At Stamfordham Primary School, we have designed our curriculum with the intent that children must have the building blocks to become successful adults in terms of being able to gain employment, live healthy lifestyles, be moral citizens and to take opportunities to extend their horizons.
We have a strong focus on the teaching and learning of maths and English which in turns means our children make a flying start. We encourage children to be self-motivated to improve subject knowledge in these areas by offering a range of awards for children to work toward.
As we hope that our children will aspire to a range of careers and personal interests in the future, and to ensure that they gain knowledge and skills across all subjects, we designed our curriculum to cover not only the statutory aspects of the National Curriculum, but to take account of our local farming heritage. The curriculum is covered in blocks across the school year with regular repetition of themes supplemented with whole school learning e.g. around specific artists or famous historical figures.
Our key aim is that when children leave us to move on to secondary school, they have:
We strongly believe in a creative approach to the curriculum. We value children’s differences and look for their strengths. We use a range of teaching strategies to meet the needs of different learning styles; we introduce thinking strategies and encourage learning dispositions across the curriculum. We provide a questioning and reasoning approach to all learning to enhance children’s self-esteem and foster a true love of learning; teachers are flexible and creative in delivery and focus on the development of the skills children need to become true and lifelong learners.
We review our curriculum regularly to ensure that it is best suited to our learners’ needs. Each curriculum area has a subject-specific vision and coverage is reviewed by subject leaders and the senior leadership team. Our curriculum is delivered around our vision. We also strive to ensure that the lessons we deliver are knowledge-rich, skills-led and we understand that context is everything. In addition to our timetabled planning, we offer additional focus weeks to enhance and consolidate learning opportunities. These include STEM weeks, Art/DT projects, careers weeks and additional work with the local community.
We measure the impact in a range of ways. We use ongoing formative and summative assessment methods to track the progress of all children in school. We also use less formal methods to monitor the impact of teaching and learning such as pupil questionnaires and communicating with parents and carers. Our Governing body support the senior leadership team to carry out planned monitoring of all subjects as detailed in our vigorous and comprehensive monitoring timetable and subject leaders are proactive in measuring the impact within their subject area(s).