Teaching and Learning
We love learning!
We work hard to make learning engaging, exciting and successful for our children. We have designed a rich curriculum, which is full of opportunities to explore, question and create. Our children like a challenge - they know that learning can sometimes be hard work and you have to stick with it if you’re going to do well but, above all, we
aim for our children to enjoy their learning, both now and later in life. We help them to understand how different skills are important for different things, at different times.
Everyone in our school, children and adults, take an active part in our ‘Learning Community.’ We try to help the children to see that we never stop learning and are all on an exciting learning journey together, who knows where it will take us?
Every child is supported in achieving their own personal goals and we monitor individual progress carefully, across each year group, sharing this with the children and their parents, helping everyone to understand the next important steps in learning.
Foundation Stage Age 3-5 Nursery and Reception
We have lots of fun in the Foundation Stage. Our well equipped nursery provides a really good start to school life. We then have two reception classes and, although the children have their own class teacher, we do work very much as a team. Play is how young children learn so we follow the play based, Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum, which helps the children to build on their skills and to develop a positive attitude to learning. The children’s skills are developed in the following six areas:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Creative Development, Communication, Language and Literacy, Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy, Knowledge and Understanding of the World and Physical Development. All of these are equally important and are linked. Each area has targets or ‘Early Learning Goals’, as they are known, which the children work towards. We assess progress by observing the children and then use our evidence to create a Foundation Stage Profile for each child which we share and discuss with parents.
Quality learning is developed through short teacher led sessions when we teach specific skills like letters and sounds but there are lots of opportunities for the children to follow their own interests and to explore and discover, either on their own or alongside their friends. We encourage the children to become increasingly independent and to make decisions about their learning, making good use of the learning environment, inside and out.
Key Stage 1 Age 5-7 Years 1 and 2
Learning in Key Stage 1, (KS1) builds on the Foundation Stage and provides lots of opportunities for the children to continue developing their personal and social skills, helping them to make friends and increase their confidence.
Using the National Curriculum as our framework, and by listening to the children themselves about what interests them, we design exciting activities and learning experiences which we feel confident they will enjoy.
We know that children learn best when they are actively involved in their learning so we plan lessons which inspire them and encourage them to want to find out more. We go on visits and invite specialists in when we feel it will enrich the children’s learning experience.
Key Stage 2 Age 7-8 Year 3
When the children move into Key Stage 2, (KS2) we keep building their independence, ready for their move to Middle School. They develop and extend their existing skills in new contexts and take increasing responsibility across different areas of the school.
When the children move into Key Stage 2, (KS2) we keep building their independence, ready for their move to Middle School. They develop and extend their existing skills in new contexts and take increasing responsibility across different areas of the school.
The National Curriculum includes what we call core subjects- literacy, numeracy and ICT (Information, communication, technology) as well as foundation subjects such as science, art, history, geography and design technology. These are usually taught through exciting interactive projects where the children can make links between different areas of learning, rather than as separate subjects.
The children also study RE (Religious Education) where they learn about Christianity and some of the other world faiths. They have the opportunity to learn French and Spanish. We encourage them to do as much exercise as we can so our PE (Physical Education) programme covers lots of different sports but includes dance and gymnastics too. The children in year 3 also go swimming during their last year with us at the local leisure centre.
We enjoy coming together as a whole school to share and to celebrate our learning and we feel it is important for the children to be able to work collaboratively with other people as well as on their own. We know that different children learn in many different ways and so we take great care to consider this when we plan what we want them to do.