Welcome to the Curriculum page of our website. Here you will find information on the different subjects taught at Putnoe Primary School and how you can support your child's learning in these areas. Please use the links on the left had side of the page to navigate between the different subject areas.

Intent

Aiming High, Learning for Life

Here at Putnoe Primary School, we aim to help all pupils enjoy and achieve.

We strive for academic excellence while seeking to provide a balance between academic subjects and the aesthetic, practical, musical and physical activities. We believe all pupils should have the opportunity to develop those life skills that will raise self-confidence and self-esteem and contribute to their role as responsible, aspirational citizens.

Putnoe Primary School is committed to meeting and exceeding the requirements of the primary National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum in both breadth and depth, and these are mapped throughout the school. Links between curriculum areas are made where these are relevant and purposeful. The curriculum is taught with the consideration of the needs of all learners. Our curriculum is exciting and aims to inspire pupils to develop a love of learning.

At Putnoe Primary, we meet the welfare requirements detailed in the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage and actively safeguard and promote the welfare of all of our pupils.

Implementation

Early Years

The Early Years timetable is carefully structured so that pupils have rigorous direct teaching in English, Maths, and phonics each day.  These sessions are followed by group work, where pupils work with a member of staff to develop within their individual targets.  This focused group time means the teacher can systematically check for understanding, identify and respond to misconceptions quickly and provide real-time, verbal feedback, which results in a strong impact on the acquisition of new learning.   

Pupils are provided with plenty of time to engage in ‘discovery learning’ throughout the variety of experiences carefully planned to engage and challenge them in the provision. The curriculum is planned for the inside and outside classrooms and equal importance is given to learning in both areas. This provides time for quality interactions with adults, and between peers, in self-selected activities; this also allows staff to follow pupils’ interests and use targeted next steps to pinpoint learning opportunities in play. Staff ensure that interactions are positive and progressive, allowing pupils to flourish and gather words at pace in order to become confident communicators.

Pupils are encouraged to become early readers through enjoyment of books and the systematic teaching of phonics, using the Monster Phonics scheme, in line with the rest of the school. The curriculum is taught through topics which are enriched with classroom enhancements, trips and visitors. Topics are supported by quality key texts and pupils are encouraged to learn nursery rhymes and develop their mathematical thinking through direct teaching and exploration. We follow the structure of White Rose Maths to ensure that pupils learn via a mastery approach that will enable them to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

We have built our school environment to enable our pupils to strengthen their core muscles through physical play; pupils spend time outdoors in their natural environment in all weathers. They develop through wonderful, exploratory, sensory experiences in our squiggle sessions (Nursery) and in our environmental area. Our learning environment is adaptable in order to reflect pupils’ interests and progression. The pupils are supported to learn to work together, manage their feelings and ask questions through skilled adult facilitated play. In Early Years, our environment and all our interactions and routines are intentional and purposeful to support pupils with their next steps. 

We have weekly focused teaching in Music, Computing and PE to develop pupils’ gross and fine motor skills, which are embedded into their daily routine.  Our Nursery pupils are prepared for Reception by taking an active role in Dough Disco and Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle to support their early writing skills.

We understand the importance of parental engagement and believe that our parents have a crucial role to play in their pupils’ education. We work hard to create strong partnerships between home and school.  Parents receive half termly curriculum overviews to inform them of what their child is learning and have the opportunity to be use ‘Seesaw’, an online portal used for communications and an opportunity for parents to share in the learning at school.

Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2

For Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, our schemes of work reflect the content and challenge of the National Curriculum and beyond. Staff have worked together to develop our curriculum so that the needs of our pupils can be best met. The curriculum is adapted and updated according to the needs of particular pupils within a year group.

Throughout a week, pupils will access daily reading lessons, focussed on phonics and decoding, fluency and/or comprehension. They have at least four hours of English based lessons, along with at least four hours of Maths based lessons.

We use ‘Monster Phonics’ as our phonics scheme, and elements of ‘The Write Stuff’ to influence the teaching of Writing. We use ‘White Rose Hub’ as the basis for our Maths lesson, with ‘Primary Stars’ supporting the use of resources in Key Stage 1. We know that our pupils must develop high levels of language and vocabulary, and this thread is weaved into all curriculum areas.

Alongside this, each week, pupils will engage with science learning; computing lessons; musical development; personal development lessons, such as religious education or personal, social, emotional development; and physical activity. Throughout the year, the creative curriculum is split in to three areas of design technology and three areas of art and design. The humanities curriculum is split in to three main history areas and three main geographic areas.

We plan for extra-curricular enrichment activities, linked to learning, for each year group. These include visitors coming into school and pupils attending out-of-school trips. We recognise that ‘real life’ experiences are one way to inspire a love of learning. There are numerous specialist staff that work with our pupils to enhance the curriculum provision, ranging from cello teachers, local artists, DJs and many more. We specifically aim their work toward pupils that may not otherwise get the opportunity to engage with experiences such as this.

Skills are taught progressively across year groups, within a year, within a unit and within a lesson so that knowledge is built over time, leading to pupils knowing more and remembering more. Learning leads from prior learning and knowledge, and where key concepts have not been remembered, these are re-taught to pupils.

More information about how the curriculum is implemented at Putnoe Primary School, can be found on the curriculum pages of our website. We also give more specific details about each year group in our half-termly curriculum overviews.

Impact

The impact of the curriculum can be seen by talking with pupils about their learning. Their books demonstrate some ways that learning has been recorded, and the outcomes at the end of their time at Putnoe demonstrate how they have progressed and attained.

In the EYFS, we assess against all areas of learning using an online system. We use a combination of formative and summative half termly assessments to inform our planning and guide our curriculum. Progress is monitored towards our own end of year curricular goals, created from a curriculum designed to be progressive from Nursery to Reception and unique to our school. At the end of the EYFS year, we assess pupil attainment against each of the Early Learning Goals and measure the progress of our pupils in achieving a good level of development.

We assess all subjects and learning regularly using an online system. We use national assessments such as the baseline, phonics screening and key stage 1 and 2 SATs so that we are able to judge our pupils’ attainment in relation to the national picture.

From year 2 upwards, we use written tests for reading and maths, so that pupils become familiar with the format and expectation of national testing. The data we gain from this gives us insight into specific areas of the curriculum that need further development, as well as identifying the needs of individual pupils.

Termly pupil progress meetings held between senior members of staff and class teachers bring discussions about the curriculum and individual pupils to the forefront. Staff work in curriculum teams to evaluate the impact of the curriculum on pupils’ attainment, which enables a reflective approach to our curriculum.

Additional Information

In line with government requirements, the school sets whole school curriculum targets annually that are developed from individual pupil and class targets set by the teaching staff. The targets are discussed, agreed and monitored by the Governing Body’s Standards Committee. The National Curriculum applies to pupils of compulsory school age in maintained schools.

The following subjects are included in the National Curriculum at Key Stages 1 and 2:

• English
• Mathematics
• Science
• Computing
• Religious Education
• Art
• Design Technology
• Music
• Geography
• History
• Physical Education
• Personal Social and Health Education

For each subject and for each Key Stage, programmes of study set out what pupils should be taught and attainment targets set out the expected standards of pupils’ performance.

For further information, please contact Miss Durrheim (Deputy Head Teacher).