Subjects
Early Years | Mathematics | English and Phonics |Science | Religious Education | Computing | Physical Education | PSHE and No Outsiders programme | Geography | History | Art | Design and Technology | Music | French
Our Curriculum
Each term, we have an overarching theme across the school. We are working on providing some online examples of work in each topic area. Click on the links below to see the progression from EYFS – Year 6. We have started this with our ‘Rainforests’ topic and will update the website termly.
YEAR A (2019-20, 2021-22)
Going Jurassic | Lest We Forget | Rainforests | What a Great Achievement! | Back to Nature
YEAR B (2020-21, 2022-23)
Rebellion | Our Planet | Discoveries | Great Britain | Us
Our Christian Values
The Christian Value of LOVE underpins all we do and, with the Values of COURAGE, TRUTH and RESPECT supporting our Christian foundation, this ensures we have a strong, inclusive community, welcoming to all who join us regardless of faith and background.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me” – John 10:14
Intent
Our curriculum has been carefully designed and is effectively delivered to ensure that our children are equipped to be the Good shepherd in all areas of their life. We see each child as unique with the potential to achieve in all areas of learning. We help them to fulfil this by nurturing them in a secure and positive environment where they feel confident to take risks and explore knowing they are safe. At Rollright, children take a knowledge-rich learning journey through a school which has Christian values at its heart.
Implementation
The curriculum we follow is bespoke to Great Rollright. It has been developed to allow us to take advantage of the mixed age group arrangement of our school. We are following a spiral curriculum based around topic themes which children revisit throughout their learning journey from EYFS to Y6. This has allowed us to meet not only the requirements of the National Curriculum, but to interleave them to ensure progression and retention of knowledge. Our curriculum has also been personalised to maximise the enrichment opportunities and skills in our local community.
Learning is most effective with spaced repetition; interleaving enables pupils to make connections between topics and supports moving learning from the short-term memory to long-term memory. This allows us to develop vocabulary as well as subject knowledge – a key tool for the progression of all pupils at Great Rollright.
Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction take a key role in implementation across all subject areas of the curriculum.
A part of Rosenshine’s Principles, the retrieval of previously learned content is frequent, which increases learning capacity and aids the process of the moving learning to the long-term memory. Our curriculum arrangement allows this through the overarching topic areas which are revisited biennially, but also through the careful positioning of topics to allow for this to happen within the year as well. Term 6 has been left topic free to allow for teachers to decide the best use of this time to ensure that knowledge and understanding has been successfully embedded by revisiting and extending topic learning as required.
Differentiation of Subject Knowledge
Curriculum Overview
In addition to our exciting and stimulating themes, we also provide further opportunities to enhance children’s learning wherever possible. These include:
Whole School Themed Days and Weeks
Assemblies and Acts of Collective Worship
Impact
We strive to ensure that our children’s attainment in core and foundation subjects is in line with, or exceeding, their potential when we consider the varied starting points of children. We measure this carefully using a range of materials, but always considering age related expectations. Our aim is to ensure that children will be academically and socially prepared for life in high school and in modern Britain and the world.
The curriculum is assessed and evaluated through the following:
Formative Assessment – teacher’s strong subject knowledge and understanding of pupils means that the main method of curriculum assessment we employ is formative assessment.
Retrieval Quizzes – taken regularly and often repeated to ensure understanding of concepts and that learning is stored in the long-term memory.
Pupil voice – discussions with pupils about learning, and their spiritual and moral development. Pupils will demonstrate an enjoyment of learning and talk enthusiastically and knowledgeably about their lessons. They will also demonstrate compassion to their peers, community and the natural environment.
Pupil Behaviour – children will show that they are developing kindness, tolerance and compassion through their interactions with each other and adults in the school environment and as they mature through the school they will extend this beyond the school community.
Work in books – children will use exercise or sketch books to record written work. This should be a record of pupils ongoing learning. Pupils are encouraged to take pride in their written work, and teachers will give feedback orally and occasionally in writing. Work in books will show progression over a topic or unit of work.
Summative Assessment – Pupils will sit NFER or SAT assessment papers over the course of a school year. These are used to monitor pupil progress and are reviewed by all school staff and Governors. Children’s progress is reported to parents.
Some year groups sit National summative Assessments. In Foundation Stage, pupils are required to do a statutory reception baseline assessment (RBA). The RBA is a short, task-based assessment of a child’s early literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills when they begin school. The assessment will form the start of a new measure of how schools are helping their pupils to progress between reception and year 6. Alongside the RBA assessment the reception teacher will conduct her own teacher assessment of the children in all the areas of learning and development. This will be used to inform parental discussions at our parent meetings. At the end of the Reception year the staff will have filled in the Foundation Stage Profile’s early learning goals. In Year 1, pupils take the Phonics Assessment. In Year 2, pupils take KS1 SAT’s which inform their outcomes alongside Teacher Assessment. In Year 4, pupils sit a Multiplication Test. In Year 6, Pupils sit KS2 SAT tests.