Enrichment Opportunities - Simpson's Lane Academy

Forest School

In our academy, we feel it is important that our children have access to wider opportunities and experiences to help build their confidence, communication and problem-solving skills to set them up to be successful citizens in society. Throughout their time in the academy, the children have access to Forest School sessions for a half term each year, which is led by an external Forest School teacher, who runs the sessions in our outdoor Forest School area. This year, we have also developed an indoor Forest School classroom, where children can access aspects of the Forest School sessions.

Forest School is a long-term outdoor education process that is holistic and learner-led. It allows children to develop themselves through healthy engagement with risk, problem-solving and self-discovery, all within a natural environment in a hands-on and thoughtful manner. The academy also runs after school Forest School Club for children to access throughout the year if they so wish.

Classroom Kitchen

At Simpson’s Lane Academy, we pride ourselves in giving children experiences that will help them be successful in later life. It is for that reason, that we offer our children Class Kitchen sessions. These sessions give our children the opportunity to cook a variety of different healthy foods whilst teaching them life-long cooking skills, that build and progress through each year group. Every child, in Key Stage 1 and 2, have access to these sessions once per half term. As well as getting the chance to cook the array of different recipes, they also learn the nutritional values of the different foods whilst also exposing them to ingredients they wouldn’t usually try at home.

The children are giving the chance to enter into cooking competitions against other schools from around Europe.

As well as Classroom Kitchen session that are delivered within the classroom, we also have our very own Cooking Room within the academy. This space is used to teach small groups of children life long cooking skills. We also use this space to run Cooking Club after school during parts of the academic year.

Art Lab

At Simpson’s Lane Academy, we pride ourselves on creating spaces that can nurture and enable children to express themselves in the arts. Every child across Year 1- Year 6 in school have access to Art lessons in our fully equipped Art Room. The children enjoy imitating, innovating and inventing their own works of art, in a room that is purely dedicated the subject.

Science Lab

To raise the profile of Science in our academy we have created a brand new Science Lab that children have access to each week. Science lessons are delivered in the lab where they can conduct their science experiments, whilst also getting to see the learning that is happening in other year groups as each year group has their own experiment station set up in the lab. We are excited to develop our budding new scientists.

Music Room

Throughout the year, our children across the academy are given the opportunity to experience playing a musical instrument and are taught by a professional music teacher. The children are exposed to samba, guitar and percussion lessons throughout their time in the academy. At the end of a term, they demonstrate their learning through performing in their very own concert to the rest of school and parents and carers.

In our academy, we have our very own Music Room where classes go to access their music sessions.

Immersive Suite

We feel at Simpson’s Lane Academy, our children need opportunities to be able to develop their imagination and get an experience of the wider world as they often do not have much experience travelling outside of the Knottingley area. To help develop this, Simpson’s Lane has our very own Immersive Suite where children can be immersed in a range of different settings. This helps to build children’s vocabulary which in turn impacts on building their knowledge of different environments.

Immersive learning is a hugely effective way for many learners to develop their knowledge and skills. It provides artificial, digitally created content and environments that accurately replicates real life scenarios so that new skills and techniques can be learned and perfected.

After School Clubs

For parts of the year, we offer a range of after school clubs that children can access:

– Cooking Club

– Forest School Club

– Elite Sports Club

– Football Club

– Gardening Club

– Coding Club

– Art Club

– Games Club

– Sewing Club

– Archery Club

– Yoga Club

To ensure we are offering children extra-curricular clubs they are interested in we are constantly conducting Pupil Voice alongside our Academy Councillors.