Facilities
Our facilities at St James Hatcham match the needs of our curriculum and each classroom is thoughtfully resourced to ensure we meet the needs of a demanding and engaging curriculum for all learners.
Being in our classrooms and outdoor environment, you might believe you were in a small village school as every direction to look in has beautifully kept green areas, mature trees and vibrant plants.
Our classrooms and shared areas show a consistent understanding of approaches to environment that promote calm learning and behaviour and, the benefits of bringing nature to the classroom.
The outdoor spaces consist of separate playgrounds for Early Years, Infants and Juniors and areas for calm play and sports. Our popular 'Jenny's Space' is a popular all-year play and seating area named after our much-loved Church Warden, Jenny Sagi, who sadly passed away. Each playground is well stocked with outdoor toys that demonstrate our belief in the importance of play and well-being.
Every classroom has an interactive whiteboard and the school is well-stocked with brand new laptops as well as tablets for pupils to use. Our focus on Global Citizenship ensures that each classroom is not only resourced with globes and maps, but maps with different perspectives in order to spark critical thinking and challenge perceptions. Every classroom has an inviting, cosy, well-stocked reading area with books that represent all communities and the diversity of our pupils. Believing in the importance of working with hands-on and concrete materials in all year groups means that we have a wide range of both research led and tried and tested resources for Maths, Science, D&T and PE. We also have a wide range of Djembe drums, steel pans and ukuleles that support our outstanding music offer.
We are also proud to recently have added an Edible Playground!
The Edible Playground was built by the charity Edible Playgrounds, part of Trees for Cities, which transform areas in school grounds into educational, natural outdoor spaces that excite and teach children about growing and eating healthy food. The Edible Playground seeks to address key areas of children's development and health. It will provide children with opportunities to learn about nutrition, physical activity, knowledge of how to grow their own food both in and outside school.
Our Edible Playground has been designed specifically with our school in mind, appreciating that we are based in an especially built up and urban area, it provides our students with direct access to the benefits of nature, right outside their classroom doors. It provides an outdoor classroom area, raised beds for growing fruits, vegetables and herbs, a green house to store our gardening tools and an exciting wormery to provide fertiliser for our crops!
Staff at St James recognise that students need a variety of interpersonal skills and resilience to cope with the demands of our changing world. Our children thoroughly enjoy participating in our Global Citizenship Curriculum that recognises the urgency with which we must strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and through growing their own food, it is our hope that this will provide children with accessibility to be sustainable and understand where food comes from.
