Our Curriculum

Click your child’s class on the right hand side to find out about what they are up to this term and also some further ideas for reading books recommended for their age!

Curriculum

Our curriculum has been designed with our children and the local area in mind. As a staff we thought about our schools ethos, the community and links we have already established or our plans and hopes for the future.

Termly curriculum plans can be found by clicking on each class’ page.

Reading:

We are currently using ‘Accelerated Reader’ which encourages children to read a broad range of texts before moving ‘up’. Children log their progress on their own online profile and take comprehension quizzes about each book that they read. In the infants the children have access to a number of phonics based books including Oxford Reading Tree and Song Bird. Our books are coloured banded to allow us to differentiate and monitor the progress of the children.

Writing:

Teachers use Jane Considine’s ‘The Write Stuff’ approach to writing. This follows a method called “Sentence Stacking” which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together through short, intensive moments of learning that children can then immediately apply to their own writing.  An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to 3 learning chunks. Each learning chunk has three sections:

    1. Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
    2. Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
    3. Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the model.

Stretch and challenge is encouraged through ‘Deepen the Moment’ opportunities.

“The Write Stuff”  uses three essential components to support children in becoming great writers

The three zones of writing :-

    • IDEAS –  The FANTASTICs uses a child friendly acronym to represent the nine idea lenses through which children can craft their ideas.
    • TOOLS – The GRAMMARISTICS. The grammar rules of our language system and an accessible way to target weaknesses in pupils grammatical and linguistic structures.
    • TECHNIQUES – The BOOMTASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual.

Phonics:

Our phonics is taught using a variety of resources, this includes a mixture of Jolly Phonics and ‘Letters and Sounds’. This creates a fun, pacey and engaging learning environment. For more information about how children learn phonics, click below to open a guide for parents:

Phonics Guide For Parents

Handwriting

To develop atomicity of handwriting, we follow ‘Kinetic Letters’. Within Kinetic letters children, learn letter formation through movement and multisensory experiences. The programme develops both concentration and motor skills with children motivated through personal challenges underpinned by stories, song and movement.

It has 4 main strands to help children develop their handwriting:

    • Making Bodies Stronger
    • Holding the pencil
    • Learning the Letters
    • Flow and Fluency

Children across school undertake daily handwriting lessons using this approach to learn and then refine handwriting.

Mathematics:

In mathematics we ensure there are plenty of opportunities for problem solving and chance to apply logic skills. We often have investigations and work through real life and worded problems.

Science

At Buildwas, we place value on investigative science and children using their own ideas to explore concepts following the National Curriculum.

Foundation Subjects:

Our thematic curriculum has been designed with the the children and our local context in mind. It aims to enrich the lives of our pupils, giving them skills and opportunities that will help them in later in life and take up their roles as global citizens. We hope that the children are as excited about the themes they will be covering as we are. We endeavour to bring these themes to life through the local links, visits and immersion activities to help create life long memories.