Primary

The new National Curriculum commenced in 2014.  Subjects taught are English, Maths, Art and Design, Design Technology, History, Geography, Science, PE, Music and Computing.  Modern languages are taught in KS2 and RE and Personal, Social and Health Education are taught across both Key Stages

Maths and English are taught every day. English is divided into reading (including the use of Reading Recovery and Book Bands to measure progress), phonics (through a combination of phonics schemes), writing, handwriting, spelling, grammar and punctuation.  From Years 1 to 6 , we use a programme called The Write Stuff.

Maths is taught from Reception through to Year 6 following a programme called Maths Mastery. Through this, children follow a highly structured method of going into each Maths topic in great detail and not moving on until all children have 'mastered' it. 

Other subjects are taught from an enquiry base with children initiating a project from a key question. For example in Year 6, they have the question; Is Bristol built on tears or glory? The story is the Diary of a Slave Girl and there is both a History and Geography link to Bristol's role in the Slave Trade. The aim is to not only encourage the asking of questions but also to enable the children to use higher order thinking skills transferring their knowledge to different contexts, as well as retaining relevant knowledge in their long term memories . Each theme starts with something exciting to engage the children; this could be a trip, event or surprise activity. An example of this would be in Year 3 where they discovered a large footprint on the playing field that turned into a crime scene. Alternatively, in Y6 where the Classroom Assistant was kidnapped and the children had to rescue her using they mapping skills (Geography) to locate her and eventually designing their own burglar alarm (Science) to ensure it didn’t happen again. We also have a series of expert visitors coming in to support projects wherever possible.

If you would like to look at this further please refer to our rapidly evolving Long Term Curriculum Maps.

Show me the Curriculum Maps for KS1 and KS2

For each subject we produce the following documentation:

• A Curriculum Progression document which outlines the skills and knowledge the children will gain from Year 1 to Year 6
• A '3i' document which states our intent for teaching that particular subject, how we implement the teaching of the subject and the impact of our teaching of the subject
• Curriculum Ladders which give details of how a particular topic will be taught with a particular subject.
• Curriculum Quizzes to measure the children's knowledge at both the start and the finish of a particular topic within a subject.

Please click on the boxes below to see examples of these documents (these will be added to through this first year of our new curriculum)