National Curriculum September 2014 Key Stage 1 and 2

Our Aims  To provide an enriching curriculum, where all children learn, achieve and succeed.  To embed our Christian values and ethos.  To nurture and develop personal skills and abilities.  To provide an environment where all children feel safe, happy, independent ready to learn and are confident to challenge themselves.

Planning  Our curriculum has been split into 4 areas, which all feed into each other. 1. The Roots planning 2. Topic cycles 3. Skills and Knowledge planning 4. Tasks and activities  To show our planning we have use a tree. The roots are the roots! The trunk the topics, the branches the skills and knowledge. The leaves will be the tasks and activities planned for each topic.

Roots Planning  The roots of our curriculum are our Christian values and ethos.  We aim to enhance these attributes within each child’s character, developing their learning attitude, social skills and as they move into year 6, provide strategies to assist the transition to secondary school and as they become part of society.

Roots planning  The following areas will be planned for within the roots of the curriculum: 1. Learning behaviours, which will correlate to our successful learner wheels (resilience, creativity, ask questions, make good choices, perseverance, concentrate, team player and try new things) 2. Dispositions and Attitudes 3. Understanding of the World 4. Communication 5. Values (friendship, forgiveness, service, thankful ness, perseverance, justice and hope) 6. Collaboration 7. Service 8. Creativity 9. Challenge/Taking Risks

Topic Planning  Each planning phase (Years 1/2, Years 3/4 and Years 5/6) have developed new 2 year rolling topic cycles.  When planning topics, teams looked at what knowledge is required to be taught, the skills we wanted the children to learn and topics that have worked well in the past.  We asked for the child’s opinions on past topics and sent out a parent questionnaire to establish topics that had been received well by the children.

Topic Planning  Topic plans are as follows;  These overviews will be available to view on the website.

Skills and Knowledge Planning  We wanted to combine a knowledge and skills based curriculum to ensure children are exposed to a range of learning strategies and learn to solve problems independently and further their own learning.  By providing children will a range of skills we enable them to transfer abilities to a range of subjects and take new learning forward, effectively equipping children with life skills.

Skills and Knowledge Planning  Subject leaders looked at the required content of the curriculum.  They looked at progression and assessment for all year groups.  Planning teams then took this information and looked at where specific elements of each subject could be taught and under which topics.  Teams then looked at how subjects could be delivered in a cross curricular approach, where skills and knowledge from different areas could be taught within one lesson.

Skills and Knowledge Planning  Medium Topic Plans were then made, showing clearly the skills and knowledge to be taught within each topic.  These are working documents and will be added to as the topic progresses.  They will be available on the website.  We want children to have an opinion and give ideas on what they would like to learn.  Prior to each new topic, the children will be asked for their input as to what they would like to learn, with the aim of this being included within the plans.

Skills and Knowledge Planning  One topic per cycle will be RE driven. These topics will be highlighted on the medium terms plans.  We have included Outdoor Learning and Forest skills within our plans. Mrs Walsh- Young has developed the skills and content of the Outdoor Learning.

Tasks and Activities  The leaves of the tree will show the tasks and activities delivered during each topic.  The leaves will be changed each topic so the children can see what is planned. They will also be able see how their ideas have fed into the curriculum.

Resources  For each topic, their will some type of display in every classroom, highlighting elements of the topic, visual stimulus, books and artefacts for children to hold.  If you have anything that will be suitable for display in classrooms, for any of the topics, please speak to class teachers; we welcome your input.

Homework  Homework is set to provide opportunities for children to take their learning home and develop skills in a fun way.  We will be continuing with homework in a similar way to the past few years.  Homework will be ed to you with a choice of several different activities. The amount completed will be stipulated according to the length of the topic and will be made clear by the class teacher.  Your child’s class teacher will let you know when homework is due. To ensure homework is valued and teachers can give time looking at homework, each class will have a homework afternoon where work will be shared with their class