Our Curriculum
Our curriculum aims to foster curiosity, create a love of learning and open children’s eyes to a world beyond their immediate surroundings. We aim to inspire a confident, independent and curious generation of learners, who are academically, socially and emotionally ready for their secondary journey.
Approach in English
Reading and writing is at the core of our curriculum. We encourage pupils to be enthusiastic about authors and different genres of text. We aim to foster a whole school love of reading and writing.
We put quality children’s literature at the heart of learning and use a range of strategies to teach reading that include:
Guided reading
Whole class reading that focuses on core skills including retrieval, inference, vocabulary and choice.
Differentiated and diverse texts
Individual and shared reading
Reading padlets to encourage reading
Different genres of writing are modelled and pupils are given opportunities to write for a real purpose including writing for local magazines and to visiting football teams. We teach vocabulary, grammar and punctuation to aid extended writing across the curriculum.
To view a copy of the English Learning Journey from KS2-4 click here.
Approach in Mathematics
We focus on the math's mastery approach, which focuses on depth rather than acceleration, ensuring that key concepts are fully grasped before moving on. We believe in the White Rose math's motto that “Everyone Can Do Math's: Everyone Can!” With the right support, guidance and resources, all children can become confident and competent in mathematics.
We give extra support to the children who need it to help them keep up, not catch up. Higher attaining pupils are given the chance to consolidate and deepen their understanding with more challenging tasks and activities within the same learning objective.
Key elements of our teaching include:
Flexible groupings
Providing opportunities to reason about a concept and make connections
Regular fluency practice
Using resources and manipulatives to support mathematical structures
To view a copy of the Math's Learning Journey from KS2-4 click here.
Approach in Science
A good understanding of Science offers students an opportunity to increase their overall understanding of how and why things work. Science teaches children about the world around them. We are privileged to have Science laboratories where pupils can learn the key fundamentals of physics, biology and chemistry.
Pupils work collaboratively and independently through the key scientific concepts with opportunities to question, make predictions and justify their ideas. The pupils also have regular opportunities to complete experiments in a specialist teaching area. The pupils undertake a range of experiments and scientific enquiries in order to demonstrate their progress against the curriculum objectives.
To view a copy of the Science Learning Journey from KS2-4 click here.
The development of our four character values of respect, challenge, aspiration and resilience are part of every lesson, and children strive to earn the accolade of ‘Truly Trusted’ through demonstrating these in everything they do. A cross-curricular approach creates a variety of engaging, challenging activities that provide opportunities for all pupils, allowing for immersion and connections in learning to be made across all subjects. Our ‘imagination station’, an interactive display designed and created by the children at the beginning of each academic year, gives them an overview of the curriculum journey that they are about to set out upon.
We are continuously developing and refining our curriculum so that it remains relevant, current and engaging. The ‘head, heart and hands’ approach is central to our curriculum philosophy. On-going teacher assessment enables us to give specific support where needed and ensures that all children are able to maximise their progress.
Thematic Approach
While pupils are taught discrete lessons for English, Mathematics, PE, Spanish and Science these can also be integrated within our thematic approach alongside Computing, Geography, History, Performing Arts, PSHE, RS and Technology. The themes are selected to ensure our pupils will learn about a broad range of topics and issues in preparation for their secondary phase and to spearhead lifelong learning. The themes and the coverage for each subject can be viewed below:
