Core Subjects
English
At GV Primary School, reading is at the heart of all that we do. We encourage and support all children to read a variety of genres and authors in order that they become lifelong, avid readers and use adventurous vocabulary in their speech and their written work. We follow the phonics Bug Club by ActiveLearn Phonics scheme which we use to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. We celebrate children’s enjoyment of books and reading by dedicating various areas around school to spaces where children can read comfortably and happily. As spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing, we aim to foster exploratory talk and good listening skills. Drama and role-play is regularly used in lessons to encourage creativity in writing. We adapt a talk less teaching approach whereby children develop their spoken language in order to enhance their written skills and we have adapted the ‘Word Aware’ approach to ensure that our classrooms are vocabulary rich and enthuse the children to make ambitious vocabulary choices when writing. Children are curious about new vocabulary and are keen to develop their understanding of words that they are not familiar with. We have developed our curriculum to incorporate good quality and engaging texts that interest and inspire readers. We would like GV Primary children to be ambitious, resilient and creative writers with an innate desire to read for pleasure. We use our cross-curricular topics to provide a platform for talk and deliver enriched activities for writing. Application of key literacy skills are therefore taught across all foundation subjects. Writing is celebrated and displayed in classrooms and around the school and rewards for taking pride in handwriting and presentation are given weekly.
Maths
At Grove Vale, we follow a Mastery approach which is personalised to the core values of our school. As per the NCETM, mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject. The phrase ‘teaching for mastery’ describes the elements of classroom practice and school organisation of the curriculum that combine to give pupils the best chances of mastering maths
Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract
The Concrete Pictorial Abstract (CPA) approach is a system of learning that uses physical and visual aids to build a child’s understanding of abstract topics.
Pupils are introduced to a new mathematical concept through the use of concrete resources (e.g. fruit, Dienes blocks etc). When they are comfortable solving problems with physical aids, they are given problems with pictures – usually pictorial representationsof the concrete objects they were using.
Then they are asked to solve problems where they only have the abstract i.e. numbers or other symbols. Building these steps across a lesson can help pupils better understand the relationship between numbers and the real world, and therefore helps secure their understanding of the mathematical concept they are learning.
At Grove Vale we aim to inspire all children to reach their full academic potential. In mathematics this means ensuring an ambitious curriculum that is fully inclusive of all children which:
- Ensures children at Grove Vale are emerged in a rich and high-quality math curriculum, enabling freedom to be creative.
- Gives children the chance to develop the power of resilience by believing in themselves when being faced with mathematical challenges.
- Encourages children have opportunities to be curious, making connections between mathematical processes and the world around them.
- Develops children as independent learners, having self-drive to be ambitious by being a part of progressing and challenging themselves and not being afraid to take risks.
- Makes sure fluency, problem solving and reasoning is developed sequentially to ensure children have a strong foundation to build upon and achieve mastery.
Click here for more information on our Maths page
Science
Children learn through practical activities, which develop their investigative skills and encourage a desire to find out about the world around them. We study living things, materials and states of matter, light, forces, sound, electricity and earth and space. We encourage children to discover, investigate, ask questions, observe, collaborate, predict, investigate and conclude. Children are able to use correct and appropriate scientific vocabulary to explain what they observe.
