Our School Curriculum
We have a curriculum that has knowledge and progression at its heart. Our vision is for all pupils to be free to express themselves when learning. We work hard to ensure our curriculum is both engaging and inspiring. Our thinking is ‘small steps for ambitious goals’.
Our children follow a mixed aged curriculum where learning within each topic is differentiated to meet the needs of the different aged children in each class. We plan a two year rolling programme which meets the requirements of the National Curriculum (September 2014). The development of the rolling programme is carefully monitored by our subject leaders to ensure that the curriculum suits all learners needs and is ambitious, enabling the majority of children to meet age related expectation.
Where possible we allow for cross-curricular opportunities to promote children’s learning and to enable them to use and apply knowledge and skills.
The drivers that sit behind our curriculum intent are;
- Developing an intrinsic passion for reading
- Having a rapid recall of mental maths
- Promoting a sense of enquiry where children challenge their understanding of new knowledge
- Being safe and a discerning digital citizen able to select IT with automaticity
- For pupils to develop strategies that support their own and others mental health and well being
Our Curriculum Intent
Subject leaders across the school work collaboratively to make sure the curriculum is designed to support all children to achieve and succeed in all areas of school life. As a staff we continually maintain a welcoming, safe and caring environment where our pupils can thrive. We aim to raise our pupil’s aspirations and prepare them as confident and morally equipped citizens. Our school is a community and runs on respect; respect for one another regardless of individual backgrounds.
Our curriculum takes into account our school’s unique characteristics and setting. We are located in the beautiful rural setting of the Blackdown Hills; the river Culm running through our village and our historic Beacon looking over us. Our community environment is integral to our curriculum; our pupils explore the locality throughout their time with us. We are an inclusive school and give every pupil who joins us the same opportunity to thrive and be successful. We have high expectations at all levels for our pupils. We expect them to be smart, to keep a good presentation in their books, to speak articulately and most importantly to have a resilient attitude to learning. We always give positive praise for not giving up and encouragement to keep going. We foster a ‘have a go’ attitude. We have a science curriculum with plenty of investigation. We encourage our pupils to be reflective learners and we use pupil conferencing to facilitate this. With a focus on knowledge across all curriculum subjects our pupils have increased opportunities to learn at a deeper level.
Curriculum Implementation
Our rich and vibrant curriculum is designed with skills at its core. In order to ensure that progression is maintained individual subjects have been carefully mapped out across year groups; we know the learning journey that our children take when they are with us. Teachers individual lesson plans are differentiated, monitored and assessed to ensure pupils are suitably challenged.
Classroom learning environments are vibrant and clearly labelled. Classroom displays are purposeful and designed for our pupils to refer to and for our pupils to feel proud of. We support our pupil’s physical well-being through providing expert sports teaching and coaching, taking part in numerous competitions and sports festivals. The Jigsaw programme for PSHE covers all aspects of social and emotional relationships and teaches our children about feelings and appropriate choices in life. Our school listener makes time for those children who need greater and more complex support with regards to their emotional well-being. Ultimately we help our pupils to be happy and content with who they are.
We give our pupils a wealth of opportunities throughout their primary education. We visit the theatre, go on residential, experience forest school, sing in choirs with hundreds of children, and participate in national projects. We work really hard to ensure that every pupil is given an opportunity to represent their school, be it in sport or the creative arts.
Curriculum Impact
Culmstock Primary School uses rigorous data analysis, termly point in time assessments (to track progress and attainment against national age-related expectation) and monitoring throughout the year to gauge the impact of curriculum design. Together the Head of School and individual subject leaders monitor planning, classroom environments, books, lessons and moderate the accuracy of assessments, providing individual feedback to move practice on. We are keen to celebrate and share good practice and develop our skills further through professional training opportunities. We celebrate the impact of our curriculum by listening to our pupils; through pupil conferencing across the curriculum we can reflect on what is going well and what we need to improve. By giving our pupils the opportunity to talk about their learning and progress we learn about the impact of our curriculum. Our pupils move onto secondary fully equipped for the next part of their life journey. They leave with good manners and a strong core of values. They leave us as achievers; confident learners who are proud of themselves. We pride ourselves on keeping in touch with our pupils once they have moved on; we are immensely proud of them.