Curriculum

Vision Statement

‘Faith, hope, and love abide.’ 1 Corinthians 13.13

Growing closer to God in faith;

Flourishing through the Gospel of hope;

Reaching out to our neighbours in love;

Rooted in the Christian faith, and with a love of learning in our hearts, our vision inspires us to grow into the people God is calling us to be.

Curriculum Statement

Through our Christian Faith, we acknowledge our responsibility to all, to enrich lives and show love and respect within our school family. We believe in lifelong learning aimed at equipping our children to live life today and for tomorrow rooted in Christian love. Faith, hope, and love are discussed individually at several points in the Scriptures. In the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul mentions the three virtues together and then goes on to identify love as the most important of the three. Our curriculum aims to allow children the opportunity to love learning through having “a love of learning in our hearts”.

Curriculum Intent

Our Curriculum has been designed to ensure each and every child can 'live life in all its fullness' by offering stimulating and awe-inspiring learning experiences with our three Christian values at its heart.

It is bespoke to the needs of the pupils at Arundel Church of England Primary School (ACE), not only by focusing on appropriate subject specific knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum, but by developing individual and collaborative learning experiences, a positive growth mind set, a sense of responsibility, and the emergence of encouraging children to see beyond their own horizon, in the same way as Plato describes in his allegory of the cave (Republic, 514a – 519c).

At ACE our curriculum is constantly evolving, responding to the needs of learners and their interests by enhancing learning experiences and raising awareness from the local area to national and global arenas. We use our local area to drive hands on learning and allow the children to make connections between local history and national history. Thus, we develop outward looking pupils who are able to engage in learning about themselves, their European and global neighbours and have an understanding of the wider world and its complex cultures.

Ultimately our curriculum intent is to:

Develop head and body: What we learn
Develop heart and character: Who we are
Develop our actions and attitudes: How we live and learn
Develop our moral compass: Where we fit in the world.

Curriculum Implementation

Through quality teaching of knowledge, skills and vocabulary across core and foundation subjects, all children are challenged to be inquisitive, compassionate, courageous and creative learners. Opportunities are planned to influence their own learning through age appropriate and progressive themes and topics. Inter-disciplinary work enables the teaching of concepts and skills in one or more disciplines (subjects).

Effective learning characteristics include resilience, ambition, reflection and imagination. These characteristics will drive teaching and learning at our school developing the dynamic spiral curriculum.

Curriculum Impact

Our children have a confident set of skills, rich knowledge, well embedded learning behaviours and Christian values which can be used to get ahead in education and life more generally. This enables them to be ready for their next stage in education and to be lifelong learners.

The curriculum enhances breadth of learning, depth of enjoyment and recall and emotional capacity for spiritual, social and emotional engagement.

Curriculum Diet

Our Curriculum is varied and stimulating. We ensure that as the children move through school they make progress and build upon previous experiences. The topics studied are balanced across the Key Stage ensuring that all of the children have the correct access to all curriculum areas.

Basic skills of numeracy and literacy form part of the everyday organisation of classroom activities and are part of every week’s work. Weekly spelling, handwriting, tables, number work, writing, reading, speaking and listening are essential activities that provide a basic structure to the week. This helps children to become fluent in the use of English, and competent in the understanding and application of Mathematics.

Integration of topic work allows the children to come to understand their world and its relevance to themselves.

Within each classroom Learning Journey, activities are highly structured and planned well in advance to allow for differentiated programmes of work to be developed and well resourced.

Reading

The acquisition of reading skills is the most important aspect of a child’s development in their early years at school. If a child is unable to read then obviously they will not be able to access other areas of the curriculum. Reading skills are an integral part of the majority of learning that takes place in school and therefore we place great importance upon the approaches and methods that we employ in the teaching and development of reading.

Children in EYFS and KS1 have daily phonics lessons following the ‘Read, Write, Inc’ programme (see http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/read-write-inc- programmes/phonics/). In Key Stage 2 we deliver focussed reading lessons where reading decoding and comprehension skills are developed and assessed using a range of high quality texts.

The National Curriculum

The National Curriculum Areas of Learning are:

English
Mathematics
Science
Religious Education (RE)
Computing
History
Geography
Art & Design
Physical Education (PE)
Music
Design & Technology (DT)
Personal, Social & Health Education (PSHE)
Languages

All teachers provide a range of classroom activities for the children so that the more able can be challenged at an extended level and children experiencing difficulties are set appropriate tasks. This means that children will be working on similar Learning Journeys, but on skills/concepts to match their needs.

For more information on the curriculum for each of the classes, please click on the individual class tabs.

For a more in-depth overview of the curriculum at ACE, please click the following links:

RE Scheme of Work for all Year Groups

In school there is more detail on how we sequence our curriculum to ensure that there is progression and that information is retained.

Assessment

Assessment procedures are used for a variety of purposes. They help us to provide continuity and progression in learning to match the children’s abilities and aptitudes. We use the feedback to help children understand what they know, can do and what they need to improve. We believe that constructive assessment can raise standards of education. Children gain confidence and motivation from knowing what they are doing and when they have achieved it.

Children completing KS2 (Year 6) currently undertake National Curriculum Tests, but other assessments take place continually for all children. We value our professional Teacher Assessments, which are confirmed or revised in the light of national testing.