At Aldercar infant and Nursery school, we provide a rich, broad, balanced and exciting curriculum which allows our children to explore, experiment and question.  We celebrate and welcome differences within our school family and wider community. We strive to develop a unique, curriculum based around our local context to engage, stimulate and deepen learning.  

Subject knowledge and skills are taught sequentially, building on prior knowledge and leading up to meaningful, relevant outcomes. We endeavour to make sure all our children are provided with support in all aspects of the personal, social and emotional education so they are ready and able to learn.

Our curriculum aims to encourage and develop a thirst for knowledge, and in turn promote the attitudes, values and skills to becoming a life-long learner. It is designed to find the strengths of all our children, and enable them to deepen their understanding of the world in which they live, both locally and globally. 

Our overarching aim is to provide children with the ability to become reflective, creative and resilient learners who aim high to succeed in life, and have the capability to overcome barriers they may face.

We will continue to adapt our curriculum to ensure that all pupils are able to gain the key knowledge and skills they will need to thrive in an ever-advancing world. 

Implementation

Our key priority is to ensure that each child achieves the very best outcomes, with a particular emphasis on developing the basic skills in speaking and listening, reading, writing and maths. The curriculum meets all the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum and the EYFS Statutory Framework. Additionally, it provides our children with memorable, diverse and rich opportunities from which they can learn and develop a range of transferable skills.  

A consistent approach throughout the school is applied by all staff, creating a safe, secure environment in which our children develop the confidence, independence, respect and skills required for learning.

Each of our topics is centre around a global theme, using high-quality texts to helps bring the themes to life for our learners.

Our Six global learning themes

• Identity and Diversity
• Peace and conflict
• Social Justice
• Saving our Environment
• Our Heritage
• Our World and Beyond

Our curriculum has been designed and implemented to ensure that it not only develops key knowledge, concepts and skills but provides a range of experiences that foster each child’s curiosity and interest.  We endeavour to further enrich our curriculum with visitors and trips, to enhance the children’s experiences and to bring topics alive. We also have regular visitors into school such as the ‘West End Theatre Academy’, ‘Partake’ and a local Paralympian, to develop children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

The school takes pride in providing a highly inclusive environment, where learners demonstrate enjoyment in their education and make excellent progress due to consistently high expectations. Children at all levels are encouraged to achieve their maximum potential and supported to develop at their own pace or simply to learn in a style that best suits their individual needs.

The school makes a conscious effort to engage parents/carers in all aspects of school life.  Parents/ carers attend class workshops where they participate in sessions that enable them to support their child at home.  We also strive to use the local area as much as possible and make links with the wider community. 

Curriculum leaders play an important part in the success of the curriculum by leading a regular programme of monitoring, evaluation, and review and the celebration of good practice contributes to the ongoing commitment to evolve and improve further. All subject leaders are given training and the opportunity to keep developing their own subject knowledge, skills and understanding, so they can support curriculum development and their colleagues throughout the school.

Impact

Through the curriculum, our children develop an understanding of friendship, respect and responsibility and gain the ability to start thinking about similarities and differences, promoting acceptance, diversity, citizenship and human rights.

Our children will actively:                                    

• experiment and play with possibilities
• research and seek information
• clarify/review existing ideas and change accordingly
• deepen their understanding through sequential learning
• make and test theories
• decide what is right and wrong
• develop an awareness of how their own actions can impact others and the wider community.
• develop attitudes and dispositions to make a positive contribution to the world – becoming a GLOBAL CITIZEN.
• make connections between prior and new learning.
• be resilient to try new ways
• respond well to set backs/getting something wrong

Our children make rapid progress from entry into the Foundation Stage and, by the end of Key Stage 1, achieve well when compared with national and local results. Our stimulating curriculum teaches basic skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing, whilst actively promoting all other curriculum areas.

Our children enjoy lessons and we believe this early love of learning stimulates children to become life-long learners. Our work on promoting social skills including good manners, resilience, self-awareness, consideration and cooperation throughout the curriculum enables children to become fantastic role models and the very best version of themselves.

Children leave Aldercar infants with a sense of belonging to the community, and the confidence and developing skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and become lifelong learners

Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum (EYFS)

Our children learn through play, in the following seven areas of learning:

1. Personal and social development
2. Physical development
3. Communication and language
4. Literacy
5. Mathematics
6. Understanding the world
7. Expressive arts and design

Further information on the EYFS programme of study is available here:
EYFS Long-term planning cycle 1
EYFS Long-term planning cycle 2

As an Embark school, we have worked closely with the trust to create a set of checkpoints which help us to assess our children, and monitor their progress towards Early Learning Goals.  Please click the links below to find out more about the Embark EYFS checkpoints:

EYFS Embark checkpoints
2 year old provision checkpoints

Key Stage One Curriculum (KS1)

You can find more information about the key stage one programmes of study here:
Primary Curriculum KS1 programme of study
Key Stage 1 Long term plan

Please click on the links below for further information about our planning and policies.

Policies

Our Curriculum Policy
Maths Policy
English Policy
Phonics Policy
Handwriting Policy
Relationships and Health Education Policy

Subject overviews

Mathematics overview Year 1 
Mathematics overview Year 2 
English overview Year 1 
English overview Year 2

Further information

Each class will hold a meeting at the beginning of the academic year, where parents/carers will be invited in to find out more about our curriculum, and to meet the class teacher.  If you would like to discuss anything specific, please contact the school office on 01773 713428 to make an appointment with your child's class teacher.