WHAT MAKES OUR CURRICULUM SPECIAL?

Our curriculum has been designed with the sole purpose of ensuring that we can achieve our vision: Unlock Potential, Celebrate Success for EVERY single child that attends our school.

It is delivered through projects which provide a rich menu of exciting and motivating learning activities that make creative links between all aspects of our children’s learning and has a heavy focus on vocabulary. 

The importance of vocabulary development cannot be overestimated. A robust vocabulary improves all areas of communication — listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Vocabulary is critical to a child’s success for these reasons:

• Vocabulary growth is directly related to school achievement
• The size of a child’s vocabulary in the Early Years predicts the ability to learn to read
• Vocabulary helps children to think and learn about the world
• Expanding a child’s knowledge of words provides unlimited access to new information

We believe children learn better when they are engrossed in the project being studied and apply their knowledge and skills to engaging contexts.

Throughout the year, our children will be immersed in good quality, engaging texts which link directly to the curriculum. In each year group, each term, an engaging text is chosen to match the project being studied.

At the start of each term, a Curriculum Immersion Day is held; the aim of which is to engage our children, making them want to learn and find out more!  The children enjoy a variety of different cross-curricular lessons for the day in role as a character and then work towards answering a ‘Big Project Question’ and, study a significant individual linked to the project.

Wherever possible, local links are made to ensure that our curriculum is personalised to our children. 

At the end of each term, parents and carers are invited to attend our ‘Project Exhibition’ events in order for the children to share their learning and to celebrate their efforts.

Enrichment of our curriculum is delivered through our vast selection of before and after school clubs and through themed days/weeks such as Environment Day, British Values Week, La Fete Francais Semaine (French themed week) and Science Week to name but a few!

WHAT MAKES OUR CURRICULUM UNIQUE?

Our curriculum drivers are areas that we value as a school (in addition to our Christian Values); they give an added dimension to the children's learning and are embedded throughout our curriculum.  They provide a mechanism to allow us to develop children as a whole, equip them for the future and broaden their cultural capital in order to promote social mobility.

Opportunity

If we are to realise our school vision of 'Unlock Potential, Celebrate Success' our children need to be provided with the opportunities to do so.  Children cannot aspire to things that they have never encountered.  We will broaden our children's horizons, by nurturing their interests as well as encouraging fearlessness of what is new or unknown and by providing them with a vast array of experiences. 

Staff in each year group have devised a list of ‘Curriculum Promises’ – opportunities that they promise they will deliver to the children.

Opportunities that were presented to our children last year included: enjoying a writer's workshop delivered by the author Luke Temple; tasting foods from other countries; participation in the Bikeability programme; representing our school in virtual sports tournaments; educational visits; visitors to school; and being given leadership roles within school, to name but a few!

Community

We will enable our children to develop the emotional literacy and excellent manners required in order for them to experience positive relationships based on mutual respect.  We feel that developing our school as a learning community is key to enable them to 'Unlock Potential and Celebrate Success'.  Through parental and community involvement, we strive to enhance the learning for both pupils and adults.  We want to encourage parents' and carers' involvement and for them to feel welcome and valued in our school.  We aim to help children understand that they are part of a global community in which they have an instrumental role to play.  We believe in the power of the school community to enhance and change lives. 

Our whole school feature length nativity was shared with all the local nursing homes for the residents to enjoy; we launched the Safer Schools app in December 2020 to empower and educate both parents and children as they navigate the world of technology and social media; and we have very strong links with the local parish and local library.  This academic year, now that COVID restrictions have been lifted, we intend to reintroduce inviting parents into school for a whole host of events such as: our Beginning of Year (BOY) meetings; coffee mornings; Homework Exhibition Project afternoons; Celebrations Collective Worships; Curriculum Talent Awards; Values Awards; and our Grab a Book with a Grown Up sessions.

Diversity

Children need to know more about the world, and the people and cultures within it than what is on their doorstep.  They need to experience the richness of the world's diversity, have the opportunity to challenge stereotypes and develop a commitment to promoting equal opportunities for all.  Our children will understand that difference is a positive, not a negative, and that individual characteristics make people unique.

Last year, our children celebrated Black History Month, International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Anti-Bullying Week, Autism Awareness Day, enjoyed a Diwali dance workshop and was part of the All Together Anti-Bullying campaign and the Let's Celebrate Black Lives project.  All our classes were named after artists and this year, all of our classes are named after inventors and, once again, there is a good spread of gender, race, sexuality and disability to promote diversity and inclusion. 
We have very recently formed an international link with a school in The Gambia, called Sanchaba Sulay Jobe Lower Basic School in West Africa.  We are very much looking forward to the opportunities that this will present to our children!

Curriculum overviews

Please follow the link to the curriculum overview for each year group; this outlines the learning children will cover during this academic year. As we now have mixed age classes, we will operate our curriculum on a cycle basis.

Please see the whole school overview below which details the projects to be studied in each cycle in each year group.