Our curriculum has been designed to complement the strong ethos within school that every child has the right to a high-quality education, one that builds up their self-esteem, confidence and encourages them to aspire to achieve without limits.
Our Curriculum Intent Statement
The intent underpinning our curriculum is a simple one: to achieve the very best outcomes for each pupil in our school.
Through our school curriculum we teach our children to be:
Active learners who …
- Develop their independence and skills to work in collaboration with others
- Take pride in themselves and their work.
- Are ambitious and confident learners.
- Show engagement in their learning, asking questions and showing enthusiasm
- Show resilience – when things get tough, they don’t give up!
Active citizens who …
- Are caring, considerate and tolerant
- Value themselves, others, their environment and their world
- Celebrate differences
- Take care of their physical health and mental wellbeing
Active communicators who …
- Make use of opportunities for language to share their learning, ideas, thoughts and feelings
- Steep themselves in rich reading opportunities to develop a lifelong love of reading
- Engage in wider experiences to inspire, enthuse and challenge themselves
How is our Curriculum planned?
As a staff, we regularly meet to discuss and review the needs of our children. A specific focus is given to any of our children who are identified as having a special educational need, or who are classed as vulnerable, or those coming from a disadvantaged background. We plan so that our curriculum is accessible and supports their needs.
As a staff, we also look at individuals and cohorts and identify any further specific gaps in our children’s learning or experiences. With this information in mind, the senior leadership team lead on the planning of the curriculum across school, with input from subject leaders. Subject leaders are delegated the task of ensuring that their subject is carefully planned and sequenced. This ensures consistency, as well as, progressive learning, skills and knowledge development across all year groups. We continually review our curriculum as there will always be improvements to make to content choice, the sequencing of lessons and fidelity to the discipline of each subject.
Each subject leader produces a skills and knowledge overview, based upon the National Curriculum (2014). Our Early Years curriculum has been carefully planned alongside this, so that our children are ready and have the prior knowledge and skills needed, before moving into Key Stage 1. Choices on the specific content taught and sequence of learning is based upon many factors, but always with the needs of our current children at the forefront.
The curriculum is designed within ‘themes’, chosen to engage, inspire and enthuse the children in their learning. Each half term carefully chosen, key texts provide a starting point. This enables us to plan strong cross-curricular links using a different key subject area each half term to drive the learning. It also provides the opportunity for children to experience a wide range of books and authors and enhance their love of reading.
Themes are used to provide a context for learning, however within these, individual subjects are taught discretely. with an aim of preserving the unique nature of each subject and allowing children to see that nature clearly, giving them a better understanding of each. This teaches our children what it means to be a ‘geographer’, ‘historian’, ‘scientist’ etc. It ensures progression in skills and language development and allows them to take on the notion of experts in different subject areas. The themes are set out as part of a two-year rolling programme in order to cater for the needs of the split year-group class. The cycle in place allows children to access new curricular content each year, alongside embedding previous knowledge, skills and concepts. Due to the spiral and progressive teaching approach that we use across the curriculum, children make progress in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they gain in each subject area.
Throughout all subjects we have developed a ‘Challenge & Educate’ aspect to ensure that children are taught to challenge stereotypes and are educated to value and respect differences, including those reflected within the nine protected characteristics. With this in mind, texts, story books and significant people understudy (across all subjects), are carefully chosen to provide our children with opportunities for discussion in order for them to learn and appreciate that differences are not a barrier to relationships, achievement or success.
How is our Curriculum delivered?
We have a clear teaching structure that underpins high quality teaching across all subject areas. This is based upon research, which evaluates effective teaching and learning practice. Class teachers follow a basic teaching sequence which includes:
- A recap and review of prior learning, this includes the reintroduction of key vocabulary so that children can start to make links in their learning and teachers can check children’s understanding before moving them on. Skilful questioning is used both at this stage and throughout the lesson, to check understanding and as well as provide further challenge.
- Modelling, which includes a clear demonstration for children, broken down into small manageable steps, thus allowing them time to understand what is being taught and what is expected of them.
- Guided Practice, where children are supported with some element of scaffold, to guide their learning before they become fully competent and are able to reinforce and embed their knowledge, skills and understanding through opportunities for independent practise.
Both the senior leadership team and subject leaders are responsible for monitoring the planning, teaching and impact in their subject areas. They use observation, evidence of children’s work and pupil voice to support with this evaluation.
The high standards that we promote in English and Mathematics are reflected across all subjects.
Outcomes and progress towards end of year expectations, in all subjects are tracked by teachers and subject leaders, to ensure that our children are making progress across the curriculum.
Walking into our school you will see our ethos and curriculum in action!
You will see children who are motivated and engaged, who are confident and sociable. You will see children’s work and an environment which reflects the quality and standards of our curriculum. You will see teachers and leaders who inspire, challenge and care for our children.
As a staff and school community, we never stop learning and growing. As such, our curriculum will continue to evolve and develop with the needs and interests of our children. We are confident that our curriculum allows our children to leave our school not only with a love of reading, writing and mathematics and the ability to use number and language effectively, but with the skills and creative flair that they will need in real life and to equip them well on the next stage of their journey in education.