Curriculum Intent Statement

At Smallberry Green, the curriculum is intended to meet the needs of our wonderfully diverse community, ensuring all children’s backgrounds are celebrated and acknowledged. This is underpinned by an unwavering commitment, not only to achieve the highest academic standards but also to enable all of our children to become confident, respectful and successful global citizens in an ever-changing world now, and in the future.  We do this through delivering a broad, well-balanced, subject led curriculum that is inspiring and engaging.

Our curriculum is inclusive and relevant to our diverse community. It ensures that each pupil develops the skills they need to succeed in the wider world. It has been designed to engage all learning styles and is relevant for all of our children, many of whom are new to English or have SEND. Carefully targeted support ensures children who may need extra help make excellent progress.

We fully recognise that parents and carers are critical partners in children’s learning journeys and we work closely with them through open sessions, workshops, newsletters, our website, fact sheets and other various forms of communication.

We are determined that all children develop strong language skills. Right from the start, there is a strong emphasis on early speaking and listening skills and phonics is embedded in all aspects of early school life. Reading throughout our curriculum is at the heart of everything we do. We promote a love of reading in all of our children by ensuring quality class texts are brought to life throughout our curriculum.

As well as reading, we have a strong emphasis on Maths, Writing and Science using the Maths Readiness Programme and carefully planned units of work.

We want to prepare our children for Secondary school and to recognise that each subject is incredibly important. We aim to create future authors, linguists, artists, inventors, mathematicians, sports-people, scientists, explorers, detectives and musicians etc. Consequently, all subjects are taught discretely. Where relevant, subjects may be linked together for children to make meaningful connections in their learning. Within all subjects there is a strong focus on vocabulary to ensure that children can not only read and write confidently but are able to discuss, debate and recall key information.

We also aim to ensure children develop interpersonal skills, build resilience and become creative, critical thinkers. Creativity is an integral part of our curriculum as we believe that there should be no limits to curiosity. We want all groups of children to develop a thirst for new experiences and knowledge. In order to give all of our children the experience of being creative, the school promotes regular musical events, performances, sports events, competitions and visitors into school. From Year 1, every child in the school learns a different musical instrument every year and all year groups benefit from receiving music lessons from a specialist. Our achievement in this area, has been acknowledged through the Music Mark.

We constantly provide enrichment opportunities to engage learning and believe that childhood should be a happy, investigative and enquiring time in children’s lives. Therefore, we plan a rich programme of fully inclusive clubs, trips, visits, visitors, community links and celebrations that bring classroom learning to real life and encompass awe and wonder. We make sure that these opportunities for children to have quality life experiences is part of each year group’s learning as we want our children to flourish in their areas of interest or skill.

We remain focused on developing and nurturing the whole child with a determination to teach all children the ways in which they can keep themselves safe through a strong PSCHE curriculum designed by Jigsaw and a wide array of well-being activities.

Curriculum Implementation

We use clear, focused, ‘skills-based learning steps’ and ‘steps to success’ as an effective tool in achieving intended learning outcomes, whilst ensuring that children retain knowledge learnt in different curriculum subjects.

Staff have had extensive training to enable them to use effective questioning techniques to develop higher order thinking skills, supporting them to challenge all learners. All lessons provide opportunities for learning skills as well as many recall and application activities to support the retention of knowledge and understanding in a broad, balanced and relevant curriculum. As well as this, we differentiate activities and resources accordingly and provide small group learning for different groups of children, as necessary.

At the heart of our curriculum is reading, writing, debate, discussion and maths. Where relevant subjects are linked to a key text or texts, which are brought alive with ‘wow days’ and ‘fabulous finishes’. In order to develop children’s oracy and confidence, we ensure that opportunities for speaking and listening are embedded throughout each child’s time in school.

Community involvement is an essential part of our curriculum and we celebrate local traditions and religious events throughout the year; including the celebration of different festivals where we involve parents wherever possible.

We ensure that all our children are happy, healthy and active. Our children’s enthusiasm for learning is highlighted by visitors to our school. This love of learning, begins in Early Years where a free flow, child focused learning environment stimulates the physical wellbeing of the children.  Throughout the school, children are as active as possible making good use of our extensive outdoor area and equipment which has been acknowledged through our gold School Games award.

To supplement our offer, we also use the following published materials: Early Years Outcomes, National Curriculum Statutory Guidance, Sounds Write Phonics Programme, White Rose, Maths Mastery Readiness Programme, Rights Respecting Schools, RE – Widening Horizons, Get Set for PE, Charanga for music, Jigsaw for PSCHE and Switched On Computing.

Impact

Smallberry Green is an inclusive school where we celebrate the diversity of our children and families. We are very proud of our all our children, who make good personal progress across the curriculum and also in regards to our school values, self-confidence and resilience. Our children’s behaviour and attitudes really are ‘delightful’. (Ofsted 2018).

Throughout each child’s journey at Smallberry Green, they make at least good progress in relation to their different starting points in reading, writing and maths and develop secure knowledge understanding and skills across all subjects. We have high expectations and have a robust plan to ensure that more and more children, regardless of their starting points, make accelerated progress and achieve expected and exceeding standards across the curriculum.

Pupil voice shows us that children are passionate about their learning and enjoy coming to school. Children are increasingly able to recall key learning and discuss facts that they have learnt in different subjects.

Each and every child at Smallberry Green is an individual with different starting points, on a different learning journey and with different strengths and areas to develop. Our curriculum, teaching and learning and nurturing environment ensures that each child achieves their personal best during their time with us.

Children leave our school with a sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become life-long global learners.

For more information about the curriculum for each subject please click here.

The Smallberry Green Primary School Curriculum

Termly Curriculum Fact sheets for each Year Group can be found by clicking here