Curriculum Overview

The Primary curriculum is broad and balanced, offering a wealth of experiences to ensure that all children flourish in school through a carefully designed and taught knowledge-rich curriculum. We ensure the curriculum promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils in our Primary phase, school and of our wider community. Our curriculum develops children’s opportunities, responsibilities and experiences so they are able to fully participate as educated citizens and are prepared for life in Modern Britain. Our HEARTS values are a golden thread throughout our curriculum to further encourage and establish necessary skills for later life.

In the Primary phase, we ensure that a breadth of subjects: English (Oracy, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling), Maths, Science, History, Geography, Art, PE, Design and Technology, Music, PSHE & RSE, Computing, PE, RE and Modern Foreign Languages are taught. The Language learnt in Primary is French, and is taught by secondary specialist teachers to ensure a quality curriculum is delivered to our pupils.

English, Maths and Science form the core subjects in our curriculum.

As part of being an All-Through school, Primary and Secondary phases work collaboratively to plan the curriculum together to ensure that children leave the Primary phase with all knowledge and skills for them to succeed in their transition into Year 7. The curriculum is carefully sequenced to ensure that pupils know more, remember more, leading them to do more.

For Reading, we follow VIPERS as a progressive reading programme which aids the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the reading curriculum. They are key areas which children need to know and understand in order to improve their enjoyment and understanding of texts. VIPERS stands for

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading. VIPERS is a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and students are familiar with, a range of questions, to aid understanding of the texts that they are reading. VIPERS is used in reading lessons where class texts are read, closely linked to the topic they are learning during that term. This enables children to read a range of texts, discuss common themes, plots, understand vocabulary and characters whilst focusing on comprehension to further enhance understanding.

In Maths, we believe all children can achieve in mathematics and we teach for a deep understanding of mathematical concepts, allowing all children to develop their confidence in the subject.

We want our children to build on prior knowledge. By revisiting topics and embedding new learning, this will help the children have a rich, balanced and progressive curriculum. We want all pupils to become fluent in all domains of the mathematics curriculum and to effectively reason, problem solve and develop their fluency skills.

Our ambitious mathematics curriculum allows children to make sense of the world around them by making connections and asking questions between mathematics and everyday life. The coherent structure of the mathematics curriculum across school shows consistency and clear progression in line with age related expectations. Teaching the curriculum using the mastery approach allows children to explore skills and knowledge in depth and gain a secure understanding of the curriculum.

For Writing, we follow the National Curriculum through the use of Jane Consendine’s The Write Stuff’ which follows Unit plans linked to high quality texts, which are read in class. All children develop writing through a process of having quality examples, identifying features, planning, drafting, edit and re- draft moving to production of final written pieces.

For wider curriculum teaching, we follow Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro, a well-sequenced, ambitious and connected curriculum that begins in Reception and develops across Key Stage 1 and 2 up to Year 6. The Cornerstones curriculum is designed and sequenced to build subject knowledge and skills to aid development of pupil’s learning and understanding. Built upon the National Curriculum Programmes of Study, the curriculum begins with ‘Big Ideas’ and concepts that drive the curriculum. These are then divided into smaller subject focussed learning concepts, moving into a robust knowledge and skills framework, which underpins the whole curriculum.