Our curriculum will give our children the confidence, cultural capital, ability and vocabulary to express their ideas, feelings and opinions. We will provide fun and exciting opportunities that are underpinned by opportunities to speak, listen, discuss, debate and perform.
We recognise that the development of talk underpins everything else: all learning including reading and writing.
We will provide a language rich environment where our learning will include lots of talk to discuss their well-being, reasoning, problem solving skills and opinions. We will help our children to experiment with and develop the language structures that they need for different purposes. Through our curriculum children will be able to articulate comparisons, persuade us, explain ideas, retell events, share predictions and opinions developing their academic language.
We will stretch children’s vocabulary to create breadth and depth so that they become accomplished communicators who can express what they feel precisely and confidently. Technical vocabulary and vocabulary to communicate is planned and taught explicitly with opportunities to evaluate and apply this growing vocabulary, from an early age children are encouraged to use full sentences with technical vocabulary. Through collaborative learning, they will reflect on their learning and feel confident to respectfully challenge or add to others’ ideas and opinions.
The Primary Curriculum is divided into the following subject areas:
Core subjects: English, Mathematics, Science and Computing
Foundation Subjects: History, Geography, Art, Music, Design and Technology, Personal, Social and Health Education and Physical Education.
Modern Foreign languages: Initially children are taught basic French in Year 3 4 5 and 6.
The schemes or resources listed below form a part of the teaching in these subjects and are based on National Curriculum entitlements, although these are supplemented by other approaches or plans. Other subjects are based on the National Curriculum and are planned discretely by teachers.
Phonics – Little Wandle Phonics
Maths – White Rose
RE – Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus
Computing – Purple Mash
PSHE – DCC scheme PSHE Matters
PE – Qualitas Sport
(Kapow now supports all areas of our curriculum)
We have specialist staff from the local comprehensive school, who have delivered mandarin for half a term to Year 5/6 for the last four years as part of our partnership work. We will also be holding a ‘Chinese Culture’ morning for our Year 4/5 pupils.
Planning and Delivery of the Curriculum:
A variety of teaching methods are used to deliver the curriculum, due to the limited time children spend at school. Lessons are delivered using methods such as whole class delivery, group work and individual programmes of study integrated across the curriculum, based on the needs of the individual child.
We aim to provide memorable, enjoyable and stimulating learning opportunities for our pupils and to involve parents where possible with our thematic ideas, through class newsletters, workshops and opportunities to spend the morning in school to see the progression of subjects e.g. whole school maths morning, phonics workshops and reading.
At Renishaw, we are always seeking to innovate where appropriate and to maintain and provide the best in primary curriculum possible.
We want children to find their voice. Through our curriculum our children will leave us as confident, articulate global citizens.
Curriculum Intent
At Renishaw Primary School, our curriculum is designed to recognise children’s prior learning; provide first-hand learning experiences; allow the children to develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers. It is fundamental for all of our children to believe that they are unique, valuable and capable of success.
We offer a balanced and thematic curriculum for our children to instill our core values and to build resilience. We are a fully inclusive school that offers first hand learning and exposure to world. We aim to provide rich learning experiences that allows aspirational thinking to be reinforced and is woven both in and beyond the classroom, so that our children feel that their talents and interests are championed by all of the adults who work with them.
Building a strong sense of community, is vital for our children in order for them to expand their knowledge of the countries, cultures and landscapes beyond Renishaw. We affirm that working and learning together is vital to build social and cultural cohesion and to become kind, empathetic and compassionate citizens who value diversity.
At Renishaw Primary we aim to promote positive attitudes to learning which reflect the values and skills needed to promote responsibility for learning and future success. We want our children to articulate their knowledge with confidence, using a wide range of appropriate and ambitious vocabulary with precision.
Children leave our school with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners.
Implementation
To achieve this, we are focused on making English interesting and exciting, engaging the pupils with the joy and wonder of books and hooking their imagination and creativity. At Renishaw, we view the teaching of English as a fundamental part of the holistic development of the pupil, fostering positive behaviours and attitudes toward learning, and providing key knowledge and skills, to benefit pupils throughout their education and beyond.
The development of reading in pupils is carefully planned through the teaching of phonics, details of which are provided in our phonics section. This programme is structured in line with the latest research to ensure that each pupil is guided through the process to maximise their progress. The curriculum has been designed to provide pupils with opportunities to write in a wide variety of contexts and with a range of outcomes. Central to all of our work with English is the belief the pupils should enjoy the experience – not only does this maximise the engagement of pupils, but also underlines the fact that reading, writing, speaking and listening should be pleasurable activities, matching our intention that our school should foster a love for English.
Impact
We develop children’s abilities to listen, speak, read and write for a wide range of purposes. Children learn to use language to communicate ideas, views and feelings. This enables children to express themselves creatively and imaginatively both verbally and through the written word. We aim to share with children the joy of reading and to help them to become enthusiastic and critical readers of stories, poetry and drama, as well as non-fiction and media texts. The revised English National Curriculum is followed. Our pupils leave with highly developed communication skills, skills which they take with them into secondary education and beyond. We measure our success not only though pupils’ attainment but also through their engagement with, and enthusiasm for, the many English opportunities we provide them with.
Our Curriculum
See these files for our latest plans on our curriculum. Some adaptations are being made to accommodate lock down, home learning and catch up.
The Curriculum Progression Documents below, outline how our curriculum is organised. They and are in formats that reflect the way in which the subjects differ in their nature and the way in which they are taught and delivered.
When the children are 7 and 11 they are assessed and their achievements are related to the National Curriculum Attainment Targets – these are known as S.A.T.s (Standard Attainment Tests).
Children in the Foundation Stage are also assessed and at the beginning of their entry into Nursery and Reception and at the end of the school year. The evidence collected provides a profile of their attainment against six areas of learning.
All children are assessed throughout school using a range of tasks and tests which provide a clear indication of their progress and needs.
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 National Curriculum 2014, but also a 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 the 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 they achieve their true potential.
Organisation and planning
We plan our curriculum in three phases. We agree a long-term plan for each subject throughout the school. This indicates what topics are to be taught in each term, and to which groups 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.
Our short-term plans are those that our teachers write on a weekly basis. We use these to set out the learning objectives for each session, and to identify what activities we are going to use in the lesson.
In the Foundation Stage, at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 we adopt an inter-disciplinary topic approach to curriculum planning. We plan the curriculum carefully, so that there is coherence and full coverage of all aspects of the National Curriculum and/or Early Learning Goals, and there is planned progression in all curriculum areas.
Educational Visits
We try to ensure the children undertake a half or full day visit or have a visitor come to school each term to enhance the ‘topic’ being studied. Voluntary parental contributions are asked to cover any costs incurred from these activities. In the event of the voluntary parental contributions not covering the overall costs of the activity, it may have to be cancelled. No profit accrues to the school from the voluntary contributions and on many occasions the school will subsidise these visits.
