Children develop their skills as boys and girls are taught together in small classes of 16 pupils, led by a teacher and teaching assistant.

Our youngest pupils join us from age four. In Reception, there is a balance of structured activities and free-play learning activities, both indoors and outdoors, each day. Developing children’s social skills is a major part of the Reception curriculum. The majority of learning is taught through a range of topics, such as; Helping hands and Happily Ever After in order to give the children a context and purpose for learning.

The skills necessary to become a proficient reader are given high priority. The School follows the Jolly Phonics Programme. We use the Oxford Reading Tree supported by many well-known reading schemes to develop reading skills. Plenty of activities are given to prepare children for more formal work in literacy and numeracy in Year One and Two.

Children in Reception follow the Early Learning Goals for the revised statutory Framework of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

There are seven areas of learning within the Early years Foundation Stage and they cover the main areas of young children’s development. These are:

Primary areas

  • Personal, Social and Emotional Development
  • Communication and Language
  • Physical Development

Specific Areas

    • Literacy
    • Mathematics
    • Understanding of the World
    • Expressive Arts and Design

Year 1 and Year 2 (Key Stage 1)

After the Early Years Foundation Stage, children begin to follow a broad curriculum based on, but extending beyond the National Curriculum, beginning with Key Stage One for five to seven year olds. Similar to Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are taught subjects through a creative curriculum, meaning that subjects are taught in the context of a topic, for example Let’s Celebrate, How does your garden grow, or Neighbourhood Watch.

We start each topic off with a brilliant beginning. This enables us to capture the children’s interest and start our learning journey with a bang. Previous years involved a giant snow globe in the playground for our Whatever the Weather topic, and for our dinosaur topic the children found mysterious eggs in the forest. We believe the creative curriculum gives the pupils the opportunity to develop their skills of collaboration, independence, creativity and resilience.

The majority of lessons are taught by the class form teachers and the pupils benefit from specialist teachers for subjects such as; ICT, PE, swimming and Mandarin.

The creative curriculum in practice

The Weather topic begins when children return from assembly to find their classroom has been hit by a storm.

Pupils are asked to help clean the classroom which leads them to discover large hailstones. Having made this discovery, the pupils are asked to conduct a scientific investigation on the hailstones.

By learning in this creative and exciting way, pupils are encouraged to think independently and to work as part of a team.