Curriculum
"Teachers create the conditions for very positive and purposeful learning in classrooms. A large part of this is based on the school’s core values of achieving, being thoughtful, being confident and working as part of a team. All members of the school community are aware of and able to talk about how these improve the conditions for effective learning. Pupils talk positively about how they enjoy lessons and how the teachers help them learn new things." OFSTED 2014 Above all we want our curriculum to offer challenge and provide engagement for all our children. We accept that literacy and numeracy are very important and that they underpin much of the rest of the curriculum, but we want to ensure that we allow our pupils to develop a wider range of skills and interests. We teach children, not a curriculum and we strongly believe in fitness for purpose. All children and classes are different, and as professionals we always try to use the most appropriate methods, in the most appropriate setting - which is not necessarily in the classroom! To build on our family feel, we have termly whole school topics so that children can share their learning experiences and special curriculum days. These topics are then clearly differentiated for each class to ensure that children develop skills at an age and ability appropriate level.Our topics are based upon the International Primary Curriculum (IPC). As a new National Curriculum has been introduced we have developed a one year curriculum plan initially. This will enable us to evaluate how successfully our plans have been and develop a new rolling programme. Our rolling programme will be carefully planned to enable us to have flexibility in our class structure as our school continues to grow in size. The topics and our curriculum drivers also lead the homework which children bring home and have half a term to complete from a choice of activities. Please see each classes page to see what they are covering this term and their homework. We teach Letters and Sounds using resources from LCP to all EYFS, Y1 and Y2 children and develop the skills of Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar as children progress through Y3 and into Tyburn class. We use a variety of books from a variety of schemes to support the development of children’s reading. This ensures that children read a wide variety of text types but also maintain their own interest levels. To support children as they first begin to read we use ORT Songbirds books to support Guided Reading Sessions and Project X also supports Guided Reading sessions in Old John and Tyburn classes. We are currently working hard on our curriculum for the academic year 2015/16 and beyond. This is to fit with our new structure of four classes. The website will be updated once this has been finalised. |
