CURRICULUM OVERVIEW AND INTENT

Curriculum Intent

At Foster’s Primary School, we work closely with our staff, parents and carers, learners and governors to create a safe, happy and caring environment where children have the opportunity to thrive. We strongly believe that our children have the right to a balanced, engaging and relevant curriculum with richness derived from both creative thinking around how we build learning experiences and a drive to deepen learning through connecting both the content of the curriculum and the contexts in which learning is applied. The relevance needs to answer the essential question of ‘why’ for children, and to enable them to understand how the concepts, content, facts and skills all interconnect to influence future learning.

Our engaging and inspirational curriculum encourages curiosity and a passion for learning so that children may develop into life-long learners. Our children develop an understanding and essential values of how they can contribute positively to the world on their doorstep and beyond. Above all else, we aim to ensure that learning through and within the curriculum is enjoyable.

We are extremely fortunate to have a team of dedicated, hardworking and committed staff who strive to continuously demonstrate our school’s aims and values. Our aim is to ensure that every child works to the very best of their ability every day so that s/he leaves with the highest standard of attainment possible. This applies across all areas of the curriculum, whether academic, in sport, creativity and social and cultural education.

We are committed to ensuring our young people are well prepared for the next stage of their education when they leave us and have the opportunity to thrive in the modern world.

Curriculum Implementation

The school uses the Power of Reading approach across the school, a creative, coherent and immersive approach, designed to enable all children to learn and apply the knowledge and skills taught.

The Power of Reading approach provides the necessary framework upon which we design and map our broad aims for each year group and the sequential progression we want children to achieve over time. We consider carefully how to help all children to build and remember a web of interconnected and relevant knowledge. We believe that an ‘immersive’ approach to learning through thematic topics and core texts, allows children to understand how learning is connected across subjects, topics and core concepts. In the same way, skills are taught and lessons are designed to challenge children to apply their knowledge and skills to solve problems both together and independently.

We also recognise fully the need to ensure that any ‘gaps’ in a child’s learning are addressed and therefore adopt a quality first teaching approach to delivery of the curriculum with a robust intervention system which helps children to ‘step back’ and revisit learning when needed to ensure that they are able to progress successfully.

Curriculum Impact

We deploy a robust, strategic and systematic approach to monitoring the quality of the teaching of the curriculum that leads to strong outcomes for every child. In this way we can continuously check on the quality of the curriculum design, planning for teaching and subsequently review, adapt and improve on our shared practice.

We assess and measure outcomes in line with the starting points of each child, checking that they are taught, supported and challenged to make the best progress possible and to reach at least the expected national standards or beyond.

It is equally our aim to always ensure that no child is disadvantaged in what they are able to learn and achieve, no matter what the barriers may be to their progress over time. We therefore endeavour to adapt both the ways in which we teach the curriculum and ensure that all children share the same opportunities to learn.

Our curriculum aims to develop and encourage every child and to nurture their personal growth through the values of family, friendship, opportunity, safety, tolerance, teamwork, equity, equality, strength and success.  

All children have an opportunity to develop the ability to make confident choices between right and wrong and to understand the ways in which they can make a positive difference to both their local community and the wider world.

                                           Curriculum Overviews

On this page, you will find the curricular overviews for each year group.  A more detailed view of what's happening in each term can be seen in the class newsletters in the Class Pages.

We are firm believers in the Power of Reading and every year group's learning across the foundation subjects is closely linked to the text they are studying in their English lessons. The books are high-quality and regularly reviewed to ensure that they match with the needs and interests of the individual children. Our curriculum fully fulfils our duties outlined in the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Education Needs and Disability Regulations 2014. Take a look at the plans below to see the links being made.

If you have any further questions, or would like to find out more about our school curriculum, please speak to your child's class teacher, or contact us directly.

Phonics

The children are taught to read using a phonics scheme called 'Jolly Phonics'. This is a highly regarded scheme and has proven effective in structuring the teaching of phonics. Our Year 1 Phonics Screening Check results are consistently above national and local averages and we are proud of the phonics teaching we deliver, which gives all children the best opportunity to progress as early readers and to read for enjoyment.

If you would like to learn more about the scheme, or how to teach your child phonics, you might like to try the following websites:

Maths

Maths Mastery

At Foster's, this means that within each maths lesson, children will have opportunities to work on their mathematical:

• fluency
• reasoning and
• problem solving.

Maths Booklet and How To Videos for Parents

We have put together a booklet  and a selection of how to videos to help parents and carers understand the methods we use to teach addition, subtraction, division and multiplication in school. We hope that it is useful and that the printable resources at the back of the booklet is useful for working with your child at home.

If you have any feedback, please do let us know.