OPAL

At Marlborough Primary School, we strongly believe that “Play is freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behaviour that actively engages the child. Play can be fun or serious. Through play children explore social, material and imaginary worlds and their relationship with them, elaborating all the while a flexible range of responses to the challenges they encounter. By playing, children learn and develop as individuals, and as members of the community.” (Children’s Play Council 2001).

 

We recognise that in order to learn children must push the boundaries of what is already known and already easily accomplished and this requires children to experience risk and challenge. In our desire to do our best for all children in our care we are dedicated to providing a rich play setting where all children have access to stimulating environments that are free from unacceptable or unnecessary risks and thereby offer children the opportunity to explore for themselves through their freely chosen play. We will adopt a risk-benefit approach to manage our duty of care to protect and our duty of care to provide for children's needs.

 

In January 2023, we teamed up with OPAL; a company who are experts in developing school playgrounds and the activities as well as the ethos’ that help school play times to change for the positive!

 

This page celebrates our journey with OPAL. We hope you find the information on this page useful.

What is OPAL?

OPAL stands for Outdoor Play and Learning. OPAL is all about using natural and man-made resources to allow pupils to be imaginative and creative at playtime, which is something we felt fitted well with our ethos at Marlborough Primary. Find out more about OPAL Schools by visiting the OPAL website.  

 

What are the benefits of OPAL?

Through OPAL we have:

  • Happier children
  • Children coming into class ready to learn
  • More active, fit and energetic children
  • A fully inclusive playtime offer
  • More opportunities for children to be creative and make decisions
  • Children who can develop independence and resilience
  • Increased social skills and collaboration between children…. and most importantly fun!

 

The OPAL play team

The school has a dedicated team to develop play across the school. The OPAL play team meets regularly to discuss our action plan and the daily logisitics of resourcing, H&S and ideas for further outside fun.

 

Head Teacher - Mrs Buddle.

Deputy Head Teacher - Mrs Smith.

Curricular lead for play - Miss Taylor.

Play co-ordinator - Mr Whittle.

Play workers - Miss Boulter, Miss Tarn Miss King, Miss Crooks and Miss Cooper.

OPAL champion governor - Miss Cooper.

Caretaker - Mr Harrison

8 x Year 4-6 playground buddies.

 

Having this structure enables Mr Whittle to be outside daily, monitoring play and encouraging the 8 playwork principles.  Miss Taylor prioritises resource collection, organisation and budget e.g. new sheds for storage.  It is also cross referenced to our school development plan, and staff training is provided across all teams within school.  Miss Cooper is able to report OPAL feedback and impact back to the Governing Board.

How can you support OPAL?

We want the children to be out every day, in all weathers, in all parts of our grounds. Please make sure they have a warm waterproof coat in school. We can provide wellies, however waterproof trousers are a good idea to send into school if they love getting mucky.

Don’t throw it away!

We are continually developing our play offer so are always looking for any spare items you have that we could use.

Item like these are always appreciated.

  • Plastic milk crates and wooden pallets
  • Road signs and cones
  • Kitchen pots, pans, baking trays, worktables, wooden spoons, chopping boards
  • Tools like spades, trowels, brooms and buckets
  • Tubes of various sizes and various materials
  • Nets and ropes
  • Fabric (large sheets/brightly coloured fabric/saris)
  • Foam sheets / body boards
  • Cable drums
  • Guttering
  • Noodles (the type you use in the swimming pool!)
  • Pegs (to help to set up dens)

Thank you to everyone who has donated items so far

What has happened so far?

So far, we have been extremely busy!  What we have been up to:

  • All of our children have participated in creating their very own ‘Perfect Playground’ where we have seen amazing examples of child-led ideas for what our children want in their playground. These can be viewed here
  • Pupil questionnaire about what sort of playground they would like and what activities/apparatus they would like to be brought in. Pupil pre-survey results can be viewed here. Pupil post-survey results can be viewed here.
  • Parent questionnaire about what ‘Play’ was like for adults in society now and how play has changed for children today. Parent pre-survey results can be viewed here. Parent post-survey results can be viewed here.
  • Staff questionnaire about what ‘Play’ was like for adults in society now and how play has changed for children today. Staff pre-survey results can be viewed here. Staff post-survey results can be viewed here.

The exciting path ahead… 

If you take a glance at our initial playground design plan, you will get a flavour of the phased plans that have guided us closer to improving the quality of play and creativity at play times. As expected, with the ever-changing climate of schools, the phases have be tweaked slightly, though any changes to the original draft plan that have be made, as always, have been done so with the children’s learning and development in mind. As ever, we will keep you updated with the latest playground news and events, in which we will be working in close partnership with ‘OPAL’ Schools Playground development team to ensure that your child has the most fulfilling time out there on our playground!

 

Our OPAL gallery…

Below as well as on our social media pages, you will able to follow our exciting outdoor play and learning journey with regular updates and information regarding your child’s play time and how the transformation of our playground is progressing!