Our Curriculum

Our children have the opportunities to learn in a range of ways - individually, in groups and as a whole class, as appropriate. At all stages, children learn, practise and refine a wide range of skills in all their activities across the National Curriculum. These are described as key skills, as they help learners to improve their learning through their education, as well as in later life. 

The key skills are complemented by the development across the curriculum of 'thinking skills' - information processing, reasoning, enquiry, creative thinking and evaluation skills. 

The school’s curriculum framework has been devised to ensure that knowledge and key skills in all subjects are taught in a coherent, well-planned and progressive manner. This is often through over-arching themes which makes learning meaningful for the children. Our curriculum is designed to promote long-term memory. Opportunities are provided to return to content and concepts, over time, in order to gain a growing developmental understanding.

The school’s commitment to outdoor learning and first-hand real-life experiences benefits every child’s development. Age appropriately, all the children are directly involved in assessing risks. This heightens their awareness and understanding of risks in their daily lives across a range of environments. In this way, children are learning a crucial life skill that will promote safety and well-being today and through into adulthood.

We aim to develop children as individuals – physically, mentally, culturally and spiritually but above all as lifelong learners, able to make a positive contribution to the local and wider community, today and in the future.

We follow the early years framework in EYFS and the national curriculum in KS1 and KS2.

Our school curriculum is designed to be active, hands-on and memorable. The focus is squarely on learning but learning in a way that is enjoyable and driven by the interests of the pupils.

There are three key drivers in our curriculum. These form the foundations of our curriculum and permeate all aspects of school:

Farm to Fork - Outdoor Learning
We provide our children with safe and varied outdoor experiences which they might not access at home or elsewhere. Outdoor learning provides health benefits and opportunities to self-assess risk. As well as this, it promotes well-being, collaboration, a connection to nature and a greater level of enjoyment and motivation. We use our year round growing area and polytunnel to plant, grow and harvest vegetables and fruit, which are then used by the children in our curriculum kitchen. The crucial skills developed through this approach, ensures that our children understand where their food comes from and how important it is to cook and eat healthy meals. These life skills will ensure the children from our rural community keep connected to the local area and grow up fully understanding the importance of being fit and healthy, looking after themselves and others.

Physical Development and Wellbeing
We encourage healthy living and active learning beyond the classroom. We promote a love of sport and physical exercise which supports children’s learning and wellbeing. Our school's Gold Award confirms our commitment to ensuring that our children access the best coaches, sessions, outdoor play spaces and opportunities for physical exercise as possible. We take proud in our pastoral care and family ethos. Every child and family are supported in a wide variety of ways to ensure our children are safe, healthy and well cared for. We work tirelessly to ensure our children are equipped with the tools needed to make them well adjusted, confident and kind individuals with a thirst for knowledge and an alert, keen curiosity for life.

Language Development and Vocabulary
Nationally, there is evidence of a "vocabulary gap" between children on-entry to school. In order to close this gap and to promote a love of reading and writing, we provide a word-rich environment and a love of stories and books. Reading is always a high priority in order to allow our children to access the full curriculum offer with a focus on high quality teaching of phonics. We use Read, Write inc and then Accelerated Reader in school, which evidence shows a rigorous and sequential approach to the reading curriculum. These schemes ensure we develop pupils’ fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading.

English, Mathematics and Science are coherently planned and sequenced to ensure clear progression within and between year groups. We enable children to develop knowledge and key skills in these subjects so that they can apply them in different contexts.

Other subjects in the national curriculum are carefully planned over the long term so that pupils’ experiences are deep and broad. Our children acquire the knowledge and cultural capital they need to broaden their horizons, become aspirational citizens and succeed in life. 

Each subject of the curriculum has a comprehensive document that outlines knowledge, skills, coverage for each year group in a clear and progressive way. Conscious connections, continuous provision and links to our three key drivers are made to ensure a cohesive experience for all. Longitudinal learning to revisit ideas and concepts to enable deeper learning is also included.

Long term, medium term and short term planning is designed to help pupils to remember the content they’ve been taught and to use and apply knowledge into larger ideas.

The school is committed to being fully inclusive and provision is made to ensure that disadvantaged pupils and pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities are able to access the curriculum in full.

Our commitment to providing a broad and balanced curriculum, with clearly defined key drivers which thread their way through all subjects, results in the majority of children achieving a mastery of the content; they remember what they have learned and are fluent in it. Some pupils attain a greater depth of understanding.

Children who attend our school will care for and respect themselves, others and the environment. They will be good at collaborating; working together for success. They will have a positive and resilient attitude and will embrace and celebrate diversity.

The National Curriculum

Schools are required by law to teach the National Curriculum to all children of five years and over. At the centre are the 'Core' subjects of English, Maths and Science as well as Computing (IT) and Religious Education (RE). The Foundation subjects comprise of History, Geography, Art, Design Technology, Music, PE and PSHE (Personal, Social, Health & Citizenship), RSE (Relationships) and MFL (Modern Foreign Language) - French in KS2. 

Children in Reception (EYFS) follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Years 1 and 2 will be working in KS1 (Key Stage 1) of the National Curriculum and those in Years 3, 4, 5 & 6 will continue through KS2 (Key Stage 2) of the National Curriculum. 

Wherever possible, we follow a thematic approach to our curriculum, to put learning into a real life context for the children. The topics taught encompass a wide range of curriculum areas, however, some subjects may be taught separately to ensure full coverage of skills for your child. 

Below you will find links to The National Curriculum but also Our Long Term Plans which are shown in a two-year cycle. 

English

English (including Phonics) in EYFS and Year 1 is taught through the Read, Write Inc. scheme. This supports the children to develop their phonics, reading and writing. With this being embedded in Willow Class the aim is to make more fluent readers with a good understanding of what they have read.

English lessons taught from Year 1 onwards are planned from a range of high quality texts, film clips, or current affairs through Literacy Shed + to engage children in their learning, covering a broad range of genres and text-types. These lessons are planned to ensure the children continue to build up their skills in specific text types and promote the children writing for a variety of purposes. The children then show off their skill development when they apply their learning to longer pieces of work in their topic lessons. 

Spelling is taught through the Read, Write Inc. scheme in Year 1 and is followed on by the Read, Write Spell scheme that is taught daily from Year 2 to Year 6. The teaching of grammar and punctuation is also taught within English lessons and supported with Special Focus lessons as part of the Read, Write Spell scheme, which is closely matched to the National Curriculum. 

At Clough and Risegate Primary it is our aim that each child leaves us with a love of words. We aim to develop children who can speak fluently, read for enjoyment and meaning and can write in any genre; be it a letter of complaint or a beautiful poem. Our Accelerated Reader scheme will enable all children to read challenging, rewarding and enjoyable texts. We LOVE reading at Clough and Risegate Community Primary School. 

Maths

Our Long Term Plans do include our Numeracy links. For more details of coverage however, you will find a link below to the yearly overview aligned to the National Curriculum from White Rose. Due to our mixed aged classes, these are not followed rigidly, instead are adapted to meet the needs of our children in response to teaching, learning and continuous assessments made. 

The White Rose Maths curriculum is a cumulative curriculum so that once a topic is covered, it is met many times again in other contexts. Our aim in Mathematics is that each child leaves Clough and Risegate Community Primary with the skills to meet the demands of everyday life in the modern world. We want all children to use and apply their mathematical skills confidently, use mathematical language effectively and to be fluent mathematical thinkers. We want children to enjoy being mathematicians. 

Science

Our aim in Science is to give children practical experiences of scientific processes by allowing them to experiment and find solutions to questions about the world in which they live. We encourage children to understand the relevance of Science to their present lives and how discoveries made today may impact on their futures. Children develop scientific knowledge and conceptual understanding of the natural world, materials and physical processes. We want children to experience the wonder of the scientific world and to be excited by what they discover for themselves. We teach Science primarily through Pearson's Science Bug scheme, however, we take opportunities to make as many links as possible in our other areas of the curriculum. 

Here at Clough & Risegate we use Purple Mash to support the learning and retention of computing skills. Throughout the scheme of work, we embed the intent of covering a wide range of opportunities to ensure our Computing curriculum enriches our children to be digitally literate and enthused along the way. The topics and skills covered support their transition into the ever growing technological world. 

RE (Religious Education)

Religious education is taught based on the Lincolnshire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education

Our principle aims are to help children to grow in awareness and responsibility, whilst developing an appreciation of the needs, customs and beliefs of others in order to assist them in the formation and expression of their own ideas and belief. Children also engage in assemblies, discussion and reflection. These take place as a whole school, as a key stage and in class.

MFL (Modern Foreign Language) - French

At Clough and Risegate Primary School we choose to teach French as our Modern Foreign Language at Key Stage 2. Through our scheme of learning on Kapow the children will begin to learn some basic French. The learning of a foreign language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for the pupils. Pupils will develop communication and literacy skills that will lay the foundations for future language learning.

Music

Music is an important part of our school curriculum. We use Charanga, a music teaching and learning platform, to ensure that we are delivering a well-sequenced music curriculum. Our Long Term Plans give details of the units covered. The interrelated dimensions of music weave through the units to encourage the development of musical skills as the learning progresses through listening and appraising, differing musical activities (including creating and exploring) and performing.

The children are involved in many activities, including listening and responding to music from a variety of cultures and periods, playing instruments, singing, writing and performing their own compositions. Children have the opportunity to work individually, in groups, or as a class within a wide range of activities in their classrooms, the hall and outdoors.

* Please see our Teaching and Learning Policy on this website for further specific subject area information. If you would like to know more or have any questions about our curriculum, then please email:  enquiries@clough-risegate.co.uk