Curriculum Intent, implementation and impact

Church Lench CE First School Curriculum

Our Statement of Intent

The aim of Church Lench CE First School is to provide a stimulating, relevant and exciting curriculum to spark and inspire curiosity for all learners regardless of gender, ability, race, ethnicity or religion.

Our curriculum is planned to ensure sufficient breadth, balance and relevance for each child. At Church Lench CE First School our curriculum is built on fundamental Christian values and British Values. Our curriculum is carefully planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been previously taught. It is crucial that our pupils acquire basic knowledge from an early age which can be developed and applied across all areas of the curriculum.

We are in general a non- scheme based school who draw upon the experience and creativity of our teaching staff to plan and deliver concepts and skills directly linked to the interests and needs of the children. Where schemes are in place, they are used to support the teaching staff to ensure high quality teaching and learning is planned and delivered in specific areas.

Learning is fostered by developing our children’s critical thinking skills across all areas of the curriculum to enable them to understand how to flourish into rounded individuals and understand how to make a positive contribution to society.

Our curriculum teaches and enables children to have the confidence to take risks, be resilient and persevere with all aspects of life. It ensures that children have a voice and understand the importance of positive mental health and well-being. Educating our pupils to keep themselves safe in the world is paramount and safety is taught throughout our broad and balanced curriculum.

As a small rural village school we understand the need to offer our children and families experiences in alternative communities. Throughout our children’s school journey they will have the opportunity to visit multi-cultural towns/ cities and places of worship of other faiths. They will also have many opportunities to visit other schools in our area to engage in inter school curricular events such as sport, writing, maths and the arts.

How will our curriculum be delivered and implemented?

At Church Lench CE First School we truly believe that early language and communication development is the anchor that supports the nourishment of all knowledge. Language is crucial to access all areas of human life. Our curriculum enables all learners to acquire and build upon early language skills to enable them to become critical thinkers and communicators.

In order to fulfil this belief our curriculum is centred around immersing our children in deep, broad and rich vocabulary through selected quality texts. Many of our texts link closely with the element of our curriculum for example in Year R/ 1 ‘Goldilocks’ is shared as part of their topic on Teddy Bears. In Years 2/3 ‘Stone Age Boy’ by Satoshi Kitamura is read to engage pupils with the stone- age era. In Years 4/5 ‘Beowulf’ by Michael Morpurgo is used to inspire work in connection with Anglo Saxon times.

Our text based curriculum allows our children to acquire and develop a range of skills in language and vocabulary (including spelling, punctuation and grammar), comprehension, fluency and stamina in both reading and writing. We believe these skills are crucial to enable learners to understand and engage in all areas of the wider curriculum including reasoning, analysing and applying in areas such as maths and science.

Our long term planning documents have been carefully designed to ensure that all areas of the curriculum are covered in an exciting and transferable way. It allows pupils to transfer key knowledge and concepts to their ‘long term memory’, where they will then be able to apply what they have learned in different areas and situations. Through experienced teaching and pedagogy children will be able to comprehend, analyse, apply, evaluate and reason.

Our assessment has been carefully developed in school to track fundamental skills throughout each subject area of the National Curriculum. We track children who are developing their skills, who are within the expected range of skills and those who are working at a greater depth standard. Our internal tracking system measures the progress of our pupils in reading, writing and maths during each term.

How will we measure and monitor the Impact of Our Curriculum?

The impact of our curriculum will be measured and monitored by subject leaders, head teacher and governors. This will be shared with parents through curriculum overviews, our school website and newsletters. Most importantly the impact and progress is shared with our children and celebrated during lessons, recognition by other staff and the head and through celebration assembly. Children will have the opportunity to comment on the curriculum by completing questionnaires and discussing content with their teachers throughout the year.

We invest a lot of our time developing the children’s skills in resilience, confidence, independence and perseverance and by the time children leave each Year 5 they are ready to start Year 6 at Middle School. Our pupils understand the importance of Christian and British values and their attitudes and actions reflect tolerance, respect, compassion, responsibility, perseverance and resilience.