The Barming Primary School Curriculum

Intent Statement

Here at Barming Primary School we aim to develop the child as a whole and aim to provide a curriculum that supports our children to learn life skills to prepare them for the unknown.

Our curriculum is designed to:

• recognise where children are 
• provide first hand learning experiences.
• promote creative thinking.
• encourage connections between subjects and real life.
• promote safe, equal, caring and enjoyable relationships and discussing real-life situations appropriate to the age and stage of pupils.
• encourage the children to develop interpersonal skills.
• build resilience and support critical thinkers.
• encourage children to develop self-discipline, responsibility and to work collaboratively with others.
• understand their own strengths and areas for development and know how to face challenges.
• promote responsibility for learning and future success.

The ability to learn is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values.  This involves developing learning attitudes and resilience – acquiring an understanding that we learn from occasional mistakes that we might make. Teaching the skills of interacting with others, questioning, reasoning and explaining help to create a positive attitude to learning.

Implementation

Our curriculum incorporates the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum and other experiences and opportunities, which best meet the learning and developmental needs of the children in our school. We aim for the curriculum to provide children with memorable experiences, in addition to diverse and rich opportunities from which children can learn and develop a range of transferable skills.  

Core subjects

Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils are able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are organised into distinct domains, but pupils should make connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. They are then encouraged to apply this learning to other subjects such as venn diagrams to explore historical similarities and differences and understanding of number to support their understanding of chronology when producing timelines.

The expectation is that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly at the same pace. However, decisions about when to progress are always based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material consolidate their understanding through additional practice, before moving on.

Our English curriculum is derived around the use of high quality age-appropriate rich texts. We believe that our fundamental task is to teach our children to speak clearly and articulately, and to read and write effectively. Reading across all curriculum areas is a priority to extend and deepen pupils understanding and use of vocabulary. We want pupils to develop a love of reading during their time here at Barming Primary School and be exposed to a range of classic and contemporary literature. The use of the school library and class shared texts are key to this. We use each text to create opportunities to develop reading, fluency and comprehension with a focus on key reading strategies and skills. We develop grammar and punctuation knowledge and understanding - using and applying these skills across the wider curriculum.

We explore the writing structure and features of different genres, identifying the purpose and intended audience through our carefully WRITER sequence. Pupils plan and write a piece of writing with a clear context and purpose before evaluating the effectiveness of writing by editing and redrafting.

We currently use 'Letters and Sounds' as our Reading Scheme but from October 2022 we will be a Read, Write Inc School and plan to fully emerse our children and support their reading by embedding a phonics based approached. 

Science is taught in planned and arranged topic blocks to have a project-based and skills based approach. This is a strategy to enable the achievement of a greater depth of knowledge.

Through this planning, we involve problem solving opportunities that allow children to find out for themselves. Children are encouraged to ask their own questions and be given opportunities to use their scientific skills and research to discover the answers. Teachers use precise questioning in class to test conceptual knowledge and skills, and assess children regularly to identify those children with gaps in learning, so that all children keep up.

We build upon the learning and skill development of the previous years. As the children’s scientific knowledge and understanding increases, and they become more proficient in selecting, using scientific equipment, collating and interpreting results, they become increasingly confident in their growing ability to come to conclusions based on real evidence.

Relationships and Sex Education is taught across the school. It is taught with a positive, respectful view of relationships, gender and human anatomy. Medically accurate language and information is used, so that pupils can learn about people and relationships, their bodies, reproduction and health in ways that are appropriate to their age and maturity. We use the Kapow scheme of work to support progress and ensure clear progression with this.

At Barming Primary School, we recognise the contribution of Sport /PE to the health and well-being of the children. We believe that an innovative, varied PE curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities have a positive influence on the concentration, attitude and academic achievement of all our children.

Our Primary School Sport’s Funding has enabled us to continue and extend our provision through employing PASS to train our staff to deliver high quality PE Sessions and support us to enter Inta/Intre PE competitions against other schools. We are now developing our our progressive scheme of work.

Computing skills are embedded in fun and interesting ways. Children apply IT skills in creative ways to inform learning across the whole curriculum; this engagement in creative aspects of their curriculum helps all children to make progress. Ensuring that all children become digitally literate and gain a good understanding of online safety.  We use 'Purple Mash' to ensure a clear progression of knowledge and skills for all chidlren. 

Foundation Subjects

Opportunities for child voice are planned at the beginning of each new topic and this is used to inform the learning for each topic to ensure relevance. SMSC and British Values is embedded throughout our curriculum so it becomes the core from which our children learn. They understand the importance to listen to their peers, support each other and explore new learning in an environment that fosters growth.

History: Our History curriculum is designed to develop a sense of the past in order to understand their identity and the world around them. We aim for our History curriculum to inspire curiosity and develop an appreciation of world culture.

Geography: Through studying Geography we aim for our pupils to gain an understanding of the physical aspects of the planet and the different environments and habitats of the world. We relate this to the past, present and future.

Languages: We believe that learning a language has a positive impact on a child's learning. It increases their cultural awareness and understanding, improves their speaking and listening skills and reinforces grammatical terminology. French is taught across Key Stage Two using the scheme 'Mr French' to ensure progression.

Art/DT: These subject alternate over the year to ensure children build on previous skills. Some topics are taught via a blocked approach to ensure skills get taught thoroughly and allowing the children to fully immerse themselves in the project.

Inclusive Environment 

The school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, where learners demonstrate high levels of enjoyment in their education. Children at all levels are helped to achieve their potential. Those who are most able are challenged and supported through being offered tasks which provide opportunities for greater depth. Less able pupils are actively encouraged and given targeted support to embed skills and develop at their own pace, or simply to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.

Music and performance is valued in the school and the school deploys specialist independent music teachers for pupils to have individual lessons if parents wish them to do so. We also work closely with Kent Music School to provide music lessons. In Year 4, all pupils are taught to play the Ukulele and guitar and read music linked to this.

The school has an active choir group called ‘Young Voices’ who attend the O2 Arena to sing and share their love of singing.

 A varied timetable for extra-curricular activities is offered by the school, with clubs that support the curriculum, as well as those which develop specialist skills in different sports, whilst also extending the range of children’s experiences. These have restarted in Term 4 2022 after the pandemic disruption.

A primary focus of our curriculum is to raise self-worth and understanding of the fact that we can all achieve and all aspire to do great things.

Subject leaders play an important part in the success of the curriculum by leading a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation and review and the celebration of good practice contributes to the ongoing commitment to evolve and improve further.

Impact

The innovative practice across the school provides a strong foundation and opportunities for children to collaborate and develop social skills both indoors and out. The curriculum design ensures that the needs of individual and small groups of children can be met within the environment of high quality first wave teaching, supported by targeted, proven interventions where appropriate. In this way it can be seen to impact in a very positive way on children’s outcomes and we use our data followed by Pupil Progress Meetings to ensure an upward trend.

We deliver lessons where pupils feel safe and participation is encouraged by using a variety of teaching approaches.

Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Children feel safe to try new things. High quality visits and visitors to the school enhance the curriculum and provide opportunities for writing for a purpose.

To find out more about the National Curriculum click and open the document below:

To find out more about the curriculum for your child follow the link below:

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