children with special educational needs into our classes. All of the SEN children at our school are very much loved and highly regarded members of their classes. In fact we often find that classes with children with complex needs often turn out to be quite special themselves, in terms of their patience, understanding and tolerance.

We work very hard together to make sure that all children are included in every aspect of school life as far as their needs allow.