At William Ford School, we aim to provide the very highest quality of education within a Christian context. Online learning offers fantastic opportunities to engage and improve pupil learning. The following websites are frequently used in our school. Log-in details will be provided by the class teacher should you require them.
We have an assembly daily from 2:45 - 3:10 pm. Each day is delivered by a different member of staff and has a different focus. On Monday, our assembly is delivered by a member of the clergy from Dagenham Parish Church. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are class and year group assemblies delivered by the class teacher or year group leader. Our assembly on Thursday is delivered by our Deputy Headteachers and Friday is our 'Celebration' assembly led by our Headteacher and focuses on the recent achievements and outstanding work produced by the pupils.
For children to make the best possible progress in reading, they should read daily to a parent, guardian, or older sibling. We recommend to parents that they aim to read for 10 minutes and to make a note of this in the pupil's homework diary. To progress in understanding the book as well as being able to read it aloud, parents may wish to ask questions about the text such as about events that have happened, what a character might be thinking or feeling, or for a prediction about what might happen next in the text. It is also beneficial to the children to have the opportunity to discover genres, book types, and authors that interest them and this can be achieved through trips to a local library. This can support their enjoyment of reading and also introduce them to text types they might be unfamiliar with.
Each child will receive at the start of each week a list of spelling words to learn. The pupil should once each evening look at the word, cover it over, write it down, and then check to see if they wrote it correctly. The words may be chosen due to a particular spelling pattern or sound within them or if they are keywords that relate to a topic being studied. Also, the National Curriculum contains a list of words that children in Britain are expected to know how to spell and these words are used in the Spelling Test as part of SATs in Year 6. These words will be covered in our weekly spelling sheets but parents may wish to help their children practice at home too.
Parents who wish to pay using cash will need to take their original letter to a local store that displays the ParentPay logo. The store will scan the barcode on the letter to top up the account. Alternatively, our school office can issue parents with a plastic card that contains this barcode. The first card is free of charge for parents but further cards will be charged at £1.50 each.
Year 6 has a football team during the autumn and spring terms led by Mr. Harrington. This year the team did us proud and finished runner-up in the Barking and Dagenham Post cup.
Our STEM Club is a powerful and highly enjoyable way to engage students with STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Through the STEM Club, students gain practical, teamwork, and leadership skills. Also, their confidence and engagement in STEM increases as well as their motivation to study STEM and enter STEM careers. The STEM club takes place on Mondays and the children are escorted from William Ford to Dagenham Park school where the club takes place in their laboratories.
The choir was started in 2015 to give children the opportunity to learn a variety of songs and perform in many settings. William Ford’s Choir is building a reputation with singing having hosted a concert in the summer of 2016 and performed in DagFest.This year, the children will be learning songs which will be used in the young voices convert on 29th January.
