As they move through school, our aim is for all our children to become increasingly aware of their own strengths as learners and to work on those areas in which they are not so strong.
Our Curriculum Journey
Our curriculum journey begins with a strong emphasis on language development in the Foundation Stage and developing the fundamental early literacy skills into Key Stage 1. We are a Read, Write, Inc school and use this scheme to teach phonics, fluency in reading and spelling strategies. Promoting a love and enjoyment in reading is an important priority from the start to the end of the journey.
We have a ‘maths mastery’ approach to the teaching of mathematics, which is aligned with the White Rose scheme. Running alongside this approach we use Big Maths as a scheme to support children with number fluency right the way through school.
There is a strong emphasis on providing rich and meaningful experiences for our pupils at all stages of their curriculum journey. This includes a wide range of opportunities both in and out of school, visits, ‘expert’ visitors and residentials, of which there are 5 between Y2 and Y6.
Well-being is an important underpinning theme in all aspects of the curriculum. We explicitly teach good social and emotional skills in a variety of ways from weekly class Quality Circle Time sessions to the constant re-enforcement of the importance of our Golden Rules. We aim for all our pupils to be confident and resilient with a good understanding of ‘how to be’ in a wide range of circumstances. We use P4C in regular philosophy circles to encourage our pupils to discuss and debate a range of topics that are important to them. We use the Sheffield RSHE materials to teach some elements of the new RSHE curriculum.
Our curriculum is progressive and constantly developmental, revisiting, connecting and building on previous learning. It provides a wide range of opportunities and experiences, from regular sporting activities, musical opportunities, the chance to perform on stage or through off site visits where children can meet enthusiasts and experts and be immersed in memorable experiences linked to their current area of study. We want our pupils to explore and discover their own strengths and challenge themselves to try and apply themselves to new activities and situations.
We want our children to become independent learners, to have the chance to discover and feel confident about their own uniqueness and also to be able to appreciate the wider world and the importance of working together to make things better.
Our staff are dedicated to making this happen. We truly believe that, by working together, we can achieve the aims of our mission statement.
Our Key Curriculum priorities
In addition to the explicit teaching of key skills, we follow a cross-curricular approach to learning. Teachers plan topics around themes, which have a ‘big question’ or key concept running through the learning sequence. These themes are usually based around an aspect of geography, history, science or the arts
