Lander Road Primary School Curriculum Overview

 Our school curriculum meets all the requirements of the National Curriculum 2014. We also provide many and varied opportunities to broaden and enrich the curriculum for our pupils through activities both within and beyond the school day.

The ‘Learning Challenge Curriculum’ is used as a basis for our themes as it provides a rich diversity of topics which appeal to our pupils and encourages them to learn by using a question as a starting point.  Other vital skills are developed through `Philosophy for Pupils` and PSHE. 

Intent

Our school has a clear intent behind our carefully designed and balanced curriculum offer:

• The aim of our curriculum is to raise aspirations and provide our pupils with the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they need to succeed
• The rationale behind this is to address social disadvantage at the earliest possible opportunity
• Our broad and ambitious curriculum is delivered through a blend of discrete subject specific teaching, cross-curricular approaches, and thoughtfully planned enrichment activities; the design and implementation of our curriculum is underpinned by the principles of aspiration, challenge, opportunity, respect and nurture.  This enables pupils to make strong progress in their learning

Implementation

Our curriculum is taught and implemented successfully, with the following strengths:

• Subject knowledge (including content and pedagogy) of teachers is strong
• Teachers present subject matter clearly, and feedback is used to identify and address misconceptions
• Reading is taught using a range of different approaches including synthetic phonics (using the Read, Write Inc. programme), Reading Recovery, Oxford Reading Tree Scheme, guided reading using the Reciprocal Reading approach and the Accelerated Reading programme.  This is sequential and builds upon prior learning.
• Assessment information is used to enable pupils to flourish – assessment systems are used to ensure that pupil progress is carefully tracked and that appropriate support and intervention is implemented and reviewed as necessary
• Our well-planned and sequenced curriculum provides our pupils with the opportunity to build on prior knowledge and develop understanding of key concepts which enables them to succeed academically.
• The school is proud of our unique and enriched curriculum which includes a wide range of opportunities which are offered to pupils across the school both during and outside of the school day.  These include residential visits (including abroad), visits to museums, theatres, cinemas, concert halls, galleries and places of worship.  We welcome a wide range of visitors to school to further supplement our curriculum offer. These strategies powerfully address social disadvantage by closing the gap of opportunity for our most disadvantaged pupils and ensuring that all pupils have access to the wealth of experiences we provide.
• The implementation of the curriculum is reviewed annually

Impact

Our curriculum design ensures that the needs of individual and small groups of pupils can be met within the environment of high quality first teaching, supported by targeted, proven interventions where appropriate. In this way it can be seen to impact in a very positive way on pupils’ outcomes.   

Enjoyment of the curriculum promotes achievement, confidence and good behaviour. Pupils feel safe to try new things. High quality visits and visitors to the school enhance the curriculum, broaden pupils` experience of the world, and provide opportunities for writing for a purpose.

Pupils have opportunities to share their learning with each other, their parents and carers and other learners through school-based and external exhibitions, performances, competitions and events involving other schools. Developing their independence and motivation as learners and their sense of responsibility as future citizens is at the heart of all our teaching and learning.

The extremely positive impact that our curriculum has upon all learners is reflected in core subjects through outcomes in statutory assessments, which are reported on annually and can be found on our school website.

The positive impact of the wider curriculum is demonstrated in pupils` behaviours and attitudes – to their peers, to their teachers, to the wider community and to themselves and their own learning.