Continuous Enrichment

School Council

Our School Council is made up of two members from each class from Reception to Year 6.  This ensures that children are represented across the school community and have an opportunity to air their views. School Council members are elected by their class each year after discussions about qualities and characteristics that they feel would make a good School Councillor.  The School Council work closely with other ambassadors in school to promote a healthy, safe environment and to improve the experiences of all children who attend Ash Grove Academy.

Music 

We recognise the importance of providing the opportunity for our pupils to learn a musical instrument, and we are lucky to have two talented musicians on our staff - Mrs Chan and Ms Coope.  Mrs Chan leads music lessons for children in Reception and across KS2.  All children learn to play instruments, starting with tuned and untuned percussion instruments, and leading to children in Year 3 learning the recorder and in Year 5 learning to play a brass instrument as well as the ukulele.  Singing is also learnt and celebrated, both in music lessons and in whole school assemblies and live performances.

Educational Visits

At Ash Grove, we believe that learning from first-hand experience is very powerful and provides lasting impact. We support children’s learning through a range of educational visits, all of which are linked to our spiral curriculum at school. We ask for voluntary contributions for these trips and workshops approximately three weeks before the activity takes place.  Parents/carers for whom this would cause financial difficulty are invited to come and see us.

Residential Trips

Pupils from Year 1 to 6 are given the opportunity to join residential trips. Our residential trips are extremely popular and give children the opportunity to challenge themselves and be successful in a range of outdoor pursuit activities. This promotes team-building skills and raises self-confidence and self-esteem. Our aim is that all children have the opportunity to join these trips during their time at Ash  Grove.

The residential trips are as follows:

Key Stage 1 Forest Stay	Spring Term	Delamere Forest 1 night residential
Key Stage 2 Outdoor Pursuits	Autumn Term	Robinwood Activity Centre 2 night residential
Year 6 Cultural Experience	Summer Term	Day trip - full cultural experience in London Seeing the sights, taking in famous landmarks, and watching a live theatre production in the West End.

Visiting Experts

We invite many experts into school to work with our children, including novelists, dramatists, artists, musicians and representatives from local services. Experts inspire our children to learn through sharing their passion for their subject area, which can raise our children’s aspirations for their future careers.