Summerside is a vibrant, inclusive, and culturally diverse school. We celebrate children’s different cultural backgrounds. Adults and children make new children welcome. We have a specialist provision in our school for Deaf children, where children are fully integrated into mainstream classes.
Children enjoy coming to Summerside to learn. They are excited about learning new things and making progress. Our staff works hard to ensure that our learners have the skills that they need to succeed in life. We provide excellent pastoral support for children, including kind adults who will listen, trained counselors for children experiencing difficulties, and Learning Mentors. Our children care for each other and play safely together. We are proud that the children at Summerside are extremely polite and well-behaved.
At Summerside, we pride ourselves on offering a creative and positive learning environment where all children have the opportunity to be successful and feel valued. We aim to create a secure and safe school where all children can develop confidence, self-esteem and feel successful. Every individual is allowed to grow personally, socially, and academically. All of our staff are committed to providing outstanding teaching and learning which is fun and creativity is at its heart. This will enable each child to achieve the highest possible standard and the academic and social skills necessary for their future education and life in society. “Summerside is a fully inclusive school, where all pupils are valued as individuals and supported in realizing their true potential.
At Summerside, we believe that reading is fundamental to the development of children’s language and imagination. There is lots of research to demonstrate the links between good reading skills from an early age and future success in life. That is why we want all our children to be readers, be passionate about reading and develop a love of books.
We hold many themed Book events including Scholastic Book Fairs, World Book Days and we are developing our links with local authority libraries – North Finchley Library. We regularly have authors and storytellers in for workshops and we are developing Buddy Reading sessions across our school. Children are innovative when developing their passions for reading including organizing and running their own Book Exchange Library.
Nestled in the heart of our highly inclusive school, the Resourced Provision has places for twelve children from Nursery to Year 6. It combines the advantage of mainstream education with highly specialized support and intervention for deaf children. Our approach to communication and supporting children is child-centered. Communication preferences for each child are discussed and reviewed with parents and staff. We can provide a broad range of communication support. This is appropriate for children who are oral/aural, those who use British Sign Language, and for children who use a combination of both. In line with this, every child in the Deaf Provision has a Communication Profile detailing their current communication methods and best practice for working with the child.
Places are available for children with moderate to profound hearing loss and a Statement of Special Educational Need and delayed language development. We recognize the importance of combining inclusive education and specialist support. Children are based in mainstream classes according to age. They are supported in class and withdrawn with support as appropriate. We aim to enable pupils to acquire language and communication skills so they can fully access the curriculum.
The Summerside team includes Teachers of the Deaf, Communicators, a Deaf Tutor, and support from NHS Speech and Language Therapists in partnership with parents or carers. All school staff is encouraged to learn British Sign language to level 1.
We provide daily audiology checks and liaise directly with local audiology clinics. The rooms in the Deaf Provision are acoustically treated to provide very good listening conditions for the children. All mainstream classrooms and halls have sound-field systems to provide improved amplification of the teacher’s voice. Some classrooms and the halls have additional acoustic paneling to further improve the quality of sound for the children.
We value home/school links and use individual home/school books as a means of communication. We record what the children have done in school using text and pictures and we encourage children and parents or carers to do the same at home. We are very happy to discuss the children’s progress with parents or carers by phone, email, or in-person informally. We have termly coffee afternoons for parents and staff to meet informally.
