Our Curriculum
We provide all children with a wide range of learning opportunities delivered by skilled and experienced staff. We aim to help each child develop in knowledge, skills and understanding and to become confident and independent learners. We place our children at the centre of their own learning and our curriculum is meaningful and engaging. We work in topics and make links across individual subjects. Themes have included Space, Oceans, Local Studies, and All About Me. We use our outdoor learning environment to develop practical life skills through different physical activities and environmental issues.
Specialist Teaching
Every week each full-time teacher spends half a day away from their teaching duties to concentrate on planning and evaluating their pupils' learning. We use specialist teachers to provide cover during this time which allows the children to benefit from PE, Art or Music.
Assessment
We aim to develop within children the language of learning, enabling children to be more involved in their learning by being able to know their strengths and areas for development. We encourage children to identify their own particular learning needs and help them to find ways of meeting them.
Through this we believe children's problem solving skills, independence and self-esteem will be improved.
Assessment opportunities are a natural part of teaching and learning, and constantly take place in the classroom through discussion, listening and analysis of work, along with more formal assessment tests at the end of a unit of work.
Outside School
We enjoy strong links with other local schools in the partnership and often take part in music festivals, engineering days, sporting events or junior citizens.
We also enjoy going on residential and day school trips. Recent adventures have included Coleshill House WWII Auxillary Unit, Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway Swindon, the Sheldonian Winter Concert Oxford and the Watermill Theatre in Newbury. Every year our oldest children go on exciting five-day residential to Yenworthy Lodge on the North Devon coast.
Our oldest children also go swimming one morning a week for a term.
School and Home
Not only do we welcome your child, but also you and your family, as it is our view that staff cannot fully educate children without the whole-hearted support and co-operation of parents. We consider that the important foundations of your child's education will best be served by home and school working closely together. We encourage this partnership through Parent-Teacher Interviews, workshop meetings, curriculum information, home-school diaries and weekly 'Celebration Assemblies.' All our children receive an appropriate level of homework. This encompasses a wide range of possibilities to do with everyday life that reinforce what we learn at school.