Carry My Story: A Kirklees Linking Programme
Diamond Wood Community Academy is at the heart of the Ravensthorpe community. We strive to ensure our curriculum is based around developing our pupil’s sense of self and identity. Part of this is providing learning opportunities surrounding the area they live in and the stories of those who live alongside them. With this in mind, we have become an ambassador school for the Carry My Story project which has been run by our local authority for the past six years.
What is the Carry My Story Programme?
Carry My Story is a Kirklees school-linking programme which provides the opportunity for children to explore their own identities and learn about others. The children are visited by local people who come into school to ‘tell their story’ and explain how they are a part of their community. This not only supports the children’s learning and development but also helps to create strong community links.
The Linking Programme also involves schools from across our local authority with the aim of linking them together to provide children with the opportunity to meet children from different ethnicities and backgrounds. They will build friendships with others they would normally not come into much contact with. The project teams up with 'The Linking Network' and the 'Kirklees Cohesion Team' for this aspect of the project.
Carry My Story has become a core feature of our curriculum design and has supported us in ensuring we provide children with progressive, bespoke and uniquly personalised teaching and learning experiences. We were the first school in Kirklees to involve the whole school in the project and adapt our curriculum to fully immerse ourselves in it.
Take a look at the slideshow below to find out more.
We have recently been recognised as a school for embedding our 'Carry My Story' work within our curriculum by the Pearson National Teaching Awards. Take a look at our 'Certificate of Excellence' below.
Celebrating the Success of Carry My Story 2023-2024...
Our Spring 2 Carry My Story whole school topic was successfully planned and carried out across the whole school. This was as well as all of the school linking and refugee visits which are a truly impactful part of the programme. This was the third year we had taught this part of the curriculum, allowing for the Kirklees programme, and our intended progression of opportunities to merge as planned, and create a plethora of learning opportunities across school.
Mrs Booth and Mrs Lillie attended all of the training provided by Kirklees and the CMS team and cascaded this to staff in school. Following the success of Carry My Story over the years Mrs T and Mrs Price felt inspired to enhance the resources available for our pupils during this invaluable topic. They have written and published their very own book called 'Carry Our Story, Carry With Care' and provided all classes with copies to keep. All classes enjoyed this very special key text during our Carry My Story topic which is all about identity, diversity, equality and community.
The whole of the Spring 2 term was dedicated to ‘Carry My Story’. The main focus of identity and community was broken down for each year group to ensure progression and knowledge and understanding.
Below are some samples of the work undertaken in each year group. For more information please contact either the year group leaders in school or our curriculum leader. We would be more than happy to discuss our amazing work with you in person and show you more examples. We are extremely proud of the progress we have made as a school embedding CMS to date and can’t wait to see how we can continue to grow this further next year in 2024-2025.
Click here to download all of this information and the pages in the slideshow below to take a closer look.
Celebrating the Success of Previous Years...
CMS 2022-2023
Click here to see an overview of the project from 2022-2023.
CMS 2021-2022
Click here to see an overview of the project from 2021-2022.
CMS 2018-2019
Click here to see an overview of the programme from 2018-2019.
This was our very first year engaging with the Carry My Story and Linking Network teams.
We quickly realised how beneficial the project was for our pupils and how it had a much bigger potential for our pupils and community.
CMS 2019-2020
Click here to see an overview of the programme from 2019-2020.
This was a challenging year due to the start of the Covid19 pandemic. The restrictions put in place that the programme was cut short.
However, as you will see, our pupils were still able to engage in some very purposeful learning.
CMS 2020-2021
Click here to see an overview of the programme from 2020-2021.
Again, this was a challenging year but we are proud to say that we still engaged with the programme successfully and were creative in the way we did this.
***SPECIAL INFORMATION***
Following the success of Carry My Story over previous years Mrs T and Mrs Price felt inspired to enhance the resources available for our pupils during this invaluable topic. They have written and published their very own book called 'Carry Our Story, Carry With Care' and provided all classes with copies to keep. We can't wait to enjoy this very special key text during our Carry My Story topic which is all about identity, diversity, equality and community. What an amazing way to show pupils that they could be an author or illustrator one day if they want to be!
To order a copy of this very special and unique book visit the following link -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carry-Story-Sally-Elizabeth-Titherington/dp/B0BN8YCZ56/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=
For more information about Carry My Story you can speak to Mrs Lillie or Mrs Booth who are now taking a lead on this within school. You can also speak to our curriculum leader Mrs Price who has worked on the programme for the past 6 years and will continue to support staff in school.
