Our Curriculum
The children are at the heart of our curriculum which is designed to excite, challenge and support every child, to find their strengths and to build their aspirations.
Our broad and balanced curriculum is carefully designed, implemented and reviewed to ensure that our core values shine through in everything that we do. It is planned and sequenced to provide sufficient knowledge and skills that build over time and prepare our pupils for future learning.
We strive for excellence on a daily basis to ensure children are responsible, resilient and ready for the next chapter in their lives.
Reading, Writing & Maths
KEC Curriculum
Knowledge
Experiences
Connections
Our curriculum excites pupils to ask questions and learn new knowledge and skills. Our curriculum builds pupils’ substantive and
disciplinary knowledge progressively over time, from the moment they start school in the Early Years. It prepares them well for the Key Stage Three curriculum.
The long-term plan is devised so that there are clear subject links within a unit, enabling pupils to make connections in their learning. This is also the case with the subject strands, where skills correlate with other subjects. For example, the skills within similarities and differences in history work parallel with making comparisons in geography.
The curriculum has been designed to broaden understanding and embed knowledge, so that pupils know more and remember more over time.
Pupils learn subject content in the curriculum which may support them to access the reading pathway texts. For example, in the Year 5 history unit, pupils learn about the Victorians. This prepares them with background knowledge for reading Street Child as their whole class Reading Pathway text. This ensures that pupils have the contextual understanding necessary to fully access the text, while reinforcing historical knowledge.
Pupils master knowledge progressively through each year, phase and key stage. The needs of all pupils have been carefully considered when setting this ambition. This ambition remains high, but may be adapted by support and resources for those pupils with additional needs.
The most important knowledge we expect pupils to remember is identified in each subject, and many subjects involve an enquiry-based element, reinforcing our strong belief in fostering enquiry in the wider world.
Influential people and significant places are also paramount to the curriculum, and are used in all subjects. These are selected to span
different eras and areas of the world, and link directly to the unit of work pupils are learning. By incorporating a diverse range of people
and places, learning is put into a real-world context, and pupils are given an insight into how learning connects to the world around
them, inspiring them to pursue future careers.
Throughout the curriculum, we take every opportunity possible to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Early Years Foundation Stage
At Alford Primary School our curriculum is based on the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework educational programmes and ‘Development Matters’ guidance, along with children’s interests and developmental needs, and the context of our school. Our curriculum is designed to give children the foundational knowledge and understanding needed to prepare them for year 1 and beyond.
A key feature throughout our provision is developing children’s language and vocabulary. We do this through the stories we read, our interactions with children, and our language and communication rich environments. We provide lots of opportunities to develop children’s familiarity with stories, songs and rhymes. Everything we do is designed to promote language development – our learning environments, the structure of our day, the way focus activities and interventions are organised, and the high quality training we provide for all our staff.
Running all the way through our early years is the principle of learning through play, the best and most meaningful way for young children to learn. We provide rich, enabling learning environments, inside and outdoors, which promote exploration and discovery.
At Alford Primary School, we are passionate for our children to become accomplished, happy, confident, well-rounded individuals who have a love for learning. We believe that all our children are capable of achieving amazing things and our curriculum is designed to allow our children to develop the knowledge and learning behaviours that they need to succeed in an ever-changing world.
Children will leave our EYFS as
Independent Individuals who can follow our class rules, set simple goals and persevere to achieve them, select resources and manage their own personal needs.
Confident Communicators who can listen attentively, hold a conversation with friends and adults, ask relevant questions and be able to use new vocabulary appropriately.
Fantastic Friends who can be kind and helpful, show empathy respect to others, work and play co-operatively, whilst considering the ideas and feelings of others.
Compassionate Citizen who can help to look after their community and care for the environment, know some reasons why Alford is special and have an awareness of other peoples’ cultures and beliefs.
