Elsworth Curriculum
At Elsworth Primary School we teach through a topic based approach where subjects are linked together (where possible) and this encourages children to make links in their learning. For example, children might be asked to make a non-fiction book in English all about animals that live in the sea.
In our Early Years and Key Stage 1 classes the topic is different each half term, whereas in Key Stage 2 children study a different topic each term. Topics may take on a historical, scientific or geographical theme on which the majority of learning is based.
We also try to link special days, visitors and trips to these topics.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage (Reception year), children learn best when they experience learning first hand, through meaningful interactions with others, through physical activity and through play. Our Early Years practice is based on on-going observation and assessment of the children and their interests.
The Early Years curriculum
Prime areas of Learning
- Personal, social and emotional development
- Communication and language development
- Physical development
Specific areas of learning
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
Characteristics of learning
- Playing and exploring
- Active learning
- Creating and thinking critically
Our Early Years principles are based on Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage (publishing.service.gov.uk)
The EYFS seeks to provide:
- quality and consistency in all early years settings, so that every child makes good progress and no child gets left behind
- a secure foundation through planning for the learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly
- partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers
- equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported
At Elsworth CE (A) Primary School it is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background.
We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
How do we teach Phonics and reading at Elsworth CE (A) Primary School?
Teaching Phonics: Phonics sessions every day.
- We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
- Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
- We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:
- Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
- Children in Year 1 review Phases 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week
- We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These:
- are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children
- use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge
- are monitored by the class teacher.
- Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
- decoding
- prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
- comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
- In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.
- In Years 2 , we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
Home reading
- The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
For more information on Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds please have a look at the website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk
For information on how to pronounce the phonemes taught in Reception, please click on the links below:
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 1 – YouTube
Phase 2 sounds taught in Reception Autumn 2 – YouTube
Phase 3 sounds taught in Reception Spring 1 – YouTube
When children are ready to move on from Phonics, they use Accelerated Reader which is used from this point and then throughout KS2. Accelerated Reader allows children to have more of a free choice of reading books, calculating their reading age and stage, then giving them a selection of books to choose from in our school library.
Once the children have finished their book, they take a quiz about it and the number of words that have been read is collected. We challenge the children to read as many words as they can throughout the year and we celebrate this with certificates during our celebration assemblies on a Tuesday afternoon.
English: English is a key part of our education of young people. At Elsworth CE Primary School, we intend to teach children to speak coherently and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions with others, and through reading and listening, others can communicate and build relationships with them.
Reading: At Elsworth CE Primary School we intend to promote and share a love of reading throughout our school community by sharing literature between different age groups and generations. Through reading, children have the chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Reading also enables children to acquire new knowledge and to build on what they already know across a variety of topics and subjects. Reading is therefore an essential skill that allows children to participate as a full member of society and should be taught as such.
Writing: Writing takes a key role in a child’s ability to communicate as a member of society. At Elsworth CE Primary School we promote transcription and composition at the highest levels in order to allow children to write coherently and fluently in a variety of genres and for a variety of purposes. We believe that this will equip children to be able to communicate and build relationships with other members of our society whilst building bridges to connect with others.
Phonics: At Elsworth CE Primary School, we believe that the teaching of Phonics provides vital building blocks on which to build an effective method of communication with others through skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing. These four skills will allow children to acquire new knowledge, interact with others and build relationships with them.
We aim for our mathematics curriculum to provide a foundation for understanding the world, the ability to reason mathematically, an appreciation of the beauty and power of mathematics and a sense of enjoyment and curiosity about the subject. Our desire is to see our pupils actively involved in their learning, including through the use of concrete objects to support themselves, and the way in which we deliver our curriculum intends to develop their confidence as they progress in their learning of mathematics. We want to enable our children to develop self-awareness, independence and resilience within their learning and for them to be continually challenged and have the highest expectations of themselves. Our intention is for our pupils to make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that all children:
- Become fluent in the fundamentals of mathematics (using mental arithmetic methods as their first port of call when appropriate), including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately.
- Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
- Can solve problems by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.
- Develop an efficient, reliable, formal written method of calculation for all operations so they can use these methods accurately, with confidence and understanding while using correct vocabulary.
- Are able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas, as mathematics is an interconnected subject and apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects.
We recognise the expectation that the majority of pupils will move through the programmes of study at broadly the same pace. However, we believe decisions about when to progress should always be based on the security of pupils’ understanding and their readiness to progress to the next stage. Pupils who grasp concepts rapidly are to be challenged through being offered rich and sophisticated problems before any acceleration through new content. Those who are not sufficiently fluent with earlier material should consolidate their understanding, including through additional practice, before moving on.
Through science we aim to capture the natural curiosity that children are born with. We encourage children to develop a secure understanding of scientific knowledge through exciting and engaging opportunities. The children are then equipped to develop their scientific enquiry skills, which allows them to investigate their questions methodically and gain a deeper understanding of the world around them with care and compassion. We provide opportunities that demonstrate how science has impacted the world they live in today and how it could shape the future of tomorrow. Our Curriculum will develop confident, articulate, and investigative learners.
We aim for our art and design curriculum to engage, inspire and challenge our children to give them
the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that all children:
- Produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences.
- Think critically and develop a rigorous understanding of art and design, making informed judgements and aesthetic and practical decisions.
- Understand that ‘art’ is a process that can be learnt and that they are all capable of developing their artistic skills and can express themselves through their art and design.
- Explore ideas and meanings through the work of artists and designers, knowing how art and design both reflect and shape our history, and contribute to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation and the world.
- Develop an appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts.
We aim for our design technology curriculum to engage, inspire and challenge our children to give
them the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create through designing and making.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that children:
- are taught to combine their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding in order to design and make a product.
- are taught skills progressively to ensure that they are able to learn and practice in order to develop as they move through the school.
- Evaluate the design process and adapt and improve their product, this is a key skill which they need throughout their life.
- apply the knowledge and skills learned in other subjects, particularly Maths, Science and Art to their design technology work.
- learn basic cooking skills.
- appreciate the work of designers through history.
The aim of geography teaching at Elsworth is to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Children learn about their local area and compare their life in this area with that in other regions of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.
Through their learning, children gain a growing knowledge and understanding about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments and an appreciation of life in other cultures, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
Geography teaching motivates children to find out about the physical world and enables
them to recognise the importance of sustainable development for the future of mankind, reflecting
on and developing their own views. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world
should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human
processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments.
Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills, including map drawing and interpretation, research, investigation, analysis and problem-solving, provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time
The aim of history teaching at Elsworth School is to encourage children’s curiosity and
understanding about the lives of people who lived in the past.
We help pupils gain a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history and learn how to present and communicate this knowledge. Through this, they develop a sense of identity, and a cultural understanding based on their historical heritage; they learn to value their own and other people’s cultures in modern multicultural Britain and, by considering how people lived in the past, they are better able to make their own life choices today.
We teach children to investigate past events and how they have influenced our lives today, by asking perceptive questions, thinking critically, weighing evidence, sifting arguments, and developing perspective and judgement. In this way, children develop skills of enquiry, analysis, interpretation and problem-solving.
We aim for our languages curriculum to promote the early development of a child’s linguistic
competence making them aware that language has structure, and that the structure differs from one
language to another.
We want to provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping our pupils to study and work in other countries. The way this is delivered is intended to ensure our children enjoy learning to speak another language and do so for real life purposes, such as performing Spanish songs at church in front of the rest of the school and their parents.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that all children:
- Develop an interest in learning other languages and a curiosity and deepen understanding of the world as well as an awareness of cultural differences in other countries.
- Understand and are able to respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
- Develop their speaking and listening skills so they are able to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions while continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
- Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
- Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied while learning new ways of thinking and reading great literature in the original language.
Music is a universal language and embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. We aim for our
music curriculum to provide a rich and varied experience, which engages and inspires our children.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that all children:
- Develop a love for music through personal expression and a feeling of community.
- Increase in self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement through creating, playing and performing music.
- Critically engage with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to a variety of musical forms
- Explore ideas and meanings through the work of composers and musicians, knowing how music both reflects and shapes our history, and contributes to the culture, creativity and wealth of our nation and the world.
We aim for our Physical Education curriculum to inspire all children to succeed and excel in
competitive sport and other physically demanding activities, building character and embedding values such as fairness and respect.
Our curriculum is designed to ensure that children:
- Are provided with opportunities to become physically confident in a way that supports their health and fitness.
- Benefit from improved health, reduced stress and improved concentration levels leading to emotional stability and academic achievement.
- Understand the importance of physical activity and are able to make informed choices and evaluate the performance of themselves and others.
- Participate in enjoyable, vigorous, purposeful and regular activities which lead to a lifelong interest in sport
A good understanding of computing equips children to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. Elsworth CE Primary School believes that in order to do this, children must understand the importance of becoming a responsible digital citizen.
Through a rigorous education throughout our school community, children will learn how to interact respectfully and responsibly with others and how to keep themselves safe in order to be an active participant in the digital world
Religious Education (RE) has a significant role for the development of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. At Elsworth we ensure that RE promotes respect and open-mindedness towards others with different faiths and beliefs and encourages pupils to develop their sense of identity and belonging through self-awareness and reflection. The principle aim of RE is to engage pupils in an enquiry approach where they can develop an understanding and appreciation for the expression of beliefs, cultural practices and influence of principle religions and worldviews in the local, national and wider global community. The key aims for RE are reflected in the two attainment targets: Attainment Target 1- Learning about religion and belief; Attainment target 2- Learning from religion and belief. The development of knowledge, skills and understanding focuses on these two key aspects of learning in Religious Education.
At Elsworth C of E Primary school, we believe that PSHE and Citizenship (PSHCE) has the power to enhance the health and wellbeing of all children, their families and the whole school community. It has a positive influence on the ethos, learning and relationships throughout our school. It is central to our values and to achieving our school’s aims.
We firmly believe that our PSHE curriculum, which includes Relationships and Health Education, enables our pupils to develop the knowledge, understanding, skills and attributes they need to reach their potential as individuals and within the community as well as to live confident, healthy, independent lives, now and in the future. These skills and attributes help children to stay healthy, safe and prepare them for life and work in modern Britain. Our curriculum builds on statutory content already outlined in the national curriculum and in statutory guidance. We follow the Cambridgeshire scheme of work to provide consistency throughout our school, support staff with subject knowledge. PSHE is embedded within wider learning to ensure that children learn to develop resilience and healthy, respectful relationship skills, which they will practise and see enacted in the school environment.
Our aims for PSHE are:
- To enhance skills for communication, empathy and healthy relationships which underpin both success in learning and positive, inclusive relationships.
- To support the development of resilience, self-esteem, self-efficacy and aspiration through recognising, valuing and celebrating achievement.
- To offer accurate and relevant knowledge to support decisions about personal wellbeing and health
- To explore the relevance of knowledge for personal situations and decision making
- To offer opportunities to explore, clarify and if necessary challenge, their own and others’ values, attitudes, beliefs, rights and responsibilities
- To offer the skills and strategies they need in order to live healthy, safe, fulfilling, responsible and balanced lives.