Curriculum Overview
Petts Hill Primary – Our curriculum
Our learning community has pride in our curriculum and all that it stands for.
Our curriculum is designed to meet the needs of each cohort of children in order to expand their cultural capital. We make sure each child has what they need to unlock their own potential. We place a particular emphasis on the importance of behaviour for learning, good manners, self-care and respect. The skills of communication, reading, writing and numeracy are taught explicitly and are woven throughout all we do. We use a marginal gains approach to improvement; we understand the power of small changes for the pursuit of excellence.
Our curriculum promotes creativity in the pathways to acquiring knowledge and skills and the school’s leaders encourage and empower a passion in staff to think and plan without constraints. We ensure there’s a broad range of experiences to promote an understanding that there are a multitude of routes to success.
Our curriculum embodies compassion within its design. We believe that though acquiring knowledge and understanding of the difficulties and issues faced by the world and the people in it, our children can learn the power of compassion in solving them. We strive for our curriculum to be fully inclusive and representative of our children. We are an anti-racist school and are working hard to decolonise and diversify our learning offer.
Our curriculum is built on enabling courage by giving tools to children to be ambitious and aspirational. We aim that all children have a belief in their future success and can recognise the talents within themselves. It is a priority for us that our children have the courage to stand up for what is right.
Our community of staff, children, families and governors collaborate to understand problems and discover shared solutions. Together we all know that what we do matters.
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The school is organised into three phases (Foundation, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2)
The school offers the full requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage in Nursery and Reception years and the 2014 National Curriculum including religious education in years 1 to 6.
The Early Years: This is called the Foundation Stage
The children in the Foundation Stage follow the Development Matters Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum.
This has developmental goals and milestones for children from birth to 5 years. There are 3 prime areas of learning:
- Personal, social and emotional development
- Communication and language
- Physical development
These areas are considered to be the most important areas and vital for children to be successful in the other specific areas of learning:
- Literacy (writing/reading)
- Mathematics (numbers/space and shape)
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
All work the children do is carefully planned from observations and the children’s current level, supporting them to progress through the curriculum goals wherever their level of development.
We provide a curriculum which is broad, balanced and suited to the needs of the children. Support is given to children with differing needs who are not at the expected level of development.
The Curriculum for KS1 and KS2 consists of:
- Core subjects- English, Mathematics, Science
- Foundation Subjects – History, Geography, Computing, Art and Design, Design Technology and Music are all taught through an inspirational creative curriculum that is bespoke to Petts Hill. Physical Education, Religious Education and languages are taught independently.
Reading has a very high status within the school and we seek to create fluent, discerning, life – long readers who value books.
We actively involve parents in the processes of reading and acknowledge the role of parents and carers in the development of reading. We encourage parents/ carers and children to enjoy reading and sharing books together. Where this is regular practice children make significant progress. We place great importance on having a wide range and variety of quality books available around the school and in the library.
Time is set aside for regular reading and children are given the experience of reading alone and together and they are encouraged to discuss these and make choices about their reading. We use a variety of engaging reading schemes and variety of other reading books to promote a love of reading.
Learning takes place indoors and out in the EYFS and children learn across all areas of the curriculum outdoors in all weathers including rain and snow. The outdoors is a compulsory part of the curriculum and supports children across all areas of their learning.