We provide a curriculum which is broad and balanced, offering a range of experiences, which are relevant to the children’s present and future interests and needs. Education is a life-long process and we aim to help the children to achieve their full potential and to acquire the concepts, knowledge, skills and attitudes that will equip them for life in a fast changing world. The children will be provided with active, enjoyable and stimulating learning experiences in a secure, happy and caring environment where each individual is valued and respected. We aim to provide each child with opportunities to experience success and achievement and to develop a positive self-image. You can find more information on the curriculum our school is following at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum
At Drayton Green Primary School we are committed to providing a high quality Early Year’s education which gives children a secure and confident start to their school life and nurtures a lifelong love of learning. We aim for all our children across Nursery and Reception to be happy, excited and engaged in their learning and encourage this by providing stimulating and challenging learning experiences.
All children begin school with a variety of experiences and learning and it is the privilege of our Early Years staff to build upon that prior learning and experience. We aim to work alongside our children’s parents and carers to ensure children have the best start to their school life and lay the secure foundations to support their academic success.
The EYFS is a very important stage in a child’s life as it helps prepare for school ‘readiness’ as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes. Children’s early years’ experience should be happy, active, exciting, fun and secure; and support their development, care and learning needs. Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences before the age of five will have a major impact on their future life chances. At Drayton Green Primary School, our EYFS uses the EYFS framework which sets out how and what children will be learning to support their healthy development and provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up. Whilst at our EYFS setting at Drayton Green, children will learn skills, acquire new knowledge and demonstrate their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.
Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:
· Communication and language;
· Physical development; and
· Personal, social and emotional development.
These prime areas are those most essential for a child’s healthy development and future learning. As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:
· Literacy;
· Mathematics;
· Understanding the world; and
· Expressive arts and design.
All 7 areas of learning are used to plan children’s learning and activities. The EYFS staff teaching and supporting our children in our setting will make sure that the activities are suited to each of the children’s unique needs.
Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside. It is very important that they develop social skills, such as turn-taking, sharing and independence, which help them greatly in the next stages of their learning. The guiding principles that shape our practice in the Early Years are that children are ready, able and eager to learn!
At Drayton Green Primary, we strive to create an environment in which children can confidently learn and achieve by working independently and with their peers. The maths curriculum aims to provide children with the opportunity to develop enjoyment and passion for the subject, allow them to understand the world around them and reason mathematically.
Using effective planning, teaching and learning strategies, assessment and knowledge of our children, we aim to develop and extend pupils’ knowledge and understanding of mathematical concepts by providing them with a range of learning activities- both mathematical and reasoning concepts.
Pupils’ progress is closely monitored and work is differentiated towards the individual’s needs and ability.
The national curriculum for mathematics aims to ensure that all pupils:
Our main aim for English in the school is to expose all pupils to rich, high quality texts that broaden their range of vocabulary and experiences through reading. Through a range of teaching approaches like shared writing, drama, visualising and writing in role, pupils embark on a creative English journey – that our diverse community can relate to. We believe and prioritise the importance of discussions, thoughts and feelings about a particular book and this is combined with a rigorous approach to the teaching of skills. We strive to develop a real love for reading through our different approaches in English lessons.
Whole Class Reading
We have chosen this approach to allow all of our pupils the opportunity to access high quality texts during reading lessons. Pupils are taught explicit reading skills like inferencing, retrieving information from text, commenting on the author’s choice of language and making comparisons within the text. This is all combined with an exciting reading journey with texts that are specifically chosen to engage our pupils and our diverse community.
Phonics
At Drayton Green we use the phonics programme Bug Club. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills, as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.
There are six overlapping phases. The table below is a summary based on the Letters and Sounds guidance for Practitioners and Teachers.
Phase | Phonic Knowledge and Skills |
Phase One (Nursery/Reception) | Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. |
Phase Two (Reception) up to 6 weeks | Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions. |
Phase Three (Reception) up to 12 weeks | The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the "simple code", i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language. |
Phase Four (Reception) 4 to 6 weeks | No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump. |
Phase Five (Throughout Year 1) | Now we move on to the "complex code". Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know. |
Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond) | Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc. |
At Drayton Green Primary School, we foster a love for science by tapping into our pupils' natural curiosity about the world around them. Our science curriculum covers the core areas of physics, biology and chemistry, providing exciting, hands-on learning experiences that encourage exploration and discovery.
A key focus is on developing pupils' Working Scientifically skills, as outlined in the National Curriculum. Pupils are taught to observe carefully, ask thoughtful questions, and carry out investigations. They are encouraged to predict what might happen, test their ideas, record their findings and analyse the results to draw informed conclusions. Throughout this process, pupils learn to use precise scientific language to articulate their thoughts and discoveries clearly.
We believe that science is essential to understanding the modern world and we aim to equip our pupils with the skills and knowledge to appreciate its impact in everyday life. By fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills, we hope to inspire our pupils to pursue science further and perhaps even become scientists of tomorrow!
At Drayton Green Primary School we want History and Geography to spark children’s curiosity about their surroundings, Britain’s past and the wider world and help them develop their thinking and acting as geographers and as historians.
We aim for a high quality History and Geography curriculum to inspire in pupils a curiosity of practical discovery of key knowledge and concepts, as part of their learning process by:
• providing opportunities for children to develop a chronological framework by investigating the past and how it influences the present.
• encouraging children to interrogate evidence (e.g artefacts) and form their own opinions.
• enabling children to communicate their view points in a variety of ways using appropriate vocabulary.
• developing and using their geographical skills and knowledge .
• building enjoyment, empathy and curiosity for finding out about the past and their surroundings.
At Drayton Green Primary School, we believe that Physical Education (PE), experienced in a safe and supportive environment, is essential to ensure children attain optimum physical and emotional development and good health. We intend to deliver high-quality teaching and learning opportunities that inspire all children to succeed in physical education and in developing life skills. Children will be willing to practise skills in a range of different activities and situations, alone, in small groups and in teams, and to apply these skills in chosen activities to achieve exceptionally high levels of performance. We also want to teach children how to cooperate and collaborate with others as part of an effective team, understanding fairness and equity of play to embed life-long values. Our PE curriculum aims to improve the wellbeing and fitness of all children at Drayton Green Primary School, not only through the sporting skills taught, but through the underpinning values and disciplines PE promotes. We want our children to have a keen interest in PE – a willingness to participate eagerly in every lesson, highly positive attitudes.
In our French lessons, we aim to develop pupils’ speaking skills for use in everyday situations. We begin with simple greetings and progress through the year groups to include: making basic conversation by asking and answering questions; buying an ice-cream; ordering a meal in a café and telling a doctor where it hurts.
We use a wide variety of resources including songs, games, short films and interactive activities to make learning French as engaging an experience as possible. In addition to whole class learning, children work in pairs and groups on different language tasks.
Pupils also develop their ability to write in French. To this end, some lessons look at how common French sounds are represented by particular letters or letter combinations. We also compare the structure of English and French which helps to increase understanding of grammatical terms. From recording single words and short phrases already familiar to them in spoken form, pupils move on to writing simple sentences and then to producing scripted conversations which they rehearse and perform for their peers.
The art curriculum is linked to the Topic themes that are covered throughout the academic year. This enables one to embed what the children are learning in their Topic lessons. To ensure children experience a broad and balanced curriculum, skills such as drawing, painting, collage, 3D, printing, mixed-media assemblage, and sculpture are covered over time. To see progression in the children’s work, skills are revisited and built upon across the whole school art experience from Year 1 to Year 6 and in ARP1 and ARP2.
With every Topic theme covered, the children are introduced to art movements and artist linked to the theme. The children are made conscious of where and when the art is from including ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds. Children are encouraged to use art vocabulary when sharing their creative design art ideas with their class. Children are provided opportunities to develop their own ideas in their sketchbooks linked to the theme in an imaginative way, right through to an outcome. Every child is encouraged to strive for excellent when embarking upon a Topic theme and to apply a growth mind-set to every challenge they face.
We are a multi-cultural school and believe that if children are to develop an understanding about religion, then certain aspects of a child’s own experience must be developed. Developing self-awareness and awareness of others and the natural world is paramount. We seek to engage children in their own personal quest to discover meaning in their lives and to foster sensitivity towards seeing things from other people’s points of view.
There are three main strands of the Computing curriculum: information technology, digital literacy and computer science. Information technology is about the use of computers for functional purposes, such as collecting and presenting information, or using search technology. Digital literacy is about the safe and responsible use of technology, including recognising its advantages for collaboration or communication. Finally, computer science will introduce children of all ages to understanding how computers and networks work. It will also give all children the opportunity to learn basic computer programing, from simple floor robots in Years 1 and 2, right up to creating on-screen computer games and programs by Year 6. We include regular teaching of e-safety during each year to ensure that children feel confident when using computers and the internet, and that they know what to do if they come across something either inappropriate or uncomfortable.