Trumpington Park is a new build primary school located to the south of Cambridge city centre. Like all schools in the first half of 2020, it has had to adapt to different ways of working and of welcoming pupils into the classroom.
Like many schools, Trumpington Park stayed open throughout the lockdown to accommodate keyworker children and coming up to the end of the summer term, started to see other children return as the government encouraged wider attendance.
However, social distancing measures, class bubbles, anxiety about being in class and worries about cross contamination are unfortunately, part of the new norm.
The new term in September will continue to bring challenges and opportunities at Trumpington Park and elsewhere but the events of the last few months have, in some respects, helped school managers better prepare.
The school has adopted a system reflecting Gratnells recipe for return with each child allocated their own desk, chair and an antimicrobial desk resource tray.
In addition, each child has a floor tray for personal effects such as coats and bags to reduce the possibility of them mixing in communal areas like the cloakroom.
Going a step further in the fight against surface contamination, in June 2020, the school introduced Gratnells SortED tray inserts into its classrooms. These are designed to divide a tray from two to eight sections and provide a way to deploy resources more easily.
Manufactured to work perfectly with Gratnells school storage trays, each child has immediate access to clearly separated resources within their own desk tray. Crucially, this reduces the temptation or impulse to share and creates a barrier to cross contamination.
The brightly coloured inserts, like the desk tray, have the added benefit of an antimicrobial additive. This reduces surface contamination between usual cleaning routines. The additive is effective for the lifetime of the product against a variety of bacteria, fungi and viruses.
It provides another layer of protection where the sharing of resources can be difficult to control, especially in early years and primary classes.
Children at Trumpington Park are now regularly using SortED inserts and they are proving popular for maths manipulatives and storing all manner of resources for art classes.
The inserts can be easily wiped clean, washed in hot soapy water or indeed cleaned in the dishwasher.
At Trumpington Park, where the inserts are also used during outdoor sessions in forest school this easy-to-clean feature is a real plus.
“The use of the SortED inserts has supported us with our preparation, organisation with resources and developing independence in our children,” said Charlotte Leaver, assistant headteacher.
“Children were already used to using their individual trays to support learning but by using the SortED inserts they have been able to access a wider range of resources.
“We have been using the SortED inserts across the curriculum to support with teaching. In EYFS they have been used mainly to support with Maths holding counting resource and children in Year 1 have been using the SortED trays to support their learning in Forest School and in Science with identifying and classifying materials.”
Find out more about Gratnells at gratnells.com.
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