Curriculum

Leaders have developed an ambitious curriculum.

Leaders have given careful thought to the knowledge that they want pupils to learn and the order in which to teach this new information.

The curriculum builds from the early years to Year 6.

Pupils typically try their best in lessons. They aim to live up to leaders’ high expectations for their learning and achievement.

- Ofsted, March 2023

Curriculum Rationale

Here at Manor Primary School, the aim of our curriculum is to prepare our pupils to be lifelong learners by equipping them with a full range of skills and knowledge to ensure that they are ready for the next steps in their education as well as preparing them for the wider world.

The key priority of our early year’s provision is to build enquiring minds and develop the love of learning. The foundation curriculum is designed to be stepping stones for our young children that allows them to build the foundations for future learning. This is achieved through an aspirational early readers and writers phonics programme, an ambitious vocabulary initiative and a carefully planned maths sequence of learning. This gives our children the knowledge, understanding and skills to enable them to be ready for their transition into Key Stage One.

We are ambitious that every child will be a confident reader and writer. As a school, we use the DFE validated Synthetic Sound Programme 'Rocket Phonics' to ensure that our children are taught phonics in a systematic way which is based around a text and gives the children the opportunity to begin reading and writing as early as possible. At the heart of our English curriculum is high quality children's literature and we use ‘ Literacy Counts Read to write’ to ensure that children have access to high quality texts that inspire them to write and allows the children to see themselves as writers. Literacy Counts was chosen as it aims to develop the children's vocabulary skills by exposing them to higher level vocabulary from a young age.

In Maths, White Rose Maths is used as it supports teachers in providing well-structured blocks of learning, which provide opportunities for varied fluency, mastery and to revisit previous learning. This is done through the White Rose Hub small step approach, allowing staff to plan sequences of learning adapted to meet the needs of the children in order to support children to make progress.

Our curriculum is delivered through subject-specific topics that meet the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum.

We have created curriculum road maps for each subject which incorporates the key elements of the National Curriculum and what we want our children to know. Each topic is planned for using our ‘Road Signs.’ This consists of the key questions that we want our children to be able to answer, the skills we wish them to attain, the link to the National Curriculum, key subject and topic specific vocabulary and the ‘Sticky’ Knowledge which is what we want our children to be able to remember after the topic. These ‘Road Signs’ are then used by individual teachers to plan their topics.

Each topic is planned carefully, starting with children’s current knowledge and ending with what the children need to know to move onto the next stage in their learning, so that real progress is made.

The planning of the curriculum is based around a a Foundation, Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 curriculum. This is to ensure coverage of selected topics by all children who progress through the school. This programme is regularly reviewed to ensure compatibility with new directives or to make necessary improvements to the existing programme of work.

Our Curriculum allows our children to build on their knowledge as they progress throughout the school. For example, in Geography in Lower KS2 we focus on Mountains and Rivers and then in Upper KS2 they can use this knowledge to help them gain a better understanding of Volcanoes as part of our Angry Earth topic. This works the same way in our History Curriculum; in Lower KS2 we learn about Romans and Anglo-Saxons and then in Upper KS2 we use this knowledge to focus on Crime and Punishment and concentrate on these two time periods as part of our topic. We do this to ensure that the children have prior knowledge which can be built on further as their learning progresses.

We use questions as a way to structure our children’s learning. Each lesson starts with a question, which we intend all of our children to be able to answer by the end of the lesson. We feel that this gives our children a key focus and it ensures that our ‘sticky’ knowledge remains clear throughout the topic journey.

At Manor Primary School, we believe our Curriculum allows us to reach our goal; which is to give every child the skills and knowledge to be the best they can be.

As a school, we are proud of the ambitious, broad and balanced curriculum that builds on the knowledge, skills and understanding of all of our children. Through a positive and caring environment, we aim to develop happy, confident and caring young citizens who are well-prepared for the future as life-long learners.