Core Subjects
Long Term Curriculum Overview
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 want to inspire our mathematicians to embody all of our core values, based on an inclusive, active and adaptive approach, where we aim for all of our children to develop a deep, conceptual, long-term and adaptable understanding of mathematics.
To achieve this, the curriculum is carefully structured and layered from EYFS - Year 6 and focusses on the most important skills children need to secure to be ready to progress. Provision follows an adaptive and interactive approach, linked to our core values, enabling children to reason and un-pick a concept in a variation of ways, with problem solving and reasoning at the heart. Children have separate opportunities to develop and secure key number facts while also having structured retrieval practices to deepen learning within long-term memory. - resources
As a result, all children have a positive attitude towards maths, make progress and are challenged within their own rates. Children are flexible, adaptable and confident mathematicians that can reason and apply their learning in a variation of ways.
Our strengths:
- Long term, topics (especially number) are given sufficient time to break learning into small, manageable steps. Skills are sequenced from EYFS to Year 6 to demonstrate progression. Medium term, the maths lead works in collaboration with class teachers to produce medium term plans to ensure adequate sequencing of skills into small steps.
- DfE Ready to Progress criteria are a priority are used to support planning and assessment and highlight the most important skills children need to progress to the next year group. Staff determine prerequisite knowledge through pre-assessments, use this to adapt provision and assess children against the criteria half termly.
- Number facts are a priority and embedded through discretely taught sessions as well as throughout the learning journey and homework (Mastering number or mental maths sessions, quick maths). As a result, Y4 MTC check in 2023 saw 58% children score 25/25 with a mean score of 22.8. This is assessed and celebrated half termly to identify and address gaps through additional intervention and promote engagement.
- Consistent approach which links to the core values.
- Robust CPD map which focusses on current needs as well as embedding a mastery approach.
- Children from all abilities have regular application of taught skills through problem solving and reasoning with a focus on real life.
- Children have a positive attitude towards maths
Click here for more information on our Maths page
Science
At Grove Vale we aim to give the children knowledge of the world around them that they can then go on and apply through practical activities which develop their knowledge alongside their investigative skills. We encourage a desire for the children to find out more about the world they live in. We study living things, materials and states of matter, light, forces, sound, electricity and earth and space. We want the children to discover, investigate, ask questions, observe, collaborate, predict, investigate and conclude. It is important to us that children are able to use correct and appropriate scientific vocabulary to explain what they observe.
Our core values underpin everything we teach during science lessons. The children are resilient in science by developing strong problem-solving abilities to tackle research obstacles and experimental failures and understand that progress in science often involves encountering failures and setbacks. They are ambitious by being inspired to learn from the work of scientists through discussion and reading. They are encouraged to push themselves out of their comfort zone by tackling ambitious research and investigations. They make an active contribution in lessons and take pride in their work. The children show curiosity by becoming curious about how the world around them works. They are excited by new learning and ask thought provoking questions in science. They devise their own lines of enquiry and make links between concepts. Finally, they are creative when making links between concepts and present their learning in a variety of ways. They think ‘outside of the box’ when drawing conclusions and articulate themselves confidently.
