Landywood Primary School on Shine Interventions: GPS

We spoke with Dawn Burrows, Deputy Headteacher at Landywood Primary School and Teacher Degree Apprentice, Bethany Thomas, about their recent experience with Shine Interventions: GPS:

Dawn: "After I inputted our data from the NTS assessments for year 5 into Boost Insights, I looked at the Group Intervention Reports and organised the pupils where I felt necessary. I also spoke to the year group teacher to see who they thought would benefit from the interventions. They aligned nicely - Boost Insights reflected the teacher’s judgements well.

We are fortunate to have several teams of teaching assistants in both Key Stage 1 and 2, so we were able to organise two 30-minute interventions in the afternoon, per week.  I mainly used printed resources, which provided teacher guidance and a handy breakdown of the specification and picked up on some topics we might have missed. It stripped the learning back to the basics and allowed you to delve into the texts."

Beth: "I communicated with the teachers, explaining what the pupils covered in the interventions and flagging what they need to look at, in terms of grammar. I was also able to discuss what the pupils had been covering in the classroom. This allowed us to make those direct links during the children’s learning. We aimed to continue the learning outside of the intervention. 

The children taking part in Shine GPS were primarily working towards attaining their age-expected level, and the interventions were a stepping stone to learn the skills needed for assessments. It was great for those children who have the knowledge and understand the texts but require help answering the assessment questions correctly. It can come down to how they interpret the text or the question itself, and I think this is what the interventions are perfect for. 

I liked how the resources combined both supported and independent learning, targeting those pupils who have the knowledge and capability but are lacking in confidence. The interventions allow you to tackle the questions together as a group, with guidance which makes the children relaxed as it's not a typical test environment, so you get much more of a response from them." 

Dawn: "We’re an evidence-based school and consider Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) research with our teaching practices. We understand the benefits of small group interventions and over the years have witnessed such successful stories. Shine GPS provides quite bespoke interventions for particular groups in comparison to other interventions we’ve used in the past, so we could really see the impact. The impact of Shine GPS within our data is definitely there, it's a clear connection. 

The massive thing that gets in the way of pupil progress is confidence, whereas this intervention kind of goes, 'let's do it together'. It allows the children to kind of relax and think, 'oh, this isn't a test', and you just get so much more out of them than you would have originally.

Our pupils’ confidence increased, and progress could be seen between and out of sessions, especially in the classroom, and this was discussed in pupil progress meetings. We were able to make links to the learning back in the classroom, so we were continuously triggering memories. The children really enjoyed the texts and got on board easily. They look forward to the interventions and by working as a group the pupils can learn from each other. 

The resources definitely save you time as you’ve got everything you need - I love the teaching guidance. From my point of view, it's been great as I’ve developed and understood different methods of teaching as well as what works differently for different children. I’ve been able to reflect after each intervention and work on how to improve my delivery of the resources. It helps us and the children. 

I go to subject leader updates and I'm always going on about it, about how really good the Shine interventions are for Maths and Reading that we’ve been using for a few years, and we've joined, obviously, the Shine GPS intervention trial now as well. And I know that one of the other primary schools nearby switched their assessment tests to NTS last year and they've also looked at the intervention package as well on our recommendation because it's just so good for us and for staff workload as well. "

With thanks to all staff at Landywood Primary School for sharing their experience. Read more about their outcomes in our Shine GPS Impact Report.