Curriculum Objectives
Our top level objectives in planning and implementing the Curriculum are to:
- Provide an interesting and stimulating environment with a caring, secure atmosphere, in order to foster self-discipline, good manners, mutual respect and tolerance, and where children may become happy and well-balanced individuals.
- Provide the basic skills which children need for work and life by giving each of them a thorough grounding in English and Mathematics appropriate to their age, aptitude and ability.
- Make every effort to offer a broad balanced curriculum to all pupils regardless of ability, gender, religion or ethnic origin. We follow the National Curriculum in all subjects. However, we continually look for ways to adapt and modify the curriculum to suit the needs of our children.
Phonics and Reading Schemes
We believe reading underpins all areas of the curriculum. We teach the basic skills of reading from reception following the Read, Write Inc. scheme which links phonics teaching with quality texts. Pupils take home a RWI reading book and another reading book that matches their current phonic attainment. It is expected that all children read their reading book to an adult family member.
English writing lessons are linked to quality whole class texts. This gives the children an opportunity to explore and engage with a wider variety of texts, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. During these sessions, the class read a text and take part in activities to develop a good understanding. Questioning during these sessions focuses on pre-knowledge, grammar, prediction, vocabulary, deduction, inference, authorial intent, summarising, explaining and making comparisons between texts.
We use a range of interventions across school for reading which include Fast Track phonics (RWI), Speed Reading and daily readers.
We promote reading for pleasure across school by reading to the children each day using a selection of core reading books in each class.
Spellings
As part of our commitment to continually improving standards and attainment for all children we follow the Read, Write, Inc. (RWI) spelling programme to improve standards in writing, grammar and spelling.
Read Write Inc. Spelling is for children in Year 2 to Year 6 and embeds the national curriculum spelling skills using direct teaching in short, daily spelling sessions.
The children take part in daily, bite-sized lessons that build knowledge cumulatively. Three friendly aliens introduce the spelling rules on an exciting online spelling planet. There is a lot of emphasis placed on partner and oral work to ensure children fully grasp the spelling concepts. The children also have their own practice book that provides a range of activities to enhance understanding. Any errors or misconceptions are logged in the children’s personal log books so that these can be practised at other times and also taken home for additional practice.
The programme also provides teachers with the opportunity to assess progress each half term and ensure children are understanding the spelling rules and filling the gaps in their knowledge.
The spellings (usually 10) will be sent home to practise each week before a spelling test on Friday. We would be grateful if you could support your child at home in discussing, learning to read and spelling the words from the lists relevant to their year group.
The spellings lists for each year group are below:
Special Focus
The ‘Special Focus’ words highlighted in red run alongside the spelling patterns that we cover as part of our RWI spelling lessons. These include words such as homophones and words with apostrophes that children can find difficult to spell.
The Special Focus KS1 ‘Red’ words are referred to as the Common Exception Words that children use frequently in their writing and those that they often misspell, sometimes because they don’t follow a particular spelling pattern.
The KS2 Special Focus ‘Orange words’ are the ‘Statutory Spellings’ included in the National Curriculum Programme of Study.
All Common Exception words and Statutory Spellings are listed within each year group and once again we would ask that you support your child in learning these difficult words at home.
Helping Your Child with Spelling
Most of us, even if we consider ourselves to be good spellers, make spelling mistakes at some point. What is important is that we know what to do when we get stuck and we know how to correct our mistakes. At school, our children learn the rules, conventions and spelling strategies needed to become confident at spelling by following the RWI scheme of work.
Here are some of the strategies that you could use at home that will help your child become a confident and accurate speller:
- Sounding words out: breaking the word down into phonemes (e.g. c-a-t, sh-e-ll) Many words cannot be sounded out so other strategies are needed;
- Using the Look, say, cover, write, check strategy: look at the word and say it out loud, then cover it, write it and check to see if it is correct. If not, highlight or underline the incorrect part and repeat the process;
- Dividing the word into syllables, say each syllable as they write the word (e.g. re-mem- ber);
- Using mnemonics as an aid to memorising a tricky word (e.g. people: people eat orange peel like elephants; could: O U lucky duck);
- Finding words within words (e.g. a rat in separate);
- Making links between the meaning of words and their spelling (e.g. sign, signal, signature) – this strategy is used at a later stage than others;
- Using a dictionary as soon as they know how to.
Please encourage your child to have a go at spelling words they are unsure of. This will give them the opportunity to try out spelling strategies and to find those that they find useful. You can help them to use the strategies outlined above and praise their efforts.
Still Want To Know More?
If you can’t find the curriculum information that you’re looking for, or want to find out more about our curriculum, please speak to your teacher, or another member of staff.
