Ann-Marie Swain joined St Mary’s following an early career in a variety of urban context schools. She is currently an Assistant Head teacher and Early Years Lead at St Mary’s.

Ann-Marie has taught across all primary key stages in her career and although latterly has focussed her work in the Early Years, has a keen interest and expertise in pupil progress and transition, in particular from reception to Year 1.

Ann-Marie facilitated and led the expansion of the Early Years team as the school moved from a single to two form entry setting.  This involved appointing new staff in significant numbers and integrating and inducting staff into the schools ethos and community.

Ann-Marie is passionate about supporting the professional development of other staff and is actively engaged with her own development.  She has recently completed a multi-day coaching course and also an Urban Leadership course.  She is a mentor for NQTs and new teaching assistants.  She has delivered training for Trainee Teachers, Teachers, Teaching Assistants and additional adults in school.

Ann-Marie is one of the representatives from St Mary’s who attend the Heart of Manchester cluster meetings.  Through these cluster meetings Ann-Marie shares her expertise, ideas and facilitates sharing of good practice through chairing and contributing to meetings.

Ann-Marie has been instrumental in the development and sustainability of Singapore mastery approaches to maths in the Early Years alongside the St Mary’s maths lead, Fiona.  She delivers part of the Early Years Singapore Maths CPD sessions, particularly focussing on the impact of this approach on the early learning goals.

St Mary’s uses the reading scheme, Success for All (SFA) on which Ann-Marie is an expert practitioner.   She has assisted staff both new to the profession, and those new to this way of working to use the SFA principles of cooperative learning and has supported their practice.   In particular Ann-Marie has expertise in supporting International New Arrival pupils to access the scheme and make accelerated progress through their early language learning.   Ann-Marie has a wealth of experience in teaching phonics, through graphemes and phonemes and synthetic phonics.  She is also skilled at working with pupils for whom English is an Additional Language, both on developing their communication skills and on integration into the wider school community.

Ann-Marie runs a book club with year 1 which aims to engage and encourage parents to better support their child’s reading, through modelling of good reading practice and active encouragement.

Ann-Marie has led on the development of provision for Creative Writing within the school, leading on staff meetings, resource creation and whole school initiatives such as ‘Adventure Week’.  Stories of exploration, pirates and futuristic fun merge into an engaging and exciting week for pupils (& staff!) to develop writing skills.

Ann-Marie is passionate about using outdoor spaces to enhance provision, and has developed the space and activities within the grounds of St Mary’s.  Alongside the physical development of the space, Ann-Marie has led on the development of an outdoor curriculum to develop provision.  This has had significant impact in the Early Years Understanding the World and Creative Curriculums.

Ann-Marie Swain was designated as a Specialist Leader of Education, Early Years Specialism in July 2016.  Ann-Marie is available for school to school support deployments by negotiation with the Head Teacher of St Mary’s.

Current Scheduled CPD Opportunities

In addition to being available for deployment to support specific schools, Ann-Marie is involved in the facilitation of the following Scheduled Professional Development Opportunities which are open to all.

St Mary’s CofE Primary School, Moss Side

St Mary’s C.E Primary School is a Voluntary Controlled Church of England school at the heart of its community. St Mary’s is a very special place. We are an outstanding school where everyone works hard to encourage children to enjoy learning, achieve their best, behave well, support each other and grow in confidence. We aim to help children to grow into confident, talented and articulate young people. We are an exciting and vibrant school where children enjoy learning and make excellent progress. In our school we seek to meet the needs of each individual child. We celebrate diversity and teach children to recognise and respect people’s differences as well as similarities.

View our rates and the deployment process

 

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