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The Curriculum

 
   

Curriculum Intent

Underpinning the curriculum at Thorpe Primary School are the shared PKAT goals and principles. 

PKAT Goals

  • Striving to unlock children’s passion to succeed in their school career and beyond;
  • Building together strong foundations to acquire the key skills for life-long learning; and the resilience and courage to apply them;
  • Designing and delivering an innovative and stimulating 4-19 curriculum;
  • Challenging, supporting and investing in our staff to create an outstanding workforce;
  • Creating an inclusive learning community where safeguarding, well-being, respect and aspiration for all are paramount.

PKAT Principles

Leadership
All young people and adults make a positive and exciting contribution to the life of the school and local community through the development of leadership skills.

Relationships
Being different, belonging together.

Responsibility
Responsibility we have for ourselves and each other and for making a positive impact in our school, the local community and as a global citizen.

Courage/Resilience/Determination
Having the courage and resilience to take risks with our learning to achieve beyond our expectations, and having the determination to succeed.

Dreams and Aspiration
Broadening the awareness of opportunity for all young people, enriching their experiences and supporting their pathways to their dreams and aspirations.

Pursuit of Excellence and Celebrating Success
Relentlessly pursuing school improvement, challenging and supporting regardless of starting points and celebrating individual success, achievement and progress within the school and the wider community.

In addition, at Thorpe our curriculum is underpinned by our three core values:
                                                        Challenge, Inspire, Succeed                                                 

 

 

At Thorpe Primary School, our intent is to ensure every child has every opportunity to succeed, so that they are the best version of themselves when they leave us.  Pupil achievement is at the heart of all that we do, and we aim to create a sense of resilience, independence and resourcefulness in all children.

We value the diversity of our school intake, with around 80% of our children from ethnic minority communities, 60% of whom speak English as an additional language as indicated by parents.   There are 36 languages spoken in school (Census October 2019), the top being Panjabi, English and Urdu.  Significant numbers of children travel from out of catchment to school, 50% in 2016/17.  Over half of our children come from areas of significant deprivation (Central and Ravensthorpe Wards).  We ensure our curriculum takes into account this diversity and the wide range of learning needs. 


Our curriculum uses the National Curriculum as its foundation.   In line with this, our ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum has been carefully chosen and organised to ensure children can build on their knowledge year-on-year. 

We intend our curriculum to provide children with opportunities to increase their knowledge across a range of subjects and experiences; embedding key Literacy and Numeracy skills; nurturing talent in arts and sports; utilising the outdoor environment to foster collaborative and adventurous learning; creating Scientists, Historians, Geographers, Musicians, Philosophers, Designers, Performers, Computer programmers; creating children who are ready to be successful citizens of 21st Century Britain.

We will also ensure our curriculum ‘promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society’ (National Curriculum 2014).

We recognise reading as a vital skill that will support children’s learning across the whole curriculum.  We ensure that our pupils are taught to read with fluency, accuracy and understanding through a variety of discreet and cross-curricular learning opportunities.  Above all, we want our children to become enthusiastic, independent and reflective readers. 

How is our Curriculum implemented?

Through our detailed curriculum strategy we will:

  • Map out the knowledge we think children should know in each subject in the curriculum via the use of progression maps;
  • Identify key vocabulary we think children should know in each subject in the curriculum and incorporate this into progression maps. This, in turn, will increase reading comprehension, ensuring children build up extended specialist vocabulary;
  • Put oracy and opportunities to develop communication skills at the heart of our lessons;
  • Develop coherent threads throughout the curriculum, ensuring children have repeated exposure to abstract concepts in different contexts to ensure long term remembering;
  • Build research into learning for long term memory into our model through the use of Knowledge Organisers and regular low stakes quizzes;
  • Create a planned, cumulative and progressive model which meets the needs of our children, allowing us to be confident in making judgements about children’s attainment and progress in any subject. We use the rationale that if a child has learnt and kept pace with what our subject expectations are, taking into account their prior attainment and any specific contexts, then they have made good progress;
  • Foster a love of reading and improve reading comprehension skills through development of knowledge, modelling of reading for enjoyment by adults and provision of whole class reading resources which complement and reinforce learning from other subjects, whilst providing rich sources for writing opportunities. The structured approach of ‘Destination Reader’ will be used to support the teaching of to help develop a deeper understanding of what’s being read and to actively engender a love of reading which will endure throughout children’s lives;
  • Within mathematics, develop the core elements of fluency, problem-solving, reasoning and conceptual understanding, through the teaching of a mastery curriculum which challenges all and supports when appropriate. Core skills will be revisited and embedded;
  • Ensure scientific knowledge is developed and enquiry fostered through planned, progressive units of work.  Science Bug will be used to support planning an exciting hands-on science programme to spark imagination, fuel curiosity and nurture confident young scientists.

 

Pupils’ Wellbeing

We understand that every child deserves an education that not only prepares them academically for the future, but equips them emotionally for the challenges they will face outside the classroom and for the world they will enter when they leave our care.  PSHE comment…

In recognising the development of the whole child, the pastoral support given to children so they can access the curriculum is strong.  The work of two Family Liaison leads, a Learning Support Mentor, a SEND TA and a trained Forest School practitioner supports vulnerable pupils to access their learning and curriculum entitlement.

Curriculum Enrichment

To ensure our vision becomes reality, we also intend to provide every child with a breadth of additional opportunities:

Educational visits in every year group, from Nursery;
Enrichment of the curriculum through visitors;
Residential visits (Year 5 and Year 6);
Option to learn a musical instrument as an extra-curricular activity;
A wide range of sports events, both for participation and competition;
A chance to perform in drama productions and a choir;
In KS2, opportunities to visit 4 places of worship;
Annual fundraising events;
Topic immersion days.
 

a. Mental health and well-being support

Supporting children to build positive relationships with others:
Many of our children will require support to rebuild relationships and re learn how to interact and build relationships, including sharing, turn taking, greeting and interacting with others positively, playing alongside and with peers, responding to familiar and new adults and seeking adults to help.

​To support this area, our curriculum will:
 - build in opportunities to develop turn taking and sharing;
 - provide children with independent learning opportunities to develop play;
-  ensure adults build in opportunities to give sole attention to pupils to rebuild relationships;
-  build in PSHE opportunities to explore which adults in school keep us safe, and how they do that. 

Supporting children to manage their feelings and behaviours:
Our recovery curriculum will support children to follow the Thorpe behaviour expectations of ‘ready, respectful, safe’ and to fully embrace the positive behaviour strategies that help them to feel safe, calm and ready to learn. 

​To support this area, our curriculum will
- be built around clear routines and communication for all children;
- build in opportunities for children to express themselves and share their experiences;
- build in tools to support children in communication, such as circle time and mindfulness sessions;
- give regular opportunities for pupils to engage in self–regulation activities such as with sensory breaks, active breaks and use of resources which support individuals;
- use adults to model processing and talking about feelings and emotions.

b. Physical health and well-being support​

Our children will need support to re-engage with physical health and well-being routines, including learning new routines to keep safe and enable infection control.  This will include hand washing, social distancing and understanding new school routines.   We will need to help children to be physically well through active sessions, use of outdoor space and understanding about keeping physically well.

c. Enjoy and achieve

We need to ensure our curriculum is carefully planned to support children’s learning.  We will identify key gaps in knowledge and provide opportunities within our curriculum to help children become secure in what they have missed and minimise any disadvantages.   We will stretch and deepen all children’s knowledge and re-ignite their enjoyment and curiosity.

To support this area, we will:
 -us a range of assessment strategies to identify gaps in learning;
- plan according to children’s specific needs;
- implement a reviewed knowledge-rich curriculum;
- support children with special educational needs and disabilities.

d. Support our parents and community

We recognise that our families will have had many and varied experiences. We will engage with parents in a safe way, listen to their concerns and offer support.  We will communicate our safety measures and work with families to support remote learning.   We will have protocols in place to enable staff to still meet with parents if necessary, particularly in the safeguarding capacity with our DSLs, family liaison and pastoral support staff. 

P.E. LESSONS

On P.E. days the children will need to come to school in their P.E. kit as there will not be an opportunity to get changed at school.   As a reminder, jewellery should not be worn. If your child has stud earrings, they will be covered with tape.

Year  P.E. Day P.E. Day
R Donaldson Tuesday Thursday
R Carle Tuesday Thursday
1 Murphy Wednesday Friday
1 Grey Wednesday Friday
2 Blake Monday Thursday
2 Rosen Monday Thursday
3 Walliams Monday Thursday
3 Dahl Monday Thursday
4 Blackman Tuesday Wednesday
4 Morpurgo Wednesday Thursday Swimming
4 Lewis Tuesday Wednesday
5 Cowell Monday Wednesday
5 Rowling Monday Wednesday
6 Tolkien Tuesday Friday
6 Pullman Tuesday Friday
6 Zephaniah Tuesday Friday

PSHE/Citizenship

PSHE and Citizenship help to give pupils the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to live confident, healthy, independent lives and helps them become informed, active and responsible citizens in the community and the wider world.

Children take part in a wide range of activities across and beyond the curriculum, tackling many of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

Should you require any further information about the curriculum, then please either speak to your child's class teacher or contact the school office and they will direct your enquiry to the appropriate member of staff.