Our Curriculum

Growing together to:

Build strength through resilience
Value myself and others
Understand the world around us

Build strength through resilience

We enjoy challenging ourselves to try new things or work towards goals and targets

Value myself and others

In line with our Christian Values, we aim to value and respect others while trying to become the best version of ourselves.

Understand the world around us

We learn about our local community and environment

What do we intend the children who attend our school to learn?

There are several aspects to our curriculum that are really important and are therefore prioritised within our teaching and learning. We hope that the following pages give you a flavour of what is available at Crakehall CE Primary School.

Why is reading so important?

Reading is our number 1 priority! We challenge ourselves to make sure that every child who attends our school can read by the time they leave Year 1. Reading is essential. If you can’t read, it’s life-limiting! Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures.

In fact, reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background. It’s the most important skill that we can teach children in school.

Teaching reading doesn’t finish at the end of Year 1 – we want to turn all children into really fluent readers who enjoy reading. Therefore, reading is prioritised right through the school.

How does learning build knowledgeable learners?

Each subject has a ‘Knowledge Progression’ which ensures that learning is built upon through key components (small steps of learning), year on year. You can view our knowledge progressions on each subject page.

Children use knowledge organisers across all subjects to help bring forward prior learning and support new key knowledge. Teachers create knowledge walls to help move this new key knowledge into children's long-term memory.

We recognise that children at Crakehall are not exposed to high diversity. Our aim is to create a vast range of opportunities to ensure knowledge is hooked onto key experiences, taking children 'out of the village'. This is a key element of our school vision, Growing Together to 'understand our world'.

How does the curriculum all link together?

We have a Context Plan that provides our teachers with a framework, so they know what to teach, and in which year group. Through our context plan we hope to achieve composites of learning - the outcomes brought about by practising the key components through the knowledge progression. You can view a copy of this simple document below. It’s the teachers’ job to ensure that they cover all the content of our curriculum by the end of each academic year.

History and Geography unit planning is undertaken on a 3-year rolling plan for Class 1 and Class 2 (EYFS, Year 1 and Year 2). For other subjects, a 2-year rolling plan is taught. The themes, experiences and focuses from these units are used as a stimulus to deliver the EYFS curriculum.

In Class 2 the children are taught the appropriate knowledge progression steps for each year group. When working on a 2-year rolling plan, History and Geography are used to provide the context for the unit in the other subjects. In Year X the DT unit is “Constructing a Windmill”, the children will be using the knowledge progression from this unit however, the context can be changed to enhance learning in History or Geography. When Year X is taught alongside Year A, children may “Construct a Windmill” to support their Holidays in the Past history unit however in Year C, they will be learning about Space Discovery and could construct a flying device using the same knowledge progression. Staff adapt the schemes to support the knowledge development for each year group.

For Key Stage 2, a 4-year rolling plan is in place for all subjects.
Please note that only the unit title is provided for simplicity. For further details about the content of each unit, please refer to the ‘scheme of learning’ for each curriculum subject, available on the subject page on the website.

Context Plan for Mixed Age Classes

How do we try to ensure that learners remember what they’ve been taught?

It’s really important that we help children to know more and remember what they’ve been taught. In some areas of the curriculum such as phonics and maths, we follow a clear framework for teaching that allows for spaced repetition in order to aid long term memory. We use a range of strategies and resources, such as:
• Daily recap maths activities
• Little Wandle Phonics teaching resources (following the prescriptive planning for teaching)
• Regular engagement in Times Table Rock Stars (Y2-6) and NumBots (Key Stage 1)
• Working displays in the classroom where key knowledge is referred to and built upon
• Knowledge organisers to remind children of key knowledge.

In all subjects we ensure that teachers engage with effective retrieval practice to support their learning. A range of strategies are used, for example:

• Mini quizzes
• Chunking information
• Writing notes
• Making connections with other learning
• Use of rhymes and songs
• Encouraging active learning
• Making learning exciting
• Recording and replaying

Why do we use technology to support the curriculum so much?

Technology is a massive part of life in the 21st Century. It’s virtually impossible to think of a job that doesn’t use some form of technology. Therefore, it’s essential that our curriculum helps our children prepare for the next step in their education but also helps them to consider how they can use it positively in their own lives.

We regularly teach e-safety through our PSHCE curriculum – a very important aspect. Our school Internet connection is effectively filtered and any device that leaves the school also has access to our cloud-based monitoring and filtering facilities
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All children in EYFS and KS1 use iPads and Laptops in school. Parents also have the option of a lease scheme where children receive their own laptop which they can use both in school and at home. This allows them to bring their laptop into school every day and use it in lessons as required, as well as to help them with their learning at home.