At The Blossom Federation of Daubeney, Sebright and Lauriston Schools, we shape our curriculum to ensure all pupils have access to a rich, exciting, experiential curriculum, which celebrates the rich diversity of our schools.
Drawing on the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and National Curriculum, we provide broad, balanced and inclusive cross curricular topics that encompass British Values throughout. We ensure a sequential development of concepts, knowledge and skills in order to help our children to understand the world they live in and the impact that they can have on it.
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Each school has a Teaching & Learning Lead who oversees the curriculum and the subject leaders. The T&L Leads across the Federation work together to ensure consistency of provision and the sharing of ideas. At Sebright please talk to Jennifer Roberts.
Intent
The uniqueness of every child in our school is recognised and valued. Our curriculum embraces the community, recognising and celebrating our children’s diverse backgrounds and experiences. We recognise children's strengths, interests, diversity and learning needs, in order to promote a culture of acceptance, with PSHE, mental well-being and Growth Mindset at the heart of all lessons. We constantly reflect on our learning journey to ensure that it meets the current needs and interests of our children, offering an excellent education underpinned by a broad, culturally rich curriculum to ensure that all pupils are well equipped for the next stages in their education. Our curriculum is underpinned by the teaching of basic skills, knowledge, concepts and values however, creativity is pivotal and used throughout. We aim to provide an environment that encourages lifelong learning.
Children leave us with a sense of belonging to a school community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, ask questions, self-evaluate, make connections and become resilient, lifelong learners.
Implementation
We ensure that all children have access to a broad, creative, balanced curriculum with Numeracy and Literacy at the heart of all learning. Skills and knowledge are taught in all subject areas; we ensure there is a progression of skills, across each subject, which is built upon each year and mapped across the key stages. The building blocks of our curriculum have been developed to allow children to learn more, remember more in a vocabulary rich topic based curriculum. We ensure that children have the opportunity to deepen their understanding by making links with reading and writing across all topics, which embeds transferable skills throughout. Trips and visits are a keystone of our learning to enthuse, immerse and deepen knowledge in our topics. We have WOW Days - as an end point to each topic, where pupils celebrate, make links and evaluate their learning with the aim of remembering and understanding more.
The foundation subjects are taught through a half termly focus. This includes Geography, History, Art, Design Technology and Science.
Curriculum Impact
We plan our lessons with clear learning objectives, which are based upon the teacher’s detailed knowledge of each child. Reflective teaching and ongoing summative assessment, leads to planning that is constantly adapted to the needs of the individual classes.
Children are expected to make good or better progress in all subjects and this individual progress is tracked termly. Pupils are assessed in reading, writing, maths and phonics at the end of each term. Subsequent year group progress meetings identify the needs of a year group to ensure that they are on track to make expected progress or that there are support plans.in place. From these an action plan is created for the future term. SLT and subject leads use this in their monitoring of teaching and learning.
Below is more information on how learning is developed in different subjects.
Literacy
- Phonics:
- We devised our own Blossom Federation Phonics programme (based on the progression of Letters and Sounds) to provide concentrated and systematic teaching of daily phonics daily in the EYFS and Year 1. Targeted phonics support is given in Year 2 and further up the school, to those children when needed additional support.
- Reading:
- In Reception, Daily Supported Reading starts in the spring term.
- In Year 1, Daily Supported Reading is taught five days a week to encourage accelerated reading development. Groups are assessed weekly to ensure that all pupils are developing their skills.
- In Year 2, Guided Reading is taught five days a week to encourage accelerated reading development. Groups are assessed weekly to ensure that all pupils are developing their skills.
- KS2 take part in whole class reading five days a week.
- Writing:
- Writing is taught in unit blocks and is supported by a high quality text. The genre is decided by year groups around the topics that are being taught to enhance knowledge and understanding.
- Handwriting:
- Handwriting is developed through the school, by the end of EYFS pupils are expected to be holding a pencil correctly. In Year 1 they learn how to have a positive learning posture and form lower and upper case letters as well as digits correctly. In Year 2 they start to use the joins that lead to cursive writing.
Across the Blossom Federation, we follow a handwriting scheme that is grouped into sets, straight, tunnel, curved and zig zag letters.
Maths
- Arithmetic Fluency:
- Arithmetic is taught daily in all year groups to allow the fast recall of key facts. EYFS - Year 3 follow the Number Sense Maths and consolidate a deep mastery of number, including addition and subtraction facts to and beyond 10. Year 3 and Year 4 have an increased and steady focus on times tables, with fluent recall and making connections between learnt facts and times tables being the focus. Years 5 and 6 continue to prioritse times tables as well as developing a deep understanding of common facts and links between fractions, decimals and percentages.
- Reasoning & Problem Solving:
- Across the Blossom Federation, we base our provision around the White Rose Maths scheme of learning, in conjunction with curriculum content and guidance from NCETM. At Sebright, we ensure that all children can access their maths learning and can apply their skills and knowledge to achieve maths mastery. Children embed their oracy skills whilst completing maths learning.
Science
- Science follows the National Curriculum and the topics are linked to the Humanities subjects where applicable, to allow for skills and knowledge to be transferred and developed.
- It is a spiral curriculum to allow for the building and development of skills and knowledge, subjects include, animals including humans, plants, material etc.
- The curriculum also develops an understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science through different types of science enquiries that help children to answer scientific questions about the world around them.
Computing
- In Computing we follow the Purple Mash Scheme of Work and use some materials, resources and guidance from iLearn2. Internet Safety is taught in all lessons and is a focus whenever pupils use computing.
The Wider Curriculum
Humanities
- This follows The National Curriculum for Geography, History and RE.
- All year groups in KS2 study a period of ancient modern history.
- All pupils learn about physical human and geography and their place in the world.
- In RE we follow the Hackney SACRE scheme of work. All year groups visit a place of worship once a year.
Music
- All pupils experience weekly music lessons in a spiral thematic curriculum. delivered by a specialist music teacher. Each theme of learning consolidates and builds upon key skill areas of the inner related dimensions of music (pulse, rhythm, pitch, duration, timbre, texture and structure).
- They have the opportunity to compose and perform their own pieces of music. Individually and as small groups within lessons, and through free extracurricular activities (KS2 Choir, and KS1/ Lower KS2 Recorder Club).
- Early Years/KS1, and KS2 have a weekly singing Assembly.
- Individual lessons are offered in Piano, Woodwind/Brass (Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Trumpet and French Horn) and Guitar.
Art
- Art is taught across the curriculum and skills are built upon termly
- There is a focused topic block in the summer term with triannual focus on sculpture, textiles and painting
- All children take part in a termly Big Draw art project.
DT
- Design and Technology uses Projects on a Page from DATA to ensure the development of skills.
PE
- As well as taught PE sessions, with a specialist PE teacher, with half termly focuses there are also other sporting activities available, including cross federation sports events.
PSHCE
- The backbone of PSHCE at the Blossom Federation is JIGSAW. Jigsaw PSHE perfectly connects the pieces of Personal, Social and Health Education, emotional literacy, social skills and spiritual development.
- There is a whole school focus each half term.
- Pupils also have SRE lessons that are taught in line with the national curriculum.
