At The Croft Primary school Learning is at the head and of all we do to enable ALL children to reach their full potential by offering a broad and balanced curriculum that is accessible to every child. You will read how we do this through our clear intent, implementation and impact overviews
Curriculum Intent
Learning will always be the head and heart of all we do. Our curriculum intent is to focus on skills and knowledge which is planned and taught progressively and sequentially to enable new knowledge to be taught, practiced, and rehearsed to enable the children to learn more and remember more. With the National Curriculum as our starting point, we believe that our curriculum allows us to provide a range of opportunities for us to develop their skills. Our curriculum implementation is led by high quality teaching and high expectations for ALL children. Entwined through our curriculum, we have these Golden threads:
- Text based
- Rich in skills
- Knowledge
- Progressive/Sequential
- Values (School rules, Croft Values and British Values)
- Community focussed
English-Writing
In Writing, we have chosen to use high quality texts that are progressive from EYFS to Year 6 to support the skills needed to enable children to become competent in the skill and understanding of what and how to be/become a writer. We follow a 3-phase planning and teaching approach that follows a clear sequence of skills that are both progressive and sequential and involve explicit links between the skills of writing and reading. This enables our children to become confident in their understanding of the text and apply that knowledge to their writing. Where appropriate and possible these writing/reading text link to our broader curriculum.
Phonics-Early Reading
We have a daily phonic session that is taught in EYFS to Y2. We will have fidelity to Little Wandle. Which teaches children to identify sounds, verbal recall of sounds, and the written form of sounds They will learn 4 sounds per week in YR and this continues throughout the year and into Y1. In Year 2 we progress from Little Wandle to spellings.
Reading
We have taught daily reading sessions in Year 2 – Year 6 (teacher led), using our 3-phrase approach. Our approach is titled: Pre phase 1, Phase 1, and Phase 2. Each phase involves discussions/oral activities, deepening knowledge of the language, and exploring texts. These are set to support knowledge understanding, fluency, and comprehension as well as provide the links between language, reading, and writing.
We have reading groups that support the Little Wandle program that happen in Year 1, this program supports fluency and comprehension and happens in small groups. We also ensure ALL children read to an adult once every two weeks, which is used to
practice fluency and support progress.
Teachers will also have reading for pleasure sessions within their timetable.
We encourage reading at home by providing all children with a reading record, where an appropriate leveled reading book. This is then monitored to encourage home reading. Children are also given the opportunity of choosing a reading book for pleasure that can
be read by them or members of their family (as this is not a book that is leveled).
Maths
To enable our children to develop their skills in Math, we follow a mastery approach to math which is mapped out from EYFS through to Y6. The mapping of the learning ensures the teaching and learning are progressive in skills, knowledge, and understanding in year group and across the school. We have daily teacher led math lessons that have a 3-stage process, the practice ‘do it’, then apply it ‘secure it’ and the challenge ‘deepen it’. This enables all children to practice and rehearse the learning allowing ALL children the opportunity to learn more and remember more.
In addition to the daily math teaching, we have daily fluency sessions to rehearse and practice key skills and/or prior learning that has been recognized as an area of need for all children.
Where appropriate we also use ‘catch up’ or pre-teach sessions in addition to the Math lesson to ensure all children have further opportunities to meet the ‘whole class’ outcomes.
Broad Curriculum
Our broader curriculum, where possible/appropriate is based on the text chosen for English reading and writing or is of a similar era/theme and ensures sequential and progressive in skills. It is designed to offer ALL our children a rich diet of learning experiences and enable our children to do more and remember more.
Curriculum Support
To enable all children an equitable offer, we use a variety of strategies to allow them to both ‘keep up’ and ‘catch up’. These include adult support, tweaking of learning objectives when appropriate, catch up sessions (same day), pre-teaching, afternoon booster session, SEND interventions and learning support to enable ALL children the same opportunities to learn and progress.
Values
We are a values-based school, and we believe that promoting our values (school and British) is an integral part of our school culture which will ensure that our children leave our
care prepared for the next phase of their education and for life in modern Britain.
Community
Our school is both a place of and a set of partnerships between us and the local community. We pride ourselves on working with/engaging our families and local business’s to enable our children to be a good citizen and understand themselves beyond the school environment.
Curriculum Implementation
With the National Curriculum as our starting point, we believe that our curriculum allows us to provide a range of opportunities for us to develop the language, vocabulary, writing and oracy experiences of our diverse community of children. Our curriculum implementation is led by high quality teaching for ALL children which will lead to long term learning.
Where possible, cross-curricular links are established however explicit teaching of other subjects using a variety of stimuli is adopted when strong, appropriate links cannot be made. Links between previous learning are made to support deeper understanding and to encourage children to apply their knowledge and make connections across curriculum areas.
Learning is carefully sequenced with regular opportunities to revisit and build upon prior knowledge to ensure the needs of the children are met. We recognize that we are all on a journey of learning and our curriculum mirrors this, using learning from previous terms and the current term so that we can embed short- and long-term learning.
We ensure high quality teaching:
- Clear sequential and progressive planning structure for all subjects (Knowledge and Skills)
- All lessons have a structure that enables our 6 principles of Teaching and Learning
- Clear and concise assessment structure for all subjects
- Curriculum leaders ensure clarity for ‘next steps for development’
- The Broader Curriculum provides rich experiences and practical learning
Long Term Planning
Broad Curriculum Coverage
Teaching & Learning
Curriculum Impact
We measure the impact of our curriculum through:
- Detailed data analysis for reading, writing and maths
- Regular pupil progress meetings
- Reflecting on the standards achieved against planned outcomes.
- Sampling children's learning across the school to recognize Curriculum Impact
- We measure the impact of our curriculum through:
- Detailed data analysis for reading, writing and maths
- Regular pupil progress meetings
- Reflecting on the standards achieved against planned outcomes.
- Celebrating the learning at the end of each topic, where children demonstrate the knowledge they have gained
- Sampling children's learning across the school to recognise progress and attainment and to celebrate success.
- Pupil discussions with teachers, Subject Leaders and Senior Leaders about their learning
- progress and attainment and to celebrate success.
- Pupil discussions with teachers, Subject Leaders and Senior Leaders about their learning