Our School Curriculum

Intent

To develop characteristics of effective learning in all children:

Playing and exploring

Children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’

Active learning

Children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements

Building bodies of knowledge

Children must have a secure knowledge base from which to draw

Creating and thinking critically

Children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things

To promote our three core values in our teaching:

Readiness 

Responsive teaching for each unique child

Respect

Positive relationships

Responsibility

Enabling environments encourage independence

To foster Christian distinctiveness through key strands:

Vision, Wisdom, Character, Community, Dignity and Worship

Implementation

Readiness

• Consistent routines and classroom rituals
• Application of behaviour strategies including IBPs
• Formative assessment eg observations, marking, questioning, mini plenaries
• Adaptation of teaching eg change of direction/approach, additional questions to deepen thinking

Respect

• A warm, loving and confident manner
• Listening to children’s explanations/reasoning
• Respectful challenge of thinking
• Opportunities for independence/challenge selection

Responsibility

• Appropriate stimulating resources/starting points
• Structured planning including interleaving of knowledge
• Repetition and checking of key knowledge in teaching time
• Appropriate time balance to allow for play, problem solving and independence

Subject specific curriculum maps that tie the curriculum story together for English, maths, science, RE, history, geography, art, design, PSHCE, SMSC, music, PE, computing and languages.

Bespoke interventions for children falling behind or needing additional challenge.

A rich programme of events which enable children to develop cultural capital.

Impact

Children's work is assessed in a variety of ways:

• Classroom feedback
• Recorded work
• Responsive marking
• Pupil voice
• PiXL tests and question level analysis
• Case studies
• Summative progress tracking

Implementation of key subjects

Tightly structured planning of key knowledge gives children the best chance of progressing quickly through the stages of learning to decode and calculate, so that they can read actively to learn and apply strategies independently to problem solve.

In our Foundation Stage the EYFS curriculum is followed with emphasis on the characteristics of effective learning. Planning is flexible and responsive to children’s interests and needs. Spoken language is a key priority with development planned systematically. In our Key Stage 1 we teach much of our curriculum through themed topics, allowing children to deepen their learning by linking knowledge.

We aim to secure confidence with phonic knowledge as a foundation for literacy. Across the whole school we use materials from Letters and Sounds and the Phonics International programme. This gives consistency in our approaches to teaching both decoding for reading and segmenting for spelling for all ages. A tightly structured, progressive reading scheme gives children access to a wide range of books they can read independently.

In Key Stage 2, English work is focused around high-quality texts and builds on the wide range of genres in our whole school reading scheme, which every child continues to be part of. Grammatical knowledge is targeted in planning for children to understand the effect of structures on their written outcomes. Foundation subjects provide opportunities for children to apply their skills in the context of different knowledge areas. For example, they might produce reports in Geography, persuasive arguments in History, and explanations in Science. Our humanities curriculum has been carefully designed in collaboration with our secondary colleagues so that our children are well prepared in the skills they need.

Across the school, we use the Abacus mathematics scheme to support and guide (but not direct) planning and teaching. This offers a mastery approach through a spiral of learning with regular investigations and problem-solving activities. Whole class teaching enables all children to access the learning whilst differentiated activities, and levels of support, enable the needs of individual children to be met.

Creative arts are taught in a structured and systematic way. All classes follow the Charanga Music School scheme which offers progressive music teaching. Art and design have a structured approach that develops technical knowledge and links to art history themes. Religious Education does not usually fit with a topic and so it is taught separately as a topic of its own or as individual lessons with strong links to our values. French is taught in Year 3, and an exciting new development is the start of Mandarin Chinese lessons for children in Years 4-6.

Wherever possible, we make links with other schools to give children opportunities to work with subject specialists. In the 2018-19, we have specialist input in maths, English, music, drama, PE and Mandarin Chinese through our links with Ridgeway Education Trust.

Part of our curriculum includes ‘Exam Paper Literacy.’ We believe all children have the right to be well prepared for external tests and be familiar with the layout and question types so that they can showcase their learning.

Although we value academic attainment very highly, we recognise that our 3Rs curriculum is not delivered through this alone. Therefore

• Leadership is encouraged through activities such as peer mentoring, organisation of school events, and pupil voice
• We offer a range of after school clubs and opportunities
• All children during their time in school will learn to play a musical instrument, and music is taught on an almost daily basis using shorts bursts of rhythm, notation and song
• If a class or group show an interest in a particular subject, teachers will try to include this in the school year
• All children also get the chance to perform during the year