Curriculum
Stanton under Bardon Community Primary School Curriculum
Our Curriculum Intent – What are we trying to achieve?
At Stanton under Bardon Community Primary School, we are very proud of our curriculum; it aims to support both academic achievement and personal development. Our vision is for pupils to leave our school as confident, independent, respectful and self-motivated young people and ready for the next stage of their education and beyond.
We strive to provide an engaging, relevant and broad curriculum which equips our children with the knowledge and skills that develop an enthusiasm for lifelong learning and the personal, social and emotional characteristics that prepare them for life in the modern world.
Our curriculum is built around the objectives set out in the EYFS Framework, the National Curriculum for all subjects in Years 1 to 6 and the Locally Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education.
Our curriculum has been designed to provide pupils with a clear, progressive framework of skills, knowledge and understanding that build year on year.
We have chosen a range of topics, influential people and themes that provide our young learners with a reflection, not only of our modern and diverse world but also of our collective journey. choices represent the knowledge necessary to develop an understanding of the main movements for change and progress that have shaped the world that we know.
The development of a rich vocabulary is structured clearly within our curriculum, ensuring that pupils understand the words needed to access high quality texts, contribute to discussions and share their own views and opinions. A rich and varied vocabulary will prepare our learners for their future education. Language will be explicitly taught throughout all areas of learning and vocabulary enhanced.
Through our curriculum, we aim to give our pupils the skills and knowledge necessary to enable them to become:
- Responsible Citizens who aim to inspire others and make a positive contribution to society
- Successful Learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve
- Confident Individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.
We believe our curriculum to be ambitious and inclusive to all pupils, giving them the knowledge and cultural capital that they need to succeed in their next steps in education. Where necessary, individual adaptations are made to meet the needs of all children, including SEND.
Our Curriculum Implementation- How do we organise learning?
We currently teach our EYFS pupils in their own phase, teaching the EYFS curriculum. In our Year 1 and 2 class, we teach across our rolling programme themes and topics A and B for the majority of subjects. However, sometimes some subjects may need to be taught separately due having been in a EYFS /Year 1 class.
In KS2, our curriculum is organised into two-year bands working on a rolling programme. Teachers in KS2 organise the themes appropriate for lower KS2 (Years 3 and 4) and Upper KS2 (Years 5 and 6), resulting in consistency and progression across the Phase.
Themes or topics are normally planned half termly but can be slightly more or less dependent on the length of the half term. The themes interweave knowledge between subjects where links are beneficial for children’s understanding of bigger ideas, however, some units are also taught as stand-alone.
Core subjects provide Year Group expectations and, where necessary, classes may be split into smaller groups in some lessons, for example, phonics in Key Stage One. In Foundation subjects, such as Science, more advanced learners work towards expanding the depth and understanding of a subject as others are mastering the basics of the key concepts.
The knowledge, skills, concepts and vocabulary that will be taught in each subject are laid out in our Subject Progression Documents, as are all of the links across our curriculum. This is enriched by a range of high quality experiences and extra-curricular activities.
The curriculum is designed with books and knowledge at its heart to ensure that children develop as strong readers and have a secure vocabulary base, which will encourage a deep understanding of the world.
We use a number of schemes of work, such as Developing Experts for Science, which provide extensive vocabulary and show inspirational work experiences in their plans, along with progression documents. We use Kapow for Design and Technology, Music, French and PSHE which also have CPD lessons for teachers.
Impact- We will be successful when…
The impact of our curriculum can be best seen in the body of skills and knowledge that our pupils accumulate over time. Pupils who can engage in high quality discussion, can question, understand wide concepts and make links in their learning whilst having the skills to produce an excellent standard of work is our desired output.
Staff measure a pupil’s progress towards this through a range of frequent formative assessments, as mentioned above. The school use NTS for maths and reading and Sonar to track progress, along with weekly spelling and arithmetic tests for Year 1 to Year 6 and more recently for individual progress in reading through Reading Plus. Teaching staff have an informed overview of their class, knowing when to move learning on or when further direct teaching is needed to ensure that all pupils are achieving their objective. Additional support and interventions are used successfully to support whole class teaching.