Hensall Community Primary School’s Curriculum
High expectations for all, by all!
Statement of intent
Hensall is a vibrant school where children are enthusiastic and motivated to achieve their potential, we encourage them to have high expectations of what they can achieve and become. We provide opportunities for children to develop as happy, independent, confident and successful learners knowing how to make a positive contribution to their community and the wider society.
Governors and staff at school believe the personal development of pupils, spiritually, morally, socially and culturally plays a significant part in their ability to learn and achieve. Our curriculum is underpinned by our values and qualities such as courage, persistence, resilience, kindness and respect. We aim to provide an education that provides children with opportunities to explore and develop their own values and beliefs, high standards of personal behaviour, a positive caring attitude towards other people, an understanding of their social and cultural traditions and an appreciation of the diversity and richness of other cultures. Through fostering a lifelong love of learning, we hope to help our pupils live full and happy lives, developing skills, values and qualities that prepare them for life in modern Britain and beyond.
We are an inclusive school where each child is valued for their unique ability; we aim for all learners to enjoy their education and support them to achieve their potential academically and morally. Our curriculum encourages each child to have high expectations of what they can achieve and we foster a sense of personal and collaborative pride in these achievements. We ensure our children recognise the relevance and purpose for learning. We aim to challenge the most able and ensure those that find learning more difficult, are provided with targeted support to embed skills, developing at a pace that best suits their individual needs. Quality first teaching ensures that children make good progress but where it slows for those that find things challenging, we ensure that each child is helped to catch up and keep up.
Implementation
We see learning as a journey, an adventure, something to be enjoyed and remembered. Each half term starts with an experience that motivates and inspires the children and gets them thinking about where they could go in their learning. This may be visiting a castle, taking part in a litter pick, visiting a museum or taking part in workshops and learning from visitors, local businesses and members of the local community in school. Along the way there are rich learning experiences that take place within the classroom and beyond with a clearly defined end point/destination where the learning is celebrated. As children progress through the themes and topics their knowledge and understanding deepens.
Books are wonderful at taking us on adventures; at the heart of our curriculum is reading. We recognise that in teaching children to read, we are ensuring that they can read to learn and are able to benefit from all the curriculum has to offer. We ensure that all learners benefit from a rich, broad, balanced, differentiated curriculum and we ensure that it is presented in an interesting, exciting and imaginative manner with lots of opportunities for first-hand experience, practical work, investigation and learning through play. We recognise the strong links between subjects and place English at the heart of a language rich curriculum with a strong emphasis on the development of vocabulary.
Subject leaders ensure that our curriculum is sequenced so that new knowledge, skills and vocabulary build on what has been taught before. Pupils work progressively towards clearly defined end points. We realise that regular practise moves knowledge into the long term memory because ‘practise makes permanent’. We provide opportunities over the course of the day for skills to be refined ensuring a firm foundation for new learning to be built on.
Our curriculum is designed and delivered in a way that allows pupils to transfer key knowledge to long-term memory. Pupils making progress will know more, remember more and be able to do more. In order to support children in committing knowledge into their long-term memory, learning journeys are displayed in each classroom and on the corridors throughout school from Reception to Year 6. These are created by the staff and children and map the journey of learning each week, over a half-term; they provide a stimulus for conversation and act as a reminder of what has been taught. The learning journey for each class, is placed onto the class page section of our website and parents are encouraged to review these and reflect on the learning with their children.
Our PSHE and RSE curriculum, provides children with opportunities to discuss and learn about their physical health and mental wellbeing, how to stay safe and how to develop strong and healthy relationships, value differences and to develop aspirations. Each week we have a Wellbeing Wednesday session where each class focuses on a subject that is unique to their class; this is planned to ensure that any issues, worries, concerns or problems that children may have are tackled and children are supported in becoming more responsible for their own safety and wellbeing. In recognising the development of the whole child the pastoral support given to children, so they can access the curriculum is very strong. Various programmes of support are provided for children where a need has been identified.
In addition to this, each half-term, we focus on a different theme, such as careers, charity and life skills in our Feel Good Friday afternoons. These sessions give responsibility to the children and help them to develop their self-confidence by contributing to the community locally and beyond. We invite parents, charitable organisations, professionals from a range of different careers, members of the local church and representatives from different religions and ethnic backgrounds to work alongside the children on a range of projects that support the children in understanding their place in a modern society.
To promote the physical health and mental wellbeing of each child, a range of extra-curricular activities are provided both during and after school. Children are encouraged to join sports clubs, play a musical instrument, sing in the school choir. Some activities are led by school adults, others are facilitated by external experts and some even run by the children themselves. Children in KS2 take part in an annual residential in a range of settings providing different experiences. The children take part in at least three hours of planned physical activity each week, including taking part in a daily mile on our ‘Wellbeing Way’. We regularly take learning beyond the classroom, using our school grounds and local community to enrich learning and foster a sense of responsibility and belonging to a community. We ensure that the transition of children into school, throughout school and onto secondary school is strong, supporting each child in their next stage of learning.
Impact
We (our children, parents, staff and governors) believe that our school is a place of enjoyment where success is encouraged, rewarded and celebrated. We are passionate about the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our children. The children are at the heart of every decision we make; we endeavour to ensure that they are happy, feel safe and become confident, independent and resilient learners.
Our children are motivated and eager to learn and we believe that everyone in school should enjoy their learning and feel proud of their achievements. We strive to recognise achievement in all areas and not simply those that can be measured by data, graphs and charts.
School leaders, including governors and our local authority Senior Education Advisor (SEA), regularly monitor curriculum provision through learning walks, lesson drop ins, work scrutiny and by talking to pupils. Much of this monitoring is unannounced and this provides a good opportunity for leaders to get a realistic view of the quality of teaching and curriculum provision that children receive each day.
Governors are linked to specific curriculum focus areas and a monitoring calendar is in place linked to the school development priorities for the year. Curriculum leaders regularly feedback progress within their area/s of responsibility in Curriculum and Standards Committee meetings.
Regular progress meetings are carried out by the senior leaders and class teachers. At these meetings each child in school is discussed and their next steps identified. We have a tiered approach to ensuring each child attains well and maximises their progress, data is analysed at these meetings and targets are reviewed. In addition to this Our Inclusion Leader/SENCO holds Vulnerable Child Reviews (VCRs) periodically with each class teacher to discuss children SEND children, those entitled to Pupil Premium and any others where barriers are preventing them making the progress they should.
Our aims for learning and teaching
What are we learning during 2023-2024?
Please take a look at our class pages (please use link below).
Here you will be kept up to date with the things your child is learning.
What do we learn in each subject?
Here you will learn more about each subject, what is taught, when and how. Each subject leader in school is responsible for providing this information on our website. If you would like to learn more about a specific subject, click on one of the icons. You can also contact school to speak with a subject leader if you would like to find out more.
What did we learn during 2021-2022?
Here you will find out what each class, and year group learnt in 2021-2022. Each half term, we publish curriculum overviews on our website, these explain what is being taught in each class. Click on each class to learn more.