Curriculum Overview

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Rationale For Our Curriculum

At Springdale Primary School our aim is to offer a broad and balanced curriculum to ensure every child reaches their full potential and has access to a range of educational experiences whatever their starting points or circumstance. We have used the national curriculum guidelines in order to develop the knowledge content of the curriculum, and our main aim is to make the curriculum relevant and exciting to our children, with clear skill progression through targets that they care about achieving.

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Intent

An important principle of our curriculum design is that the curriculum reflects the interests of the school, its staff, children, parents and wider national and global communities. The curriculum will be reviewed regularly to ensure it is fit for purpose. At the heart of all of our teaching and learning is the aim to develop children as independent, resilient, inspired and motivated life-long learners with a sense of responsibility as future citizens. The school prioritises the mental health and well-being of all pupils and provides resources to ensure pupils’ needs are met effectively

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The key skills are embedded into all areas of the curriculum. In addition, teachers plan highly engaging learning opportunities that are matched to the relative starting points of all pupils. Opportunities are given for pupils to practise skills learnt in other subjects, such as pie charts taught in maths and used in science to record results, venn diagrams used in English comprehension.

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Implementation

In Early Years, EYFS staff introduce a new theme each half term to provide inspiration for learning, whilst providing the flexibility for children to follow their own interests and ideas. Children learn through a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities. In KS1 and KS2 subjects are taught discretely through a range of different topics, links between subjects are established when this will enable children to acquire a deeper understanding and connections to be made. We also ensure the whole curriculum offers opportunities to support children’s language development. Key language is identified throughout the curriculum. Alongside our focus on key skills, we also recognise the importance of children gaining an in depth, detailed subject knowledge of a range of topics throughout all of their learning. The balance between skills and knowledge is key; children will be engaged in their work through a wide variety of learning styles and experiences, such as the mountain topic in year 6 when pupils learn all about the key features of mountains and then have an opportunity to solve problems on the Springdale Mountain!

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Impact

Assessment includes skills progression and content knowledge. Our curriculum has an ambition for high achievement of all pupils irrespective of background and starting point.

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This achievement is represented in three key areas:

• Standards: Children make progress and attain in line with or better than national expectations. They are given the opportunities to achieve the greater depth standard. Assessment documents show that knowledge and skills are embedded throughout the curriculum.

• Aspire, Believe, Achieve: Children are confident and successful learners, demonstrating our school’s learning values, and make the right choices for their learning.

• Personal Development: Children demonstrate the “Springdale Way” in their learning and in their behaviour in and around school. Children learn to make the right choices for their safety. The choices children make benefit the school and local community.

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If you would like to know more about our curriculum please contact us.

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