Tranmoor Primary

Tranmoor Primary School

 

24^th May 2019

 

Dear Steve and Kate,

You have been leading the We Can Grow Breakfast club for a few weeks now and I can honestly say the staff and children eagerly await Thursday mornings.

Having the We Can Grow team leading the weekly club has facilitated a privileged view of our children, noticing elements we would not normally have time to as we would be steering the session, this has in turn been fed back into our own Thrive and support programmes and has really benefitted the children’s wellbeing.

Kate has a wonderful, calm approach with the children, accommodating their quirks, enjoying their curiosities and providing reassurance to the nervous participants from the outset. Steve, you have boundless energy, infectious passion and a cheeky sense of humour that captivates the children and staff equally.

Together, your organisation and flexibility, generosity of resources and knowledge and passion allows seamless and stress-free use of the garden and the children are accessing learning in a way that they don’t even realise it! The children are really relaxed, behaviour is impeccable (not always their strength in class) and they are all fully engaged even overflowing with excitement as they are brought back to class bursting to tell their teacher and friends what they have been up to, how many pea shoots have peeked out, the ratio of radishes planted to growing, the parts of the potato that are growing….. the list is endless.

It is really difficult to list all the knock-on benefits this programme is providing both directly to the children academically but also indirectly through life skills such as communication, team work, self-esteem, problem solving and the application within a proper tangible project that everyone is emotionally invested in. The best part, however, is to experience the children’s reactions, they genuinely LOVE what they are doing and cannot get enough of it.

Thanks to We Can Grow we have found confidence to start growing programmes with other year groups and are incorporating many of the lessons We Can Grow have shown us into other topic projects. No price can be set on the value of the building blocks this experience is providing.

Thank you so much and hope you have a bit of a rest over half term. 

 

Kate Bratt

Tranmoor Primary School