Curriculum Policy

The curriculum is all the planned activities that we organise in order to promote learning and personal growth and development. It includes not only the formal requirements of the curriculum, but also the range of extra-curricular activities that the school organises in order to enrich the experience of the children. It also includes the hidden curriculum, or what children learn from the way they are treated and expected to behave.

We aim to teach children how to grow into positive, responsible people, who can work and co-operate with others while developing knowledge and skills, so that hey achieve their true potential. Our school curriculum is underpinned by the values that we hold dear at our school.

Values

The curriculum is the means by which the school achieves its objective of educating children in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need in order to lead fulfilling lives. Our school is in full agreement with the values statement included in the introduction to The National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers in England.

These are the main values of our school, upon which we have based our curriculum:

• We value the way in which all children are unique, and our curriculum promotes respect for the views of each individual child, as well as for people of all cultures. We value the spiritual and moral development of each person, as well as their intellectual and physical growth.
• We value the importance of each person in our community. We organise our curriculum so that we promote co-operation and understanding between all members of our community.
• We value the rights enjoyed by each person in our society. We respect each child in our school for who they are, and we treat them with fairness and honesty. We aim to enable each person to be successful, and we provide equal opportunities for all the children in our school.
• We value our environment, and we aim, through out curriculum, to teach respect for out world. and how we should care for it for future generations, as well as our own.

Aims and Objectives

The aims of our school curriculum are

• To enable all children to learn and develop their skills to the best of their ability
• To promote a positive attitude towards learning, so that children enjoy coming to school, and acquire a solid basis for lifelong learning
• To teach children the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and information technology (IT)
• To enable children to be creative and to develop their own thinking; to teach children about their developing world, including how their environment and society changed over time
• To help children understand Britain’s cultural heritage
• To enable children to be positive citizens in society; to teach children to have an awareness of their own spiritual development, and to understand right from wrong
• to help children understand the importance of truth and fairness, so that they grow up committed to equal opportunities for all
• to enable children to have respect themselves and high self-esteem, and to be able to live and work co-operatively with others.

Organisation and planning

We plan our curriculum in three phases. We agree a long-term plan for each key stage. This indicates what topics are to be taught in each term, and to which group of children. We review our long-term plan on an annual basis.

With our medium-term plans, we give clear guidance on the objectives and teaching strategies that we use when teaching each topic. As we have adopted the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies for our school, we take our medium-term planning directly from the guidance documents. We use the national schemes of work for much of our medium-term planning in the foundation subjects.

Our short-term plans are those that our teachers write on a weekly or daily basis. We use these to set out the learning objectives for each session, and to identify what resources and activities we are going to use in the lesson.

At Key Stage 2 the curriculum at our school places a greater emphasis on the core and foundation subjects than it does at Key Stage 1, and we teach these subjects separately. This means that, for example, a child may concentrate in one term on a history topic, then switch to a greater emphasis on geography in the next term. Over the three terms of the academic year, each child has the opportunity to experience the full range of National Curriculum subjects.

Children with Special Needs

The curriculum in our school is designed to provide access and opportunity for all children who attend the school. If we think it necessary to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of individual children, then we do so only after the parents of this child have been consulted.

If the child has a special need, our school does all it can to meet these individual needs. We comply with the requirements set out in the SEN Code of Practice in providing for children with special needs, his/her teacher makes an assessment of this need. In most instances the teacher is able to provide resources and educational opportunities which meet the child’s needs within the normal class organisation.

The school provides an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for each of the children who are on the special needs register. This sets out targets for improvement, so that we can review and monitor the progress of each child at regular intervals.

The Foundation Stage

The curriculum that we teach in the reception class meets the requirements set out in the revised National Curriculum at Foundation Stage. Our curriculum planning focuses on the Early Learning Goals and on developing children’s skills and experiences, as set out in this document.

Our school fully supports the principle that young children learn through play, and by engaging in well-planned structured activities. Teaching in the reception class builds on the experiences of the children in their pre-school learning.

During the children’s first term in the reception class, their teacher makes a baseline assessment to record the skills of each child on entry to the school. This assessment forms an important part of the future curriculum planning for each child.

We are well aware that all children need the support of parents and teachers to make good progress in school. We strive to build positive links with the parents of each child by keeping them informed about the way in which the children are being taught and how well each child is progressing.

Key Skills

The following skills have been deemed 'key skills' in the revised National Curriculum:

• Communication
• Application of number
• Information technology
• Working with others
• Improving own learning and performance
• Problem-solving.

In our curriculum planning we highlight these skills, so that the children’s progress in all of these areas can be identified and monitored. All subject areas contribute to a child’s progress in these skills. Our school believes that all children need to make good progress in these skill areas in order to develop to their true potential.

Monitoring and review

The headteacher is reponsible for the day to day organisation of the curriculum. The headteacher monitors the weekly lesson plans for all teachers, ensuring that all classess are taught the full requirements of the curriculum, and that all lessons have appropriate learning objectives.

Individual teachers monitor the way their subjects are taught. They examine long-term and medium-term planning, and ensure that appropriate teaching strategies are used. Class teachers also have responsibility for monitoring the way in which resources are stored and managed.

Educational Visits Policy