Newton Poppleford Primary School on Shine Interventions: GPS

Ant Pope, Headteacher at Newton Poppleford Primary School, and Teaching Assistants Hayley and Marie, share their recent experience with Shine Interventions: GPS:

"After we inputted our pupil scores from the autumn PiRA and PUMA assessments, we used the Group Intervention Reports to see which pupils needed to each intervention. The groups of pupils that were below expected in the different Grammar, Punctuation, Spelling and Vocabulary strands were in line with what we expected. The reports were a real positive and Boost Insights is straightforward to navigate. 

For groups of 4 to 6 pupils across years 3, 4, 5 and 6, I downloaded the resources, printed them off and followed the lesson plans. I began with the grammar programme and then worked my way through the rest, moving onto spelling and so on. I like the way the interventions are modelled. It’s very easy to pick up and go with it. It’s not something that you need to spend an awful lot of CPD on before you deliver. It saved so much time and now I’m ready to have an intervention whenever needed. The materials aren’t a script, but any queries the pupils might have, the guidance is right there in front of me, so I really like that. 

The children are really enjoying the interventions, they’re engaged. The content is pitched at the right level, and everyone was engaged in all of the texts. I enjoy the simplicity of it and recurring nature. The children react well to the simple and repetitive nature of Shine GPS as they know the process and that helps build their confidence. They know what to expect. 

Have we seen success? Yeah. We really appreciate the interventions, and I think it’s been beneficial to the children. Specifically with year 6, they’ve made amazing progress. I believe our SATs results for those pupils taking part in Shine will be much improved in comparison to predictions. 

I think for us the biggest impact was seen in grammar and punctuation, they’re massively more confident. The interventions allow you to break it down into much smaller pieces that the children understand. We can talk more about the content in small groups, so if the children have doubts, we can discuss specifics if they need to do so. 

We didn’t use the modelling software, just printed copies as our school does not have the break-out space available with a smartboard. If we had the resources, we definitely would have. On reflection, I can’t see any barriers to doing the interventions as a whole class, if you had a large percentage of children who weren’t achieving a certain objective.

The children can now understand what we’re talking about and explain nouns. They can define terms, which is quite a new thing for some of the children. They are able to retain the information, which they could not do before. The interventions are intuitive and based on their assessment, so it’s linked to their curriculum year accurately. We want to carry on with Shine as we think it’s been impactful."

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