Curriculum
Curriculum Statement
At Five Ways Primary School, every member of staff is committed to giving our children the best possible education, through a broad and balanced curriculum, that encourages all to achieve, feel valued as member of our school and community and to be ‘Aiming for Excellence’ (school motto). At Five Ways we believe that all children can succeed and use our creative culture to ensure that our curriculum inspires and challenges pupils regardless of ability or background. At Five Ways, our curriculum is underpinned by five core values. Our values are: Challenge, Creativity, Respect, Positivity and Working Together.
Our ultimate aim is for every child to be successful, enjoy learning and be suitably equipped to move on to secondary school with the skills, knowledge and understanding that will enable them to thrive as effective citizens of the 21st century. We want to build the foundations for learning which in turn make our children enthusiastic, life-long learners. We aim to give them the skills and knowledge that will open doors to their future educational and life success. We want our children to be responsible, independent, and caring; resilient and honest with a personal ambition and drive to aspire to do their very best.
We acknowledge that the school curriculum incorporates all experiences that we offer to the children. As a result, we evaluate our school curriculum regularly to ensure that it continues to meet the developing needs of our children and community. Our curriculum defines what we want our children to experience, know and be able to do by the time they leave our school.
Our curriculum has, at its core, the National Curriculum. We believe that an exciting, engaging, and effective curriculum is essential to enable high quality teaching and learning to take place. We have designed our curriculum to ensure that it is based around the development of progressive knowledge and skills, leading ultimately to understanding. This design ensures concepts become embedded in children’s long- term memory, enabling them to know more, do more, and remember more, whilst applying this across the curriculum. At the heart of all learning, we ensure that children develop skills in automaticity, so that prior knowledge can be readily available within the working memory of children so that new skills and knowledge can easily build upon this prior learning. When children confidently talk about and articulate their learning, they help cement information into their long-term memory.
Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage follow topics that address the requirements of the EYFS Curriculum, and enable all children to make progress across the three Prime Areas of Learning and four Specific Areas of Learning. In Reception, the children engage in a structured systematic synthetic phonics programme, Fischer Family Trust Success for All, which enables them to develop early reading and writing skills. Our EYFS curriculum has a strong focus on the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics, as we know that children must have a good grasp of these skills in order to make progress across the wider curriculum and as they move through to KS1.
Children in KS1 continue to develop phonological awareness through our Fisher Family Trust Success for All programme and Fisher Family Trust Routes into Reading programme. Those pupils in KS2 who are new to the country or not proficient in these skills, continue to receive this important provision, which is also supported through the Fischer Family Trust Reading Assessment programme and the Fischer Family Trust Aspire Lightning Squad intervention programme.
In KS1 and KS2, children follow the school’s bespoke curriculum with a strong focus on the core skills of English and Maths. Our Maths and English teaching is well-structured and we are confident that our delivery of the NC in these subjects ensures progression through the core skills. Our broader curriculum of all other subjects is designed by looking at the key skills, knowledge and understanding required by the NC; creating a foundation structure to meet these and then identifying appropriate curriculum topics and themes to contextualise and meet our children’s interests that will enable these skills to be taught.
Curriculum topic themes studied are designed to be relevant, motivating and engaging for the children and inclusive of all groups of children and individuals across the school. We also use elements of commercial schemes where we feel these complement our ambitious curriculum design. Our rationale for the use of these can be found within our subject specific intent statements. Although we teach much of our content through a stimulating topic theme, each foundation subject is also taught, to ensure the integrity of each foundation subject is not lost. For example, the children will know that when they learn about The Great Fire of London, they are engaged in learning through a history lesson.
We are proud to be a part of the myHappymind Family! myHappymind is a whole school program grounded in science and dedicated to building positive mental wellbeing, which helps children understand how their brains work and creates a culture that helps to build children's resilience, confidence, and self-esteem.
Forest School at Five Ways Primary is an inspirational process that offers all learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a woodland / natural environment. Like myHappymind, the Forest School ethos focuses on developing children's personal, social, and emotional development and therefore encourages each child to reach their full potential and strive for excellence in all areas of school life.
Our Butterflies pupils follow a bespoke curriculum that is based on the core knowledge and topics at a developmentally appropriate stage of development. This design is based on the whole school curriculum, thereby promoting inclusivity.
Learning beyond the classroom is firmly embedded within our curriculum design. Children undertake regular educational visits linked to their core knowledge and topics studied. Visitors are invited into school frequently yet purposefully. We also actively support learning at home and believe that working together with parents and carers enhances our pupils' education and strengthens the school community. Through parent consultation evenings, open evenings, newsletters, workshops and use of our Home-School Link communication books, we regularly share information with parents so that they are able to support and encourage their children’s learning outside of school. Working in partnership with parents and other school stakeholders is central to our success.
At Five Ways, we understand that ‘play’ is crucial in child development. For this reason, we have adopted the philosophy of OPAL – Outdoor Play and Learning - which enables children to learn all the things that cannot be taught within a classroom alone. OPAL also provides children with equipment to play with, and allows a certain amount of freedom in deciding how and what to play, whilst fostering a love of playing alongside or with others and ultimately having fun.
Our assessment processes have been developed over time to encompass both formative and summative assessment processes. These enable us to make accurate judgements of both attainment and progress ensuring that all children are supported to be the best they can be and are able to recognise personal strengths for them to ‘Aim for Excellence.’
The intended impact of our curriculum is to develop well-rounded, confident children who achieve their personal best and are well prepared to leave us to move to the next stage of their education, ready for the exciting new challenges ahead.
